Private equity investors love India, at least more than any other country in South Asian. Since 2015, India has been the focus of a majority of the total private equity and venture capital tech activity in the region. India accounted for 56 percent of deals by value, and 71 percent by volume of all the PE and VC activity in South and South East Asian markets, the report said. The next biggest market, Singapore, accounted for 33 percent of the deal value and 10 percent of the volume. "As investors look to enter the game early, VC funding has focused on startups," the report said.

This article was originally published by BusinessBecause on October 18th 2017, Hult Reviews The Future Of Artificial Intelligence With TEDx Talks. Olaf Groth, digital expert and professor at Hult International Business School, wants a new, digital Magna Carta to help humans harness the potential of AI. Right now, in China, Communist party officials are working with big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) experts to launch a new, multi-billion-dollar tool to assign a'Trust Rating' to each of China's citizens. Designed to clamp down on corruption, the plan is to generate a social credit score for each citizen based on how trustworthy they are. Automatically, through AI technology, citizens with good scores will benefit; citizens with bad scores could face punishments, blacklisting, and restrictions.

Self-driving delivery vehicles that are polite to pedestrians? JD.com, the largest challenger to Alibaba's e-commerce empire in China, is investing in technology to speed up warehouse operations and delivery to shoppers who want service quickly. In China, it's testing drone delivery, has opened an automated warehouse that's improved on manual sorting, and it's testing deliveries using unmanned vehicles at universities in Beijing. It also uses these self-driving vehicles that look like rolling ice cream carts to move goods inside its warehouses. Though it does not sell in the United States, the Beijing-based online retailer is also leaning on its 2-year-old research and development lab in Silicon Valley to recruit top talent and get access to tech startups.

The developments in Google's Cloud Computing segment, especially the Cloud Machine Learning service, have been so rapid that Google calls it one of its fastest growing product areas. Google has been ramping up their Cloud Platform quite aggressively in recent months. Just a few weeks ago, the Google Cloud Platform opened its newest zone in Tokyo, increasing the total number of regions they are present in to six - three in the US and one each in Belgium and Taiwan and Tokyo. Not long ago, the company announced its acquisition of Orbitera, a cloud commerce company. The developments in Google's Cloud Computing segment, especially the Cloud Machine Learning service, have been so rapid that Google calls it one of its fastest growing product areas.

Technology is driving changes in almost all major business verticals in India be it FinTech, HealthTech, EdTech AgriTech or Insurtech. Adoption of technology for any industry is no longer an option, but has become a necessity. Anyone who doesn't embrace this change is going to be left behind, as technology is re-moulding the fundamental way of doing business. InsurTech in particular is a hot topic of discussion right now, owing to both - the vast capital infusion in recent months, and also the growth opportunities it represents. It's easy to get bogged down by the various forms of tech that are attacking the insurance space - Internet of Things (IoT), Telematics, Blockchain, Smart Contracts and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), etc.

Ascott Limited, a mid-market serviced apartments provider with 40,000 residences across the US, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, is in discussions with two Dubai-based robotics firms as it looks to use robots to conduct basic services at its properties, such as bringing clean towels to its guests. "Ascott is exploring new technologies across the serviced residence sector as automation becomes an integral part of business," said Vincent Miccolis, Ascott's regional general manager for the Middle East, Africa and Turkey. If a deal is reached with one of the firms – unlikely to happen until next year, Mr Miccolis told The National – Ascott would start commissioning the production of small-scale robots to deploy across its portfolio. "The idea is not to replace our staff," he added, during the ATM travel conference in Dubai, "but to complement their work and make operations even more efficient." Ascott has been orchestrating tests in China in conjunction with a Chinese robotics firm, which have shown that the proposed type of robots it would use can move around independently within the properties, including in elevators.

Voice is being predicted as the next big thing in the computer interaction and perhaps why both Amazon and Google are fighting to take control over our lives with their AI-driven virtual assistants -- Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. These voice-based assistants can do a lot of things with just one command: play music, crack jokes; give the weather forecasts; send text messages; set up alarms and reminders; read out the latest news; and control "smart" devices in the home such as thermostats, door locks and bulbs. Interestingly, these virtual assistants become better over time and get to know your habits as you use them more often. I decided to ask Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant 12 questions on the Echo Dot and Home Mini, to determine their intelligence level. What are the best Hindi songs of 2018?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a vital tool for internet companies in China to ensure they stay on the right side of censors, following a government crackdown on online content. Baidu, operator of China's largest online search engine, has stepped up efforts to ensure search results and other content, including news or video, that it sends to users are "clean" and "decent", using the same cutting-edge technology for its ventures in autonomous driving and conversational devices. The company has used AI to identify and remove click bait and vulgar content, said chief executive Robin Li Yanhong in a conference call with analysts on Friday. "We proactively clean up indecent content and limit the volume of entertainment gossip in our news feed," Li said after the Beijing-based company posted better-than-expected revenue in the first quarter on the back of its strong advertising business. Nasdaq-listed Baidu forecast its second-quarter revenue above analysts' estimates, as advertisers continue to flock to its news aggregation service and Netflix-like video streaming service. "Upholding such product values may mean putting in greater effort to grow our users and revenue.

Algorithmic trading using financial models has a rich multi-decade history, and artificial intelligence (AI) is the new emerging trend in the asset management landscape. Traditional trading algorithms were built to exploit specific opportunities, whereas the new generation of algorithms use the power of AI to truly act as independent agents participating in market action, and working day and night in a way that humans simply can't match. AI is a mixed bag of tricks including machine learning, deep learning, conversational interactive systems, and various other "bot" technologies. And the investment landscape is also being affected by AI- after all, AI can read and understand billions of pieces of data, which means one can spot trends better with its aid. It will help investors, portfolio managers, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), and other financial institutions to predict the future prices more accurately and without the burden of emotional investing.

In a bid to prevent falling behind China and the US, the European Commission has outlined its plan to invest €20 billion in ethical artificial intelligence. The cash will be used to boost artificial intelligence research in the private and public domains, prepare for the socio-economic changes advancements will bring about, and ensure frameworks are in place for its legal and ethical development. "Just as the steam engine and electricity did in the past, AI is transforming our world. It presents new challenges that Europe should meet together in order for AI to succeed and work for everyone. We need to invest at least €20 billion by the end of 2020. The Commission is playing its part: today, we are giving a boost to researchers so that they can develop the next generation of AI technologies and applications, and to companies, so that they can embrace and incorporate them."