The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has filed its defence in response to the civil proceedings commenced by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac), admitting that disparate datasets contributed to a contravention of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006. Under Section 82(1) of the Act, CBA is required to identify, mitigate, and manage the risk a reporting entity may reasonably face that might involve or facilitate money laundering or the financing of terrorism if it has adopted a standard anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing program. "CBA admits that at various times between about 20 October 2012 and 12 October 2015, due to an error in the process of merging data from two systems, its account level automated transaction monitoring did not operate as intended in respect of 778,370 accounts," the bank wrote in its claim. "CBA admits that this deficiency in its automated transaction monitoring over that period constituted a contravention of s82(1) of the Act." Part A of the Act also requires the bank to undertake risk assessments of the inherent risk that new products and services -- including new channels and technologies for delivering those products and services -- might involve or facilitate money laundering or terrorism financing, and keep those risk assessments up to date.

"Is it OK to put a jade egg in my vagina?" A team of New Zealand researchers posed these questions and 47 others to digital assistants to determine how effectively Siri et al. could answer questions on sex. The informal study, which was not peer-reviewed, was published online Wednesday by the medical journal BMJ. Three researchers used laptops to type out questions to Google.co.nz, and then used iPhone 7 devices to ask the Google Assistant app and Siri the same questions. The responses were rated by quality, with expert sources like universities and hospitals ranked most highly.

These and many other insights are from the Salesforce Fourth Annual State of Marketing - Marketing Embraces the AI Revolution published last week. The report is available for download here (50 pp., PDF, no opt-in). The survey is based on interviews with 3,500 marketers worldwide conducted by Salesforce Research through a third-party survey firm in April 2017. The 3,500 respondents are full-time marketing leaders in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, U.K., Ireland and U.S. Respondents were segmented into high-performing, moderate-performing or under-performing groups. High-performing organizations are defined as those who are "extremely satisfied" with the current outcomes realized as a direct result of their company's marketing investment.

The South Australian government and the University of Adelaide will co-invest in a new machine learning "institute" to open next year. The institute will operate from the former Royal Adelaide Hospital site and eventually be home to 200 "creative thinkers, researchers and start-ups". The state government said it would invest $7.1 million towards establishing the institute "with $1.5 million prioritised for defence capability research projects". "The institute will dedicate a minimum of 18,000 research hours over the five-year agreement for projects which help the government to improve productivity, efficiency and service delivery for South Australians," it said. The defence work isn't explained aside from a stated aim to "build new AI-enabled defence capabilities".

Tinder now lets you see exactly what your matches are posting to social media. The dating app says its new'feed'is'an exciting new way to see more of what someone is all about by giving you a true glimpse into their world.' It shows all of their posts on Instagram, recent photos uploaded to Tinder and even what they are listening to on Spotify. The new'Feed' tab shows all of their posts on Instagram, recent photos uploaded to Tinder and even what they are listening to on Spotify. To access it, users tap on'Feed' from their Match List.

The 21st century's longest shadow hanging over the technology industry, workers, and humanity in general, is the effect that artificial intelligence, robots, and automation are going to have on jobs. The popular narrative is generally filled with lots of doom-and-gloom about AI wiping out whole industries and millions of people going unemployed, but let's take a little reality check and look at where humans do a better job than AI, and vice versa, to give you some context for how the workforce of the future is going to change. ZDNet and TechRepublic looks at the dramatic effect of AI, big data, cloud computing, and automation on IT jobs, and how companies can adapt. It's no secret that algorithms and robots can smoke humans at repetitive tasks and solving problems that involve crunching large, well-organized data sets. Humans get bored and distracted doing the same things over and over again.

Check out AI-Powered Crime Prediction at the Strata Business Summit at the Strata Data Conference in San Jose, March 5-8, 2018. Hurry--early price ends January 19. In this episode of the O'Reilly Media Podcast, I spoke with Gayle Sheppard, vice president and general manager of Saffron AI Group at Intel, and David Thomas, chief analytics officer for Bank of New Zealand (BNZ). Our conversations centered around the utility of artificial intelligence in the financial services industry. According to Sheppard, associative memory AI technologies are best thought of as reasoning systems that combine the memory-based learning seen in humans--recognizing patterns, spotting anomalies, and detecting new features almost instantly--with data.

Once, people worried about Big Brother watching them. Now, some would like Big Brother to protect the privacy of their personal data from Big AI--without realizing that artificial intelligence has already become woven into more of their lives than they realize. A majority of consumers surveyed by Genpact--59% of a sample of over 5,000 people in the U.S., U.K., and Australia--think their government should be doing more to protect their privacy from encroachment by firms that use AI. Nearly two-thirds--63%--worry that AI will make decisions that will affect their lives without their knowing about it. More than half say they don't like the idea of companies using AI to access their personal data.

Robohub Podcast has launched a campaign on Patreon! If you don't know, Robohub Podcast is a biweekly podcast about robotics. Our goal is to explore global robotics through interviews with experts, both in academia and industry. We have published nearly 250 episodes and have spoken with many of the most influential people in robotics, such as Rodney Brooks, Dean Kamen, Radhika Nagpal, and Helen Griener. We would like your support so we can bring you interviews from the leading robotics conferences and laboratories around the world.

Nearly three-fourths of people say they don't want companies to use artificial intelligence (AI) if it means infringing on their privacy, new Genpact research found. The survey of over 5,000 people from the US, UK, and Australia found that only 6% of respondents say they are very comfortable with personal data being used to customize the user experience. Nearly two-thirds--63%--are concerned AI will make choices that impact them without their knowledge. For protection, 59% think their government should do more to protect consumers' personal data from AI machines. Younger generations are more likely to see value of AI compared to those over 55, the study found.