While EMMA is a relatively simple application, developers are thinking bigger as well: Today's cognitive technologies can track the course, speed, and destination of nearly 2,000 airliners at a time, allowing them to fly safely.4 Over time, AI will spawn massive changes in the public sector, transforming how government employees get work done. It's likely to eliminate some jobs, lead to the redesign of countless others, and create entirely new professions.5 In the near term, our analysis suggests, large government job losses are unlikely. But cognitive technologies will change the nature of many jobs--both what gets done and how workers go about doing it--freeing up to one quarter of many workers' time to focus on other activities.

As artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart devices and solutions gather momentum globally amid fears of "bots" taking over jobs soon, a top Adobe executive has allayed such fears, saying AI will actually assist people intelligently. "Saying AI will take over the creativity of humans is not right. It will take away a lot of stuff that you have to do in a mundane way. A human mind is a lot more creative than a machine," Shanmugh Natarajan, Executive Director and Vice President (Products) at Adobe, told IANS in an interview. "With AI, we are trying to make the work easier. It is not like self-driving cars where your driver is getting replaced. I think creativity is going to stay for a long time," Natarajan added.

There are three main ingredients to creating artificial intelligence: hardware (compute and memory), software (or algorithms), and data. We've heard a lot of late about deep learning algorithms that are achieving superhuman level performance in various tasks, but what if we changed the hardware? Firstly, we can optimise CPU's which are based on the von Neumann architectures that we have been using since the invention of the computer in the 1940's. These include memory improvements, more processors on a chip (a GPU of the type found in a cell phone, might have almost 200 cores), FPGA's and ASIC's. Such is the case with research being done at MIT and Stanford.

USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham says Google Home is improved but is still a work in progress with some gaping holes. LOS ANGELES -- Typing is so yesterday. Why write it when you can say it? This week we turned our attention to a different way of talking -- to our phones and home speakers. And if Google's any guide, that will be the story (digitally synthesized in a computer's best dulcet tones) for the next months and probably, years.

UK insurer Ageas has begun to use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to help manage its motor claims in partnership with AI specialist Tractable. In what it describes as "a first" for the UK market, Ageas said the technology is now being used to help Ageas engineers verify the performance of its UK-wide repair networks in managing customers' motor claims. Ageas completed a successful first-stage pilot at the end of 2016, which performed analysis of several thousand vehicle images involved in accidents or requiring repair. Ageas' motor engineers were able to verify the findings of Tractable's AI technology, called AI Approval. The pilot found "that repair efficiencies in a proportion of claims could be realized, enabling cost savings and engineers to focus on more complex matters," said Eastleigh, England-based Ageas, which in 2015 was the third largest motor insurer in the UK (according to statistics from the Association of British Insurers). "The results of our initial pilot are impressive, and I'm keen to progress to using this technology at scale," said Ageas' Transformation Director Rob Smale.

Between 1967 and 2005, 684 hour-long episodes of live-action Star Trek and 22 half-hour episodes of the animated series aired on TV. Allowing for commercial breaks, that gives us 521 hours of Star Trek, give or take. Add in the 13 movies, from 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Star Trek Beyond in 2016, and you wind up with more than 48 full days of Star Trek--not counting books and comics, which, if you want to argue about canonicity and amount of content, my DMs are open. In-world time runs even longer--by a lot. The prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise begins in the year 2151, roughly, and the last movie set in that same timeline, Nemesis, takes place in 2379 or so. But Voyager traveled back to the Big Bang in one episode and Next Generation reached into its own future, to 2395.

OSAKA – Manufacturers are stepping up the development of health care rehabilitation robots because the global market for such equipment is expected to grow rapidly. Companies of all kinds are trying to tap into a medical robot market that is forecast to grow 24.51 percent through 2020, according to market researcher Infiniti Research. Demand for rehabilitation robots could be particularly strong in Japan, given the rapidly graying and shrinking population. The robots are expected to help elderly people regain the use of limbs and avoid becoming bedridden. They also allow patients to train without assistance, a major attraction in a nation with a dwindling working-age population and a mushrooming number of retirees.

Artificial Intelligence Set to Transform Insurance Industry but Integration Challenges Remain, According to Accenture Report Insurers are investing in AI technology to enhance the customer experience, empower their own people NEW YORK; Apr. 19, 2017 – Insurance executives believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will significantly transform their industry in the next three years, with insurers investing in AI to empower agents, brokers and employees to enhance the customer experience with automated personalized services, faster claims handling and individual risk-based underwriting processes, according to Accenture's Technology Vision for Insurance 2017. At the same time, however, the report found that insurers face challenges integrating AI into their existing technology, citing issues such as data quality, privacy and infrastructure compatibility. Titled "Technology for People," the report is based on the insights of a technology advisory board, interviews with industry technologists and a survey of more than 550 insurance executives across 31 countries. According to the report, three-quarters (75 percent) of insurance executives believe that AI will either significantly alter or completely transform the overall insurance industry in the next three years. One-third (32 percent) believe that their own company will be "completely transformed" by AI within that timeframe, and an additional 39 percent believe that AI will "significantly change" their company.

The days of claiming artificial intelligence as a feature that set one startup or company apart from the others are over. These days, one would be hard-pressed to find any technology company attracting venture funding or partnerships that doesn't posit to use some form of machine learning. But for companies trying to innovate in healthcare using artificial intelligence, the stakes are considerably higher, meaning the hype surrounding the buzzword can be deflated far more quickly than in some other industry, where a mistaken algorithm doesn't mean the difference between life and death. Over the past five years, the number of digital health companies employing some form of artificial intelligence has dramatically increased. CB Insights tracked 100 AI-focused healthcare companies just this year, and noted 50 had raised their first equity rounds since January 2015.

As artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart devices and solutions gather momentum globally amid fears of "bots" taking over jobs soon, a top Adobe executive has allayed such fears, saying AI will actually assist people intelligently. "Saying AI will take over the creativity of humans is not right. It will take away a lot of stuff that you have to do in a mundane way. A human mind is a lot more creative than a machine," Shanmugh Natarajan, Executive Director and Vice President (Products) at Adobe, told IANS in an interview. "With AI, we are trying to make the work easier. It is not like self-driving cars where your driver is getting replaced. I think creativity is going to stay for a long time," Natarajan added.