Artificial intelligence has jumped from sci-fi movie plots into mainstream news headlines in just a couple of years. And the headlines are often contradictory. AI is either a technological leap into greater prosperity or mass unemployment; it will either be our most valuable servant or terrifying master. But what is AI, how does it work, and what are the benefits and the concerns? AI is a computer system that can do tasks that humans need intelligence to do. "An intelligent computer system could be as simple as a program that plays chess or as complex as a driverless car," Mary-Anne Williams, professor of social robotics at the University of Technology, Sydney, said.

Recently software development companies started to embrace Machine Learning (ML) techniques for introducing a series of advanced functionality in their products such as personalisation of the user experience, improved search, content recommendation and automation. The technical challenges for tackling these problems are heavily researched in literature. A less studied area is a pragmatic approach to the role of humans in a complex modern industrial environment where ML based systems are developed. Key stakeholders affect the system from inception and up to operation and maintenance. Product managers want to embed "smart" experiences for their users and drive the decisions on what should be built next; software engineers are challenged to build or utilise ML software tools that require skills that are well outside of their comfort zone; legal and risk departments may influence design choices and data access; operations teams are requested to maintain ML systems which are non-stationary in their nature and change behaviour over time; and finally ML practitioners should communicate with all these stakeholders to successfully build a reliable system. This paper discusses some of the challenges we faced in Atlassian as we started investing more in the ML space.

Leading Australian artificial intelligence scientist Professor Toby Walsh is warning that we are "sleepwalking" into an AI future in which billions of machines and computers will be able to think. Professor Walsh, from the University of New South Wales, is calling for a national discussion about whether society needs to adopt clear boundaries and guidelines around how AI is developed and how it's used in our lives. In his book It's Alive: Artificial Intelligence From The Logic Piano to Killer Robots, he has highlighted key questions in a series of predictions that describe how our future could be far better or far worse because of AI. Here's how he thinks society might change by 2050 thanks to artificial intelligence. Humans drive drunk, tired and distracted and cause 95 per cent of accidents.

The subjugation of humanity by a race of supersmart, artificially intelligent beings is something that has been theorised by everyone from generations of moviemakers to New Zealand's fourth most popular folk parody duo. But the latest prophet of our cyber-fueled downfall must realise why people would be inclined to take his warnings with a grain of silicon. He is, after all, the same guy who's asking us to turn over control of our cars - and our lives - to a bunch of algorithms. Elon Musk, who hopes that one day everyone will ride in a self-driving, electric-powered Tesla, told a group of governors on Saturday that they needed to get on the ball and start regulating artificial intelligence, which he called a "fundamental risk to the existence of human civilisation." When pressed for better guidance, Musk said the government must get a better understanding of the latest achievements in artificial intelligence before it's too late.

Facebook has been working on artificial intelligence that claims to be great at negotiating, makes up its own language and learns to lie. OMG! Facebook must be building an AI Trump! "Art of the deal. This AI experiment comes out of a lab called Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research. It recently announced breakthrough chatbot software that can ruthlessly negotiate with other software or directly with humans. Research like that usually gets about as much media attention as a high school math bee, but the FAIR project points toward a bunch of intriguing near-term possibilities for AI while raising some creepy concerns--like whether it will be kosher for a bot to pretend it is human once bots get so good you can't tell whether they're code or carbon.

Tomomi Inada's resignation as defense minister ended a tenure that often made reporters wonder if her transgressions had more to do with ignorance than with incompetence. It would be wrong to associate her failures with her sex, though there were some in the media who harped on her fashion sense or supposed emotional instability as indications that she wasn't suitable for the job. Inada didn't actively discourage these indications. In June, she addressed the second plenary session of the International Institute of Strategic Studies' Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where she expressed in English how privileged she felt to "share the podium" with other defense ministers, namely Marise Payne of Australia and Sylvie Goulard of France, saying that "We belong to the same gender … the same generation and, most importantly, we are all good looking." As mentioned in a June 14 article in the Huffington Post, Mayumi Mori, the Asahi Shimbun Singapore correspondent, noted that Inada was obviously making a joke "to relieve tension," and that there were a few chuckles in the hall.

Chatbots, in case you aren't familiar, are software programs that automatically chat with human beings. Their history dates back to the 1960s, when a machine program known as "Eliza" was able to respond to specific types of phrases with pre-scripted quotes. Over the course of decades, computer scientists and programmers attempted to create more sophisticated chatbots, able to truly "understand" what people are saying and generate novel responses--all while seeming human--but it's been an incredibly difficult task. Now, we're finally starting to enter an era where chatbots are commonplace, and they're about to be incredibly important for several different applications. So why are we seeing this breakthrough now?

A friend recently confided in me about his fertility problems. His physician had told him his sperm were small and malformed, to the point that he might struggle to get his wife pregnant. In an effort to make him feel less bad, perhaps, she added that male fertility problems were currently at "epidemic" levels in the UK. Recent articles in several major news outlets told this same worrisome tale. For instance, one BBC headline screamed, "sperm count drop'could make humans extinct'".

Over the last three years, there has been a significant shift towards the adoption of new and emerging technologies leading to a widening mix of advice, administration and investment practices among wealth managers. In the face of competitive market pressures, constant regulatory change and escalating data volumes, it is critical for wealth management firms to leverage technology and the underlying data creatively to improve service quality, personalise customer experiences and create platforms for smart processing. Wealth managers need to define and firmly establish digital operations as a capability within their businesses. One of the key drivers to the speed and adoption of digital operations is the maturity of the Robotic Automation solutions. There are two types of solutions in this marketplace: Unassisted Automation and Assisted Automation.

Finance and trade is one of the oldest skills that mankind has developed after shaping the most preliminary forms of community. Since then, finance has been undergoing developments and revolutions to match the evolution of the human society. As the next industrial revolution matures, many areas in banking and finance are being transformed. Here are some of the trends that are helping reshape the future of the industry. There's virtually not a field that Artificial Intelligence hasn't touched, and the financial industry is no exception.