At the Berlin Chatbot Summit, Haptik, India's largest AI-powered personal assistant, announced that it is open-sourcing its proprietary Named Entity Recognition (NER) System that powers chatbots in the service's Android & iOS apps. Haptik's chatbots process close to 5 million requests a month using the Chatbot-NER system, making Haptik one of the world's largest direct to conversational consumer commerce platforms. NER is the first of its kind open-source tech designed specifically for chatbots. "We started working on chatbots in 2013 well before they were cool and we had this awesome community and such great international events," said Aakrit Vaish, co-founder & CEO of Haptik, who made the announcement during his Product/UX keynote presentation at the Summit. READ ALSO: Haptik app gets'smart wallet' feature in latest update He further added, "Developer tools and open source technology play a key part in the evolution of any platform. Open-sourcing Haptik Chatbot NER is our way of contributing to the accelerating growth in chatbot development, and advancing the overall paradigm change this technology is capable of creating."

It's widely accepted that artificial intelligence (AI) will have a huge impact on our lives in the coming decades -- but what's its value to the global economy? According to a new report, global GDP will be 14% higher in 2030 as a result of AI -- the equivalent of $15.7 trillion, more than the current output of China and India combined. The report, Sizing the Prize, was launched by PwC in a session at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2017 in Dalian, China. Improvements to labour productivity will account for over half of all economic gains from AI between now and 2030, while increased consumer demand resulting from product enhancements will account for the rest. Regional gains will be most strongly felt in China, which will receive a 26% boost to GDP in 2030, followed by North America (14.5%).

This list isn't just about what is new and innovative. It is about what will be adopted at scale. The beginning of a new year is usually the time to predict key trends for the year to come, and so it goes with the insurtech sector as well. Most lists focus on the latest sexy technologies and applications. But, after a year, we find these have hardly gained any traction and so cannot really be considered "trends" in our view.

Who Is Winning the AI Race? China and the United States dominate the world of artificial-intelligence research. Microsoft, IBM, and Google are the leading companies.

JERUSALEM – Israel's Mossad intelligence agency has set up an investment fund to help development of new espionage techniques, and is offering grants of up to 2 million shekels (about $570,000) per project to bring in new ideas. A government statement on Tuesday said Mossad was seeking technologies in various fields, including robotics, miniaturization and encryption as well as new automated methods of gleaning information from documents and new ways of carrying out operations more stealthily. A statement by the new fund, called Libertad, said it would be willing to give grants of up to 2 million shekels per project in exchange for non-exclusive rights to the technology. Developers would retain the rights to their products and would be able to sell them on, it said. "The Mossad wants to encourage innovation and creation of groundbreaking technology … the technology developed will be implemented by us, in cooperation between the parties," Libertad explained in a document.

Manish Singhal has two video technology patents to his name and helped build products at companies such as Motorola and Sling Media before becoming an entrepreneur and investor. No wonder, then, that the venture capital fund Singhal co-launched last year--pi Ventures--focuses on tech startups, particularly those working on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The VC fund aims to raise $30 million; it has already attracted investors such as International Finance Corporation, Accel Partners, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal and prominent angel investor TV Mohandas Pai. The fund has backed four startups and will invest in a total of 18-20 startups. In an interaction with VCCircle, Singhal speaks about AI startups in India and the fund's strategy.

Imagine a world where automobile damage can be assessed by an algorithm in six seconds, and you'd be where Ant Financial is today. The Alibaba Group financial affiliate on Tuesday rolled out an artificial intelligence-driven, image-recognition system to aid vehicle insurance claims adjustors in operating faster and more-efficiently. Exterior damage claims comprise about 60% of the 45 million private-vehicle insurance claims filed in China each years, so the AI system is expected to save insurers significant time and resources. The AI system is also aimed at making assessment of external vehicle damage more-standardized and objective, reducing the potential for human claims adjusters on the scene to be influenced by the parties involved in the accident. "It is a technology that we are constantly working on to improve, therefore we are offering it for free to insurance companies. We are opening up our AI capabilities to our partners, so that they can reduce cost and better serve small and micro-businesses," said Yin Ming, president of Ant Financial's Insurance Business Unit.

"Dubai Police are keen to get the latest technology to fight crime. We always search for the best technology to serve our police work for a safer and smarter city. We seek to augment operations with the help of technology such as robots. We aim for streets to be safe and peaceful even without heavy police patrol," Maj-Gen Al Merri said. "We always look to achieve Dubai's vision of becoming a Smart City. We expect it will be ready during the next Gitex fair," he said.

AT A time when the country's Information Technology industry is forced to carry out mass layoffs, experts argue that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science sectors offer a glimmer of hope. While it is feared that IT jobs are being lost to robots, Y S Chowdary, Minister of State for Science & Technology, told The Indian Express that the country lacks skilled personnel in the fields of Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. "Softwares are evolving and we need new kinds of skills. There is a huge demand-supply gap in data analytics field," said Chowdary. "Majority of government missions is based on historical data. However, today there is data available even from the unorganised population. We need to concentrate on capacity building to analyse this data to better our governance," said Chowdary, who was the chief guest at a Data Science Congress held in the city earlier this month.

Imagine a world where robots ruled, where they could continuously improve their intelligence without human intervention or programming. It sounds like the future--but it's also our present reality. Artificial Intelligence (AI) isn't a new idea, though it's certainly developed a more forward-facing interface in recent years. In 2010, only $14.9 million was invested in the technology. But in 2014, a Bloomberg report showed that Venture Capitals had invested $309.2 million into AI startups for a 300% increase.