We are surrounded by machine learning, it is "under the hood" of systems we use everyday, says Olivier Klein, head of emerging technologies for Asia Pacific at Amazon Web Services. These systems can range in the spam filter for emails, to the facial recognition systems used at airports. "Cloud is normal, machine learning is the new normal," says Klein. Klein says machine learning helps organisations create new and seamless experiences for customers, or citizens, in the case of government agencies. This can be through the use of a natural interface such as voice or facial recognition to create a frictionless experience for users.

Applying machine learning to the Virgin Velocity Frequent Flyers program has already seen communication effectiveness increase by 10 per cent and given teams the ability to apply advanced analytics at 10 times the pace, its data analytics chief says. Virgin embarked on a data transformation program a little over 12 months ago, work that's running alongside a wider digital transformation program across the organisation. The emphasis is twofold: Enhance customer experiences across the Velocity customer loyalty member base by improving redemption offers that are personalised and relevant; and lift the team's ability to understand and attribute what communications and digital activities are supporting this quest. As part of this overhaul, the data analytics team adopted DataRobot's machine learning platform to bolster predictive modelling capability. Oliver Rees, general manager of Torque Data, the data analytics arm of Virgin Australia, told CMO the group's application of machine learning is about driving personalised customer experiences, and at pace, by being able to run data analytics and modelling more accurately and faster.

We are surrounded by machine learning, it is "under the hood" of systems we use everyday, says Olivier Klein, head of emerging technologies for Asia Pacific at Amazon Web Services. These systems can range in the spam filter for emails, to the facial recognition systems used at airports. "Cloud is normal, machine learning is the new normal," says Klein. Klein says machine learning helps organisations create new and seamless experiences for customers, or citizens, in the case of government agencies. This can be through the use of a natural interface such as voice or facial recognition to create a frictionless experience for users.

Advanced machine learning and high-resolution satellite images are set to revolutionise the Australian grape and wine community's regional mapping and vineyard insights. World leading agricultural artificial intelligence software, GAIA (Geospatial Artificial Intelligence for Agriculture), has been developed by Consilium Technology, in partnership with DigitalGlobe and Wine Australia. The software provides groundbreaking insight into the health and quantity of all vineyards across Australia – effortlessly and in real-time. The partnership's initial co-investment will see GAIA deployed in Australia's wine regions to prove that the technology can deliver accurate, timely and cost-effective information about Australia's winegrape vineyards. DigitalGlobe is the world's leading provider of high-resolution Earth imagery.

THE PLANNED boycott of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) over its research into military robots has been cancelled after the lab agreed to step back from the brink of madness. The state-run lab known as Research Centre for the Convergence of National Defence and Artificial Intelligence (RCCNDAI, presumably) was working in partnership with defence company Hanwa, a company which develops so-called'cluster munitions' which are banned in over 100 countries and a completely autonomous sentry robot called SGR-A1 - echoes of ED-209 anyone? Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who initiated the action, praised KAIST for the rapid response. "I was very pleased that the president of KAIST has agreed not to develop lethal autonomous weapons, and to follow international norms by ensuring meaningful human control of any AI-based weapon that will be developed," he said. "I applaud KAIST for doing the right thing, and I'll be happy to work with KAIST in the future. "It goes to show the power of the scientific community when we choose to speak out - our action was an overnight success," he added. "We initially sought assurances in private from the university more than month ago about the goals of their new lab.

Mark Carney knows how to illustrate economic trends through the use of creative language. And when he talks, people tend to listen. "The massacre of the Dilberts" was how the governor of the Bank of England encapsulated the fear that middle-management jobs would be wiped out by automation – for people unfamiliar with American cartoon strips, Dilbert is a white collar office worker and the strip mocks the absurdities of office life. In his native Canada this week, Carney made a number of points in a speech on automation. Most obviously, many office jobs done by people would be done by computers, a process that was already well advanced. "When I look back 30 years ago, what I used to do in the City of London when I worked at an investment bank, probably about three-quarters of what I did is now done by machine," he said.

IMAGE: Fang Ren, who developed algorithms to analyze data on the fly while a postdoctoral scholar at SLAC, at a Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource beamline where the system has been put... view more Blend two or three metals together and you get an alloy that usually looks and acts like a metal, with its atoms arranged in rigid geometric patterns. But once in a while, under just the right conditions, you get something entirely new: a futuristic alloy called metallic glass that's amorphous, with its atoms arranged every which way, much like the atoms of the glass in a window. Its glassy nature makes it stronger and lighter than today's best steel, plus it stands up better to corrosion and wear. Even though metallic glass shows a lot of promise as a protective coating and alternative to steel, only a few thousand of the millions of possible combinations of ingredients have been evaluated over the past 50 years, and only a handful developed to the point that they may become useful. Now a group led by scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Northwestern University has reported a shortcut for discovering and improving metallic glass -- and, by extension, other elusive materials -- at a fraction of the time and cost.

Recently I chatted with Candace Roulo, managing editor of Advanced Manufacturing Now, about some of the most important trends in medtech and the technologies that are taking the industry to the next level. Click below to listen to the podcast, or read on for select highlights of the conversation – what I consider to be five trends medtech professionals should be talking about. Advanced Manufacturing Now: You mentioned connectivity. With the healthcare sector embracing the interconnectivity of the Internet of Things for more proactive patient management, what are the opportunities and challenges associated with using sensors in medical devices? And if you could, give us a couple examples of those medical devices.

DigitalGlobe's WorldView 3 satellite captured this image of Sydney, Australia in January 2015. DigitalGlobe has formed a partnership with Ecopia Tech to use proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and cloud computing to create building footprints. By using Ecopia's U.S. Building Footprints powered by DigitalGlobe, customers will have current information on structures in their areas of interest. Ecopia, a developer in DigitalGlobe's Geospatial Big Data platform (GBDX) ecosystem, established a process to create building footprints quickly and at scale by leveraging machine learning in combination with DigitalGlobe's cloud-based 100 petabyte imagery library. According to Ecopia, the service provides actionable insights for observing, analyzing, and monitoring business processes such as supply chain management, urban planning, and asset monitoring for industries that include energy, insurance, real estate, telecom, and location-based services.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Oh yes, this is an excellent idea. Cassie Blue is controlling the motion of the Segway by body lean, just as a human rider would do.