We introduce a new family of graphical models that consists of graphs with possibly directed, undirected and bidirected edges but without directed cycles. We show that these models are suitable for representing causal models with additive error terms. We provide a set of sufficient graphical criteria for the identification of arbitrary causal effects when the new models contain directed and undirected edges but no bidirected edge. We also provide a necessary and sufficient graphical criterion for the identification of the causal effect of a single variable on the rest of the variables. Moreover, we develop an exact algorithm for learning the new models from observational and interventional data via answer set programming. Finally, we introduce gated models for causal effect identification, a new family of graphical models that exploits context specific independences to identify additional causal effects.

This week, a machine came out on top, and an Ivy-League dropout finally got a Harvard degree. A Google-created program called AlphaGo beat its flesh-and-blood opponent, Ke Jie, not once but twice at the game Go. And artificial intelligence isn't just playing games: it is going to be a tool in France to measure whether business students tuning in online are staying attuned to class.

British Airways canceled all its flights in and out of London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports on Saturday after a major computer system failure. Thousands of airline passengers, many who were travelling during a holiday weekend in the United Kingdom, were stranded due to the outage, while the airline's fleet was left grounded on runways. "It's a complete nightmare," one person stuck at Heathrow told Reuters, also describing long waits and confusion among the airline's staff. British Airways has not revealed the source of the computer failure but said there has been no evidence it was caused by a cyber attack. We're working hard to get anyone due to fly today, onto the next available flights.

British Airways cancelled all its flights from London's two main airports until Saturday evening after a global computer system outage caused massive delays and left planes stuck on runways. BA said there was no evidence the problem had been caused by a cyber attack. The airline said terminals at Heathrow and Gatwick had become extremely congested because of the IT failure and all BA flights scheduled before 1700 GMT had been cancelled. "Please do not come to the airports. We have experienced a major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruption to our flight operations worldwide," the airline said in a statement.

More investors are setting their sights on the financial technology (Fintech) arena. According to consulting firm Accenture, investment in Fintech firms rose by 10 percent worldwide to the tune of $23.2 billion in 2016. China is leading the charge after securing $10 billion in investments in 55 deals which account for 90 percent of investments in Asia-Pacific. The US came second taking in $6.2 billion in funding. Europe, also saw an 11 percent increase in deals despite Britain seeing a decrease in funding due to the uncertainty from the Brexit vote.

Goldstaub, aged 31, is the co-founder of CognitionX, which aims to bring clarity to the fast-paced world of artificial intelligence (AI). "We're like a Ghostbusters hotline," she says. "When you feel lost and wonder who you're going to call we have researchers who can answer big questions. AI will be the next industrial revolution, it's happening quicker than anything we have ever seen. This month's NHS hack is just the latest reminder of how fast technology is developing and Goldstaub says it illustrates the need for widespread education and "collaboration beyond the tech sector, with government, academia and business talking about moving forwards with new tools". Sitting in an eye-poppingly pink chair at her company's HQ at the Wayra incubator in Piccadilly, where she has a staff of 22 and is "expanding at a rate of knots", Goldstaub explains how AI has the potential to detect cancer earlier than humans can, trade stocks, increase energy efficiency, predict human rights trials and make fairer decisions in courts. Already, 76 per cent of companies use some form of AI and it could add $814 billion to the UK economy by 2035, increasing productivity by up to 40 per cent, according to a report by Accenture. So we'd better get it right. Goldstaub compares AI to a child, learning from what it hears. "If you train AI based on racist, sexist information, you can't be surprised that it becomes racist and sexist." She cites the example of the chatbot Tay, which was trained on Twitter and in less than 24 hours was making offensive remarks. "You'll have AI making decisions about whether you can get loans, about car insurance.

Digital business platform provider Magnolia formed a partnership with IBM in 2015 to integrate with its IBM Marketing Cloud. With the integration, Magnolia users could incorporate the email marketing, lead management and mobile engagement solutions the platform provided into their daily workflows. When Armonk, NY-based IBM folded its Marketing Cloud under the broader umbrella of Watson Marketing in March, the capabilities expanded, which meant good news for Magnolia users. By installing the Magnolia Silverpop Module, Magnolia customers with a Watson Marketing account can plug their Magnolia instances into IBM Watson, bringing further capabilities for personalized content delivery based on scoring models derived from visitor behavior. IBM Watson can, "analyze and interpret all of your data, including unstructured text, images, audio and video [with the aim of] providing personalized recommendations by understanding a user's personality, tone and emotion."

A WBS Professor of Practice, Mark is an Experienced Professional Consultant with a track record in top 1000 Companies in over 20 countries and across multi public, private and start-up sectors. A recognized International thought leader in Digital, company strategy, Telecoms, Digital markets and M&A strategies, CxO practices and author of books and international papers. Mark's work and views have been published in the FT, NYT, WSJ, Washington Post, Bloomberg, AP, Mail, NewScientist, Nature, Scientific American and many channels around the world, TV and Radio including BBC, Sky, ITV, Al Jazeera and many others. Mark supports Warwick with industrial best practice through interests and expertise areas. In 2017 Mark is due to publish - The 4th Industrial Revolution: responding to the impact of artificial intelligence on business.

A French startup company has developed an automated valet service operated by a robot. The robot, named Stan, doesn't require a customer's car keys - instead, it picks up your vehicle and takes it a secure car park. The system is also connected to the customer's flight details, so their car is ready to be picked up when they return, and it can also maximize space by double parking in front of vehicles that don't need to be picked up immediately. The robotic system, designed and developed by Stanley Robotics, has already been adopted by Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. The company just raised $4 million (€3.6 million) from Elaia Partners, Bpifrance and Idinvest Partners.

Modeling causal dependencies often demands cycles at a coarse-grained temporal scale. If Bayesian networks are to be used for modeling uncertainties, cycles are eliminated with dynamic Bayesian networks, spreading indirect dependencies over time and enforcing an infinitesimal resolution of time. Without a ``causal design,'' i.e., without anticipating indirect influences appropriately in time, we argue that such networks return spurious results. By identifying activator random variables, we propose activator dynamic Bayesian networks (ADBNs) which are able to rapidly adapt to contexts under a causal use of time, anticipating indirect influences on a solid mathematical basis using familiar Bayesian network semantics. ADBNs are well-defined dynamic probabilistic graphical models allowing one to model cyclic dependencies from local and causal perspectives while preserving a classical, familiar calculus and classically known algorithms, without introducing any overhead in modeling or inference.