BENGALURU/CHENNAI:Cruising his way to the quarterly financial briefing in a self-driven car, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka set the tone for the IT gaint's future on Friday. Artificial Intelligence and automation -- two crucial technologies behind the driverless car technology -- were the points Sikka stressed on during the briefing as the'future of the company', internally and in the market. On the one hand, increasing automation inside the company is already freeing up immense effort in terms of manpower. In just one quarter (April - June, 2017) automation freed up the effort of more than 3,600 people. Just a few weeks earlier, Infosys had announced that automation had freed up effort worth 11,000 employees in FY17.

IDC sees widespread adoption of cognitive systems and artificial intelligence (AI) across a broad range of industries will drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8.0 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020. According to a new Worldwide Semiannual Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide from International Data Corporation (IDC), the market for cognitive/AI solutions will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55.1% over the 2016-2020 forecast period. "Near-term opportunities for cognitive systems are in industries such as banking, securities and investments, and manufacturing," said Jessica Goepfert, program director, Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC. "In these segments, we find a wealth of unstructured data, a desire to harness insights from this information, and an openness to innovative technologies. For instance, cognitive technologies are being used in the banking industry to detect and combat fraud – consistently a top industry pain point. Meanwhile, in manufacturing, executives cite improving product quality as a top initiative. In this case, cognitive systems recognize and know how to respond to dynamic fluctuations in product specs by adapting the production to stay within quality targets."

Microsoft has launched an app that'narrates the world' to people who are blind or visually impaired using AI. The app can, for example, recognize friends' faces and guess their emotions, read text out loud when it comes into view and even has experimental features that can describe scenes - for example, it identified a young girl throwing a frisbee in the park. The app, which is free and available on iOS-only, relies on holding up one's smartphone camera to hear information about the world. The app can also describe strangers around you. In a video demonstrating the app's abilities, the app described a young woman with glasses (left) by saying: '28-year-old female, wearing glasses, looking happy' (right) To use the app, the user must point their phone's camera, select a channel and hear a description of their surroundings.

When Swedbank customers face a problem, they reach out to Nina, the bank's virtual assistant. Visitors to Mizuho Bank are greeted by Pepper, a humanoid robot standing four feet tall. Santander allows payments to be activated by voice, and JP Morgan Chase now uses machine learning to review commercial loan agreements in seconds, a task that used to take 3,60,000 manhours every year. Wherever you look in the world of financial services, you will find some form of artificial intelligence (AI) at work. AI technologies such as machine learning and speech recognition are quietly working behind the scenes to improve lending decisions and prevent fraud.

Joanna Glasner is a reporter for Crunchbase. These are good times for AI entrepreneurs. Recent analysis of venture data shows that funding for artificial intelligence startups continues its upward trend in 2017, with investment hitting new highs. Venture, corporate and seed investors have put an estimated $3.6 billion into AI and machine learning companies this year, according to Crunchbase data. That's more than they invested in all of 2016, marking the largest recorded sum ever put into the space in a comparable period.

WASHINGTON – Twice rejected for U.S. visas, an all-girls robotics team from Afghanistan arrived in Washington early Saturday after an extraordinary, last-minute intervention by President Donald Trump. The six-girl team and their chaperone completed their journey just after midnight from their hometown of Herat, Afghanistan, to enter their ball-sorting robot in the three-day high school competition starting Sunday in the U.S. capital. Awaiting them at the gate at Washington Dulles International Airport were a U.S. special envoy and Afghan Ambassador Hamdullah Mohib, who described it as a rare moment of celebration for his beleaguered nation. "Seventeen years ago, this would not have been possible at all," Mohib said in an interview. "They represent our aspirations and resilience despite having been brought up in a perpetual conflict. These girls will be proving to the world and the nation that nothing will prevent us from being an equal and active member of the international community."

Robots that serve dinner, self-driving cars and drone-taxis could be fun and hugely profitable. They are likely much further off than the hype suggests. A panel of experts at the recent 2017 Wharton Global Forum in Hong Kong outlined their views on the future for artificial intelligence (AI), robots, drones, other tech advances and how it all might affect employment in the future. The upshot was to deflate some of the hype, while noting the threats ahead posed to certain jobs. Their comments came in a panel session titled, "Engineering the Future of Business," with Wharton Dean Geoffrey Garrett moderating and speakers Pascale Fung, a professor of electronic and computer engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Vijay Kumar, dean of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, and Nicolas Aguzin, Asian-Pacific chairman and CEO for J.P.Morgan. Kicking things off, Garrett asked: How big and disruptive is the self-driving car movement? It turns out that so much of what appears in mainstream media about self-driving cars being just around the corner is very much overstated, said Kumar.

Huawei is gearing up to launch an application processor that combines CPU (central processing unit), GPU (graphics processing unit) and AI (artificial intelligence) functions, according to a report from DigiTimes. Huawei Consumer Business Group CEO Richard Yu discussed the plans during the 2017 China Internet Conference in Beijing which started earlier this week. Yu stated that the new processor would debut in the second half of the year, though he didn't go into specifics about what the AI component of the chip would allow for (CPU and GPU have been being built into the same SoC since 2010). Yu did mention, however, that Huawei's EMUI interface supported "deep machine learning and smart computing capability," said DigiTimes. Which CPU and GPU will feature in this new chip is an interesting question.

Self-driving cars and Deep Learning are among the hottest tech trends. New KDnuggets Cartoon looks at what happens when they collide with the traditional summer pastime of grilling. "This is Jim's Hobby Project: A self-driving grill, but he accidentally programmed an adversarial grill, so now he cannot catch it!" This cartoon was ably drawn by Jon Carter. If you find it funny, congratulations - you know enough about Deep Learning and adversarial networks.

Members of a female robotics team from Herat province, leave Kabul to the U.S. from Kabul Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Jun 14, 2017. The third time's the charm for Afghanistan's all girl robotics team, who will be allowed entry into the U.S. to compete in a competition after President Donald Trump personally intervened to reverse a decision twice denying them enter into the country. Members of a female robotics team from Herat province, leave Kabul to the U.S. from Kabul Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Jun 14, 2017. The third time's the charm for Afghanistan's all girl robotics team, who will be allowed entry into the U.S. to compete in a competition after President Donald Trump personally intervened to reverse a decision twice denying them enter into the country. A members of a female robotics team from Herat province, shows her U.S. Visa as she leaves Kabul to the U.S. from Kabul Airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Jun 14, 2017.