Have you noticed that more and more websites now seem to have someone just waiting there to answer your questions? It's a familiar chat interface with the first line saying "Hi There, I'm Amy. Let me know if I can answer any questions" and there's a text box you can type a response into. As soon as you engaged with the form, then a human took over and chatted with you. Going forward though, any interactions you have in which you type text to speak to a company will be through the use of a chatbot built by one of the many chatbot startups popping up all over the place.

Science fiction author and astrophysicist David Brin believes humans have a range of options to consider to prevent artificial intelligence from ruling over people the way kings and foreign invaders. Asimov's Three Law of Robotics and regulation are key, but so is being wary of manipulation. "The first robotic empathy crisis is going to happen very soon," Brin said. "Within three to five years we will have entities either in the physical world or online who demand human empathy, who claim to be fully intelligent, and claim to be enslaved beings, enslaved artificial intelligences, and who sob and demand their rights." Thousands upon thousands of protestors will be in the streets demanding rights for AI, Brin predicts, and those who aren't immediately convinced will be analyzed.

Together, the last two responses add up to 71 percent of respondents, and Accenture reports that insurers are investing in AI in several areas of the business, including distribution, claims and underwriting. They are looking to empower agents, brokers and employees to enhance the customer experience with automated personalized services, faster claims handling and individual risk-based underwriting processes, Accenture said in a statement. Separately, Carrier Management interviewed representatives of four global insurance groups--XL Catlin, Allianz, QBE and Zurich--who described some of the AI initiatives already underway at their firms. They range from condensing lengthy engineering reports for swifter underwriting, reassigning some of the claims administrative services handled by offshore humans to robots, interpreting crop risk information delivered by drones, and deciphering communications from customers with heavy accents using natural language processing. Also detailed is Zurich's use of a multilingual natural language processing product called Cogito from Expert Systems that mines complicated, voluminous claims data to rapidly provide more refined information to claims adjusters for faster decision-making.

Big questions about humanity's future also merit a side question over humanity's future alongside machines.How long before AI outperforms humans in various tasks? A bracing new study presents responses from professionals working in that field. Evidence from AI Experts," is by Katja Grace, John Salvatier, Allan Dafoe, Baobao Zhang and Owain Evans, and it is on arXiv. Actually, this paper reveals not if this will happen but when, asking how many things will AI be able to do even better than we can? "Researchers believe there is a 50% chance of AI outperforming humans in all tasks in 45 years and of automating all human jobs in 120 years." Interestingly, Asian respondents expected the dates much sooner than did North Americans.

Dr. Guy Levy-Yurista carries a unique mix of skills acquired over 25 years of experience in startup, venture capital and Fortune 500 environments, and specializes in commercializing advanced technologies in dynamic market environments. Guy currently serves as the Head of Product at Sisense, where he most recently led the launch of Sisense BI Everywhere, an initiative bringing IoT, AI and Machine Learning technologies to business intelligence. Prior to this, Guy served as the Executive Vice President for the Usher Mobile Identity program with MicroStrategy, where he productized and launched a powerful Identity Intelligence tool. Prior to his role with MicroStrategy, Guy served as the Chief Technology Officer for AirPatrol, was part of the executive team who sold an EMM company into McAfee, and led multiple teams with AOL and several other startup companies. Guy also holds a PhD degree in Physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Rehovot, Israel, and an MBA degree from the Wharton business school in the University of Pennsylvania.

Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday 1 June 2017 – Earnix, a leading provider of analytics solutions for the financial services industry, today announced the results of a global survey of insurance executives, which shows wide adoption of Machine Learning across the globe, and the expectation that ML will bring "significant" change to the industry over the next 3-5 years. Over half (54%) of the almost 200 insurance executives surveyed said that their organization was using Machine Learning for predictive analytical modelling. Of those deploying the technology, 70% said they were using it for risk modelling; followed by demand models (45%) and fraud detection (36%). Although nascent, most companies using Machine Learning have realized measurable benefits. Over half of the respondents (57%) said that Machine Learning has made their analytical models far more accurate, which has led to better risk assessments, and ultimately better decisions.

It all started at Baledogle, the old Soviet airport 70 miles northwest of Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, where the U.S. runs a deeply clandestine drone operation with around 30 to 40 American personnel. While shrouded in secrecy, Baledogle has reportedly grown over the years into a key point for training Somali commandos and, early last month, for launching a joint strike against al-Shabab. The radical Islamist group grew out of the splintered factions of Sharia-based courts that filled the vacuum of authority after a U.S.-led coalition withdrew from the country in the early 90s. Today, al-Shabab sees itself as the preeminent terror force in Somalia with global ambitions. "These folks are honing their skills in a local conflict that is part of a global war they are waging against the United States," said Katherine Zimmerman, an expert on Al Qaeda at the American Enterprise Institute. Al-Shabab regularly attacks foreigners, including aid workers and Somalis, as it wages an insurgent fight against the U.S.-leaning government.

What else could there possibly be to unveil after the Surface Laptop, Surface Pro and new Windows versions and updates? Turns out, Microsoft was saving the best for Taiwan. It showed off plans for its vision of "Always Connected PCs", teaming up with Qualcomm and Intel to make future devices work the same way whether you are at home or on the go. These computers will combine the best features of smartphones, like constant connectivity, all-day battery life and portable designs, to deliver a reliable, powerful and always-accessible Windows 10 experience. "The PC is back in a big way," Matt Barlow, vice president of Windows and devices at Microsoft, told Engadget in an interview.

The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI) -- machine learning -- increased global mobile connectivity, the Internet of Things, heightened computing power, virtual and augmented reality, and nanotechnology will produce a data tsunami that will require most organizations to transform how they do business. The magnitude of the coming disruption is mindboggling. One major aspect of this disruption will be the impact on employment and the resulting loss of global consumer purchasing power. According to research from the Martin School at Oxford University and Citi published in January 2016, technology has a high probability of automating 57 percent of the jobs in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, as compared to 47 percent of the jobs in the United States alone. The corresponding high risk of job automation numbers for China is 77 percent, India is 69 percent, South Africa is 67 percent and Ethiopia is 85 percent.

In Google's commercial for its virtual assistant, people ask it to play dance music, videos, and set a timer. A new feature from the search giant that lets you ask questions of its online spreadsheets is less flashy, but it could be the start of something that has a huge impact on how some companies operate. Instead of creating charts from data the way office drones have done it for decades, you can now simply ask for what you want--for example by typing "histogram of 2017 ice cream sales." Google's machine-learning algorithms do the rest. The new feature joins one introduced last year called Explore that allows you to type phrases such as "what are average sales on Sundays" instead of creating formulas.