A visitor uses his mobile phone as he walks past the Microsoft booth with a logo for cloud computing software application at the CeBit computer fair in Hanover, March, 6, 2012. A women holds her laptop as she walks in front of a cloud computing logo at the booth of IBM during preparations for the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, March 9, 2014. NEW YORK President elect Donald Trump is pro-business and anti-red tape. But what if your business is red tape? Companies whose technology helps banks and investors cope with the welter of post financial crisis regulations and avoid increasingly hefty fines - a sector known as "regtech" - are sanguine about Trump's pledge to dismantle some of those reforms.

It turns out you don't need to be Dr Doolittle to eavesdrop on arguments in the animal kingdom. Researchers studying Egyptian fruit bats say they have found a way to work out who is arguing with whom, what they are squabbling about and can even predict the outcome of a disagreement – all from the bats' calls. "The global quest is to understand where human language comes from. To do this we must study animal communication," said Yossi Yovel, co-author of the research from Tel Aviv University in Israel. "One of the big questions in animal communication is how much information is conveyed."

Imagine pulling into a Starbucks drive-thru and seeing not just your drink order but your name on the screen -- along with the suggestions of what foods you might like with your drink, automatically generated by the weather, your buying history, and the choices that others with similar preferences have made. Coming soon to a Starbucks drive-through near you -- and to your smartwatch, and possibly to each store's cash register -- are serving suggestions generated by artificial intelligence. It's all part of the coffee giant's plan to use AI and the cloud to drive sales and growth, as laid out in a 45-minute presentation this month at Starbucks Investor Day in Manhattan. "I hope you're convinced we're continuing to set the bar for digital in brick-and-mortar," said Matt Ryan, Starbucks chief strategy officer, after laying out the company's technology plans. It gives us the advantage we have moving forward." Seattle-based Starbucks is going strong -- growing steadily and last month ...

Or Meaningless New research offers insights into what gives work meaning -- as well as into common management mistakes that can leave employees feeling that their work is meaningless. GE's Big Bet on Data and Analytics This case study focuses on GE's "industrial internet" strategy. Aligning the Organization for Its Digital Future In this report, MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte explore how digitally savvy executives are aligning their people, processes, and culture with an eye toward long-term digital success. Data Sharing and Analytics Drive Success with IoT This MIT Sloan Management Review study concluded that obtaining business value from the internet of things depends on companies' willingness to share data with other organizations. Beyond the Hype: The Hard Work Behind Analytics Success This report by MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS found that few companies have a strategic plan for analytics or are executing a strategy for what they hope to achieve with analytics.

Val is powered by Kasisto's KAI Banking bot and "delivers insights into spending, savings, borrowing and helps people set goals as well as offer updates and encouragement about their progress". Varo's target market is millennials, says the vendor, and this segment is "hands on" with their money. "Val's insights are always personal, relevant, timely and actionable," Kasisto states. The bot provides "human-like conversations". "Varo is bringing together this intelligent bot with deposit account, debit card, savings and lending in a single intuitive app. So in addition to insights, Val will also help answer FAQs, provide banking and app support, and assist performing transactions."

How the biggest disruption next year will come from women, not robots. Every year, we make predictions in tech about what we will see more of the following year. Whether it is the increase of virtual reality, chatbots, robots or (can it still possibly be) mobile. One thing is for sure. There aren't many banking on the fact it will be women.

Behavioural change is a very tricky thing. We humans are so fickle. We see a bright shiny wearable device that can track our every move and we think it's our "silver bullet", a "ticket" to achieving our health and fitness dreams. Only for guilt to set in, as after a short time, the wearable device winds up in our top drawer. We knew the fitness data was great, but we really didn't know what to do with it. The truth is, behaviour change requires much more than data.

Data science, advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence will be centre stage technologies shaping business in 2017 and beyond. That's according to analyst firm, Gartner, which predicts that enterprise will see "intelligence everywhere" as new software-based systems, which are programmed to learn and adapt, permeate businesses within the next three to five years. As outlined by Gartner vice president and fellow, David Cearley, these intelligent trends will intertwine to form a'digital mesh', blurring physical and digital workspaces. Artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced machine learning (ML) are intelligent machines that can understand, learn and operate autonomously. "Applied AI and ML give rise to a spectrum of intelligent implementations, including physical devices such as robots, autonomous vehicles and apps and services such as virtual personal assistants and smart advisors," Cearley said.

Imagine pulling into a Starbucks drive-thru and seeing not just your drink order but your name on the screen -- along with the suggestions of what foods you might like with your drink, automatically generated by the weather, your buying history, and the choices that others with similar preferences have made. Coming soon to a Starbucks drive-through near you -- and to your smartwatch, and possibly to each store's cash register -- are serving suggestions generated by artificial intelligence. It's all part of the coffee giant's plan to use AI and the cloud to drive sales and growth, as laid out in a 45-minute presentation this month at Starbucks Investor Day in Manhattan. "I hope you're convinced we're continuing to set the bar for digital in brick-and-mortar," said Matt Ryan, Starbucks chief strategy officer, after laying out the company's technology plans. It gives us the advantage we have moving forward." Seattle-based Starbucks is going strong -- growing steadily and last month ...

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) market is booming, with nearly every major player in the enterprise space vying for a foothold. IBM, Amazon, GE, Microsoft, Google, Cisco, SAP, HPE, Verizon--you name it, anybody and everybody, even folks who used to sell hardware--are actively working on and/or want to stake a claim in a piece of the AI pie. What encompasses the AI market? Machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), voice recognition and image processing, application and geography are what we're looking at, with mobile devices and cloud being the enablers. And just what will the AI market be?