Dr. Sindhu Joseph is the co-founder and CEO at CogniCor, one of the leading global AI-based platforms that offer enterprise-grade cognitive virtual assistant solutions. She is one of the leading innovators in Artificial Intelligence with multiple patents awarded for her ground-breaking research works. With over 15 years of industry experience, Dr. Sindhu has completed her doctorate from Artificial Intelligence Institute, Barcelona, Spain. She also has 6 patents and 4 publications delving into intricate Artificial Intelligence. In conversation with Dominic Rebello, Dr. Sindhu, who deems herself as a fighter, says, she strongly believes that any woman who is passionate for technology must approach it and must be provided with appropriate opportunities.

Most customers are confused about the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and are, therefore, reluctant to embrace this new technology, a study said. Released by US-based software firm Pegasystems, it revealed that these fears are often eased once the users gain firsthand AI experience -- which ironically many enjoy without even realizing it. "Our study suggests the recent hype is causing some confusion and fear among consumers, who may not really understand how it's already being used and helping them every day," said Don Schuerman, Vice President (Product Marketing) Pegasystems. The study that involved 6,000 customers in six countries found that consumers were hesitant to fully embrace AI devices and services. "Only 36 percent are comfortable with businesses using AI to engage with them. Almost 72 percent express some sort of fear about AI," the study found.

Widespread adoption of cognitive systems and AI across a broad range of industries will drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) new Spending Guide. The market for cognitive/AI solutions will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55.1% over the 2016-2020 forecast period, highlighting the tremendous growth and rate of adoption for these technologies. The guide also revealed that this exponential growth of AI and machine learning technologies is bound to impact the UC industry. While widespread use of AI in the UC industry is still a few years out, AI will slowly start integrating with UC collaboration tools and has the potential to transform the industry over time. "Software developers and end user organisations have already begun the process of embedding and deploying cognitive/artificial intelligence into almost every kind of enterprise application or process," said David Schubmehl, research director, Cognitive Systems and Content Analytics at IDC. "Recent announcements by several large technology vendors and the booming venture capital market for AI startups illustrate the need for organisations to be planning and undertaking strategies that incorporate these wide-ranging technologies. Identifying, understanding, and acting on the use cases, technologies, and growth opportunities for cognitive/AI systems will be a differentiating factor for most enterprises and the digital disruption caused by these technologies will be significant."

If you look past the hype, existential concerns, and fear that Alexa is a CIA mole, there are some genuinely exciting developments happening in the world of artificial intelligence. Some of these have very specific applications, such as medical imaging, diagnostic capabilities, or satellite imagery recognition. Others, like digital assistants -- or even robots -- are poised to dramatically impact how we live and work on a broader scale. Of course, most of us care about more than just a series of clever tricks. We want AI that does more than the bare minimum -- which thus far has been defined as tedious manual tasks that are a nuisance for humans to complete.

If you work in a corporation where your job involves sitting in front of a keyboard all day, you probably have your own version of an "IT Helpdesk" that most likely drives you absolutely nuts. IT Helpdesk is your resource for rectifying any computer related issues you might have because the "local IT support" team was canned during the last cost savings initiative "strategic realignment". If you log a ticket with IT Helpdesk like you're supposed to, you'll hear from them no sooner than 48 hours, so you pick up the phone and call them: We've all been there, and the only solace we have is that John in Mumbai's job is not going to be around for too much longer. You see, pretty soon computers are going to fix themselves. Recently Google's Deepmind had a scenario where AI Agent John was talking to AI Agent Sally.

Stochastic variance reduction algorithms have recently become popular for minimizing the average of a large, but finite, number of loss functions. In this paper, we propose a novel Riemannian extension of the Euclidean stochastic variance reduced gradient algorithm (R-SVRG) to a compact manifold search space. To this end, we show the developments on the Grassmann manifold. The key challenges of averaging, addition, and subtraction of multiple gradients are addressed with notions like logarithm mapping and parallel translation of vectors on the Grassmann manifold. We present a global convergence analysis of the proposed algorithm with decay step-sizes and a local convergence rate analysis under fixed step-size with some natural assumptions. The proposed algorithm is applied on a number of problems on the Grassmann manifold like principal components analysis, low-rank matrix completion, and the Karcher mean computation. In all these cases, the proposed algorithm outperforms the standard Riemannian stochastic gradient descent algorithm.

Mobvoi Inc., the Chinese artificial intelligence startup backed by Google, is getting a $180 million investment from Volkswagen AG to join a race to build the technology into cars. The startup, founded in 2012 by a group of former Googlers, will develop products for Volkswagen models and possibly other brands based on its voice-recognition and natural language processing technology. That includes a smart rear view mirror that provides navigation, messaging and information through voice input, the company said in a statement. Chinese tech giants are pushing into technologies that have the potential to transform the auto industry. Last month, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. led an investment in WayRay, which makes holographic displays for cars.

If you have a child in your life who is headed in the "IT" / "Computers" (or honestly any job that will come in five years), please consider this valuable guidance. I can't cover AI without at least touching on this thought: AI is going to wipe out humanity. To a super intelligence that is in control of the planet, we will appear to be the equivalent of how ants appear to us – mostly pests who get in the way, even as we express passing appreciation for their "primitive intelligence." It is important to understand two incredibly valuable definitions that I've paraphrased from the brilliant Yuval Noah Harari. People who express the thought above mix the two things. Absolutely no one can predict the future a hundred years out (I encourage you NOT to Google Mr. Harari's prediction about what he sees happening 300 years out).

I think that is the main reason for getting acknowledgement from the jury.

Samsung's Galaxy S8 is finally here, and it's a looker. The South Korean company's phone packs a gorgeous edge-to-edge curved screen, a beefed-up front-facing camera, a top-of-the-line processor, and a new virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence. But like many devices of the Galaxy S8's caliber, not every feature is easy to use -- or find. Luckily, we've spent enough time with the Galaxy S8 to get a handle on a few of its most useful functions. Here's what you need to know. Bixby, Samsung's new AI-powered assistant, is a tap away from every screen.