The Carlsberg group is one of the largest brewers in the world. Headquartered in Copenhagen since 1847 they produce some of the best known global beer brands including Carlsberg, Tuborg, Baltika, and Kronenbourg 1664. With revenue of approximately $10bn this is an enormous organization with a well-defined group of products. But customers are always looking for new ideas and flavors. How can a company the size of an oil tanker explore innovative new ideas?

The global volume of online payments will increase by almost 11% a year between 2015 and 2020 [1]. In emerging Asian markets, payment volumes are expected to grow by as much as 30.9% [1]. In Europe, the passage of the liberalising second payments directive (PSD2) and the advent of open banking oblige banks to allow regulated fintechs access to their online banking systems. This allows fintechs to develop new payment products for bank customers. And it's expected to significantly increase the volume of electronic payments within the EU.

Canada's rankings in innovation has lagged that of other peer nations for decades despite government efforts to address this issue. Considering its success in developing research programs at its universities, its mediocre rankings overall in technology development is disappointing. Those programs alone have not been enough to translate into entrepreneurial innovation. A 2017 C.D. Howe Institute study points out that, even though Canadians have been at the forefront of breakthroughs in emerging technologies, in many cases, the chief beneficiaries of those breakthroughs have been other nations' economies. Canada needs to take a stronger role in building an environment in which Canadian know-how spurs Canadian business growth. According to a 2017 PwC global survey, Canadian companies stand significantly ahead of their global counterparts in having a dedicated team for digital innovation, with 54% of Canadian respondents reporting that their company does, as opposed to 43% of global respondents. Looking deeper, though, shows a far less innovative spirit, as 47% of respondents said that their pursuit of digital innovation takes the form of seeking to copy others' innovations rather than pursuing their own. Already a decade ago, experts recognized factors that constrain Canadian innovation growth. A 2009 study by the Council of Canadian Academies pointed to two key issues that have held Canadian businesses back from prioritizing innovation in their business strategies. The first issue deals with what has been called "the resource curse." Canada is largely "upstream" in the international supply chain, providing raw materials for other businesses that create products that are in turn passed down the value chain until they reach the stage of finished products sold to end customers. That places Canada in a position far distant from end customers, whose evolving needs spur businesses at the downstream end of the supply chain to adapt, which, in turn, spurs innovation.

South Korea's largest conglomerate Samsung Group is planning to invest about 25 trillion Korean won ($22 billion) over the next three years into new growth areas, led primarily by Samsung Electronics. Those investments would be made in four key areas: artificial intelligence (AI), fifth-generation mobile network technology, electronic components for future cars and bio-pharmaceuticals, the company said on Wednesday. To expand its AI capability, Samsung will be increasing the number of researchers to 1,000 across its global AI centers in the U.K., Canada, Russia, U.S. and South Korea. Samsung Electronics is currently the world's largest smartphone-maker but also boasts a very strong semiconductor business that supplies chips to the companies such as Apple. Overall, the conglomerate said it planned to invest a total of 180 trillion won ($161 billion) over the next three years, which will include capital expenditures as well as research and development in its semiconductors and displays businesses.

The Samsung conglomerate said it will invest more than $22 billion over the next three years to target such areas as artificial intelligence and auto-technology components, as it seeks out growth drivers beyond phones and memory chips. The bulk of the spending will be earmarked for Samsung Electronics Co., the conglomerate's crown jewel. The company is the world's No. 1 maker of smartphones, semiconductors and televisions and last year put more toward capital expenditures than any other publicly traded company, Samsung said it would invest heavily in four key areas through 2020. Auto tech, artificial intelligence and new fifth-generation, or 5G, cellular technology--all of which that fall under Samsung's umbrella--will draw funding, as will its nascent drug companies specializing in contract manufacturing and biosimilar medications. It didn't provide a specific breakdown of the new investments, but the spending represents Samsung's broadest investment in new business pursuits since 2010. When combined with previously announced investments, the company will spend 180 trillion won, or about $161 billion, over the three-year period, a total that includes commitments for semiconductors and displays.

A single algorithm can be used to automatically label vertebrae and discs in the spine on 3D images, regardless of the type of image used. This streamlining can improve diagnoses of spine problems and preparation for surgery and accelerate radiological workflows, according to new research. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and computed topography (CT) scans are typically used to evaluate the spine. The vertebrae and intervertebral discs need to be assigned labels to serve as an anatomical reference system for clinicians. However, such labeling is time consuming; with the number of scans growing a more automated method of labeling is needed. Current computed-aided tools to label images have run into challenges because the same tissue can have different appearances, even within a scan.

TaskUs, the business process outsourcing service that moderates content, annotates information and handles back office customer support for some of the world's largest tech companies, has raised $250 million in an investment from funds managed by the New York-based private equity giant, Blackstone Group. It's been ten years since TaskUs was founded with a $20,000 investment from its two co-founders, and the new deal, which values the decade-old company at $500 million before the money even comes in, is proof of how much has changed for the service in the years since it was founded. The Santa Monica-based company, which began as a browser-based virtual assistant company -- "You send us a task and we get the task done," recalled TaskUs chief executive Bryce Maddock -- is now one of the main providers in the growing field of content moderation for social networks and content annotation for training the algorithms that power artificial intelligence services around the world. "What I can tell you is we do content moderation for almost every major social network and it's the fastest growing part of our business today," Maddock said. From a network of offices spanning the globe from Mexico to Taiwan and the Philippines to the U.S., the thirty two year-old co-founders Maddock and Jaspar Weir have created a business that's largest growth stems from snuffing out the distribution of snuff films; child pornography; inappropriate political content and the trails of human trafficking from the user and advertiser generated content on some of the world's largest social networks.

If there's a robot uprising anytime soon, it seems unlikely to start in our living rooms. Robotic vacuums like Roomba sell well because they are so handy. But other types of home robots–pets and companions from Sony's Aibo robo-pooch to the recently shuttered Kuri (backed by Bosch)–have flopped due to both prices and expectations that have been set unreasonably high. If any company can eventually bring us a domestic robot like Rosie from The Jetsons, Anki is a good bet. Started by three Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute graduates in 2010, the company has racked up over $200 million in venture funding.

The Artificial Intelligence Market is segmented on the Basis of Technology Type, End-User Type and Regional Analysis. By Technology Type this market is segmented on the basis of Machine learning, Natural language processing, Image processing and Speech recognition. By End-User Type this market is segmented on the basis of Media & advertising, BFSI, IT & telecom, Retail, Healthcare, Automotive & transportation and Others. By Regional Analysis this market is segmented on the basis of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.

Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force officers march past Tiananmen Square in a show of military strength Last month, some of the biggest names in technology signed a pledge promising not to develop lethal autonomous weapons. Coming just after the recent employee-led protest over Google's Project Maven, some have praised these initiatives as ethical and moral victories. For Sandro Gaycken, a senior advisor to Nato, such initiatives are supremely complacent and risk granting authoritarian states an asymmetric advantage. "These naive hippy developers from Silicon Valley don't understand – the CIA should force them," says Gaycken, founder of the digital society institute at ESMT, a Berlin-based business school. Gaycken's hard advice reveals a schism emerging in the future development of AI for military purposes. On the one side are those that believe pursuing the development of military AI will lead to an unstoppable arms race. On the other side, people like Gaycken believe the AI arms-race has already begun.