Editor's note: This post is the result of a collaboration with PredictX, a decision automation platform. Author Joni Lindes is a content writer at PredictX. AI is set to disrupt our current society on a major scale. According to Indeed, the number of roles in AI has risen by 485% in the UK since 2014, but the digital skills gap continues to hold back innovation. In 2017, companies spent around $22 billion on AI-related mergers and acquisitions -- 26 times more than 2015.

I can have a much more meaningful interaction with someone sitting across the table from me than I can with a massive group of people, spread out all over the world, using one message. As social media and technology "connect us" in new ways, we're being driven apart by those messages. Just consider the increasing political divisiveness around the world, at least partially the result of people misunderstanding or talking-past each other. Artificial intelligence promises a lot: self-driving cars, more complex automation, leaps in medical research. Many of these are, however, still far from realization.

With the debut of the IBM POWER9-equipped Summit supercomputer, the world's smartest AI machine, IBM is putting our money where our mouth is when it comes to building data-centric systems. You see, it's no longer about which systems are the fastest, it's about systems that are designed to handle the massive amounts of data that AI and big data applications demand. Conversely, without the ability to ingest the volumes of data this system is capable of processing, the applications might not succeed, so that's why we embrace a data-centric approach. It all comes down to data. Of course, we're very proud of the reveal from the Top500 organization today that Summit and Sierra placed #1 and #3, respectively, on their LINPACK benchmark rankings, but speed is no longer the principle parameter to assess the value of these systems.

As an MSP, you're looking for new ways to improve services without adding overhead. The addition of providing security to your clients is an absolute necessity in today's threat landscape, but MSPs need ways to ensure the highest levels of security without draining staff and profits. So, how can artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) help? George has spent the past 18 years in the IT Security industry. Then as Global Product Marketing lead for Clearswift and for the past 8 years he's been with Webroot in Product Marketing where he is the Product Marketing Director for their Business division, covering Endpoint, Mobile, DNS Protection and Security Awareness Training.

As an MSP, you're looking for new ways to improve services without adding overhead. The addition of providing security to your clients is an absolute necessity in today's threat landscape, but MSPs need ways to ensure the highest levels of security without draining staff and profits. So, how can artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) help? George has spent the past 18 years in the IT Security industry. Then as Global Product Marketing lead for Clearswift and for the past 8 years he's been with Webroot in Product Marketing where he is the Product Marketing Director for their Business division, covering Endpoint, Mobile, DNS Protection and Security Awareness Training.

With the push of a button, months of hard work were about to be put to the test. Sixteen teams of engineers convened in a cavernous exhibit hall in Nagoya, Japan, for the 2017 Amazon Robotics Challenge. The robotic systems they built were tasked with removing items from bins and placing them into boxes. For graduate student Maria Bauza, who served as task-planning lead for the MIT-Princeton Team, the moment was particularly nerve-wracking. "It was super stressful when the competition started," recalls Bauza.

The government's recent investment into AI is a welcome step towards securing the UK's position as a leader in this field, but the road to success is littered with challenges. The best way around them is for the government, private sector and academia to work hand-in-glove to fulfil AI's promise, says Ed Stacey, a partner at IQ Capital, Harnessing artificial intelligence and big data is one of the great opportunities for the UK, as the government rightly recognised in its recently published AI Sector Deal policy paper. In it, the government outlined plans to raise total R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027. The cash injection into research is most welcome, but we should not consider leadership in an academic field as a triumph. An academic paper that gathers dust, no matter how brilliant and well-argued its case – is pretty obsolete.

I was recently invited to speak at the TiECON Florida conference in Tampa Bay. I came back amazed and fascinated by the entrepreneurial activity and enthusiasm of the community in Southern Florida. Unbeknownst to me, University of South Florida (USF) is amongst the nation's Top 30 for research expenditures among public universities, according to the National Science Foundation. It has a vast amount of intellectual capital, ranking 19th out of 200 U.S. universities in research commercialization with 125 patents granted for 2017. It is also the home of USF Connect, a technology incubator that unite technology and talent with businesses.

The means to predict mortality using artificial intelligence could be a transformative factor in the future of palliative health care. While this topic may seem a bit morbid, AI has the potential to help medical care providers and doctors significantly improve the delivery of patient care in hospice situations. Getting the right kind of treatment at the end-of-life stage is more important than many assume. Not enough treatment -- or even inaccurate treatment -- can provide a painful experience for patients, and overcare may result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary medical bills, even if the patient is covered by insurance. While it's crucial to select the proper medical coverage that includes hospice care regardless of the situation -- especially for people over 65 or older, because there are specific plans for specific purposes to help with these medical costs -- AI advances may help patients and physicians determine illness sooner to prepare for end-of-life costs and treatments before it's too late.

Google made headlines earlier this month when it pulled out of the U.S. Defense Department's flagship artificial intelligence program known as Project Maven, which leverages sophisticated algorithms to analyze drone footage. Until then, the project had been so secretive that few people knew Google was involved -- not even the former executive chairman of Google's parent company, Alphabet, who now sits on the Defense Department's Innovation Advisory Board -- let alone what it actually is. But Google's decision not to seek another contract for the AI project has thrust it into the spotlight as tech companies face a wave of protests over government contracts. "We believe that Google should not be in the business of war," more than 3,000 Google employees wrote in an April letter to company CEO Sundar Pichai that prompted the move. The growing resistance from Silicon Valley to working with the government, particularly the Pentagon, raises questions about the viability of Defense Secretary James Mattis's ambitious plans to leverage cutting-edge commercial technology for military purposes.