Her name is JiLL and she is here to assist you as the new receptionist and concierge at the company's facilities management division in Sydney. Chris Hunt, Australasian Head, Integrated Facilities Management at JLL shows JiLL a 57cm tall NAO robot. JiLL joins the team as the firm's corporate front of house admin team for it's new offices at 50 Carrington Street She is 57cm tall humanoid NAO robot and part of the agent's next step in what it calls its workplace strategy. Having robots in warehouses is not a new idea, but creating one to be the front of house administrator shows where automation could lead in the white collar office sector. The idea is that some tasks can now be done by robots, leaving employees to focus on more in-depth "tactical activities".

In this latest University of Sydney'Open for Discussion' episode our host Dr Chris Neff speaks with Dr Michael Harre, lecturer in Complex Systems in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies and artificial intelligence aficionado about where AI really is and how it is affecting our lives. Michael Harre will be appearing at Raise the Bar, Tuesday 18th October. Chris Neff: Welcome to Open for Discussion. Joining me today is Dr Michael Harre from the University's Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies. Michael is an artificial intelligence aficionado, try saying that 3 times fast, and lecturer in complex systems. Chris Neff: Can I ask first, what is artificial intelligence and secondly, what got you into artificial intelligence? What was your background, how did you come to this? Ahh.. There's no straight forward answer in the sort of...general definition but usually it's something that runs on a computer that;s trying to do something kinda human like but perhaps not being very..very good at it. Because my understanding is mostly a star trek, star wars aahhhh... Will Smith movies and other kind of.. Dr Michael Harre: Ah yeah there's some great movies out there and the movies out there umm..they portray a combination of robot and ah..robots with some form of human like intelligence but umm..what you see in the robots is a bit more like um..what we think of as human behaviour and sort of expressing our human mind ah..but that's not what we are able to do at all with artificial intelligence yet.

The Workshop Program of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16) was held at the beginning of the conference, February 12-13, 2016. Workshop participants met and discussed issues with a selected focus — providing an informal setting for active exchange among researchers, developers and users on topics of current interest. To foster interaction and exchange of ideas, the workshops were kept small, with 25-65 participants. Attendance was sometimes limited to active participants only, but most workshops also allowed general registration by other interested individuals. The AAAI-16 Workshops were an excellent forum for exploring emerging approaches and task areas, for bridging the gaps between AI and other fields or between subfields of AI, for elucidating the results of exploratory research, or for critiquing existing approaches. The fifteen workshops held at AAAI-16 were Artificial Intelligence Applied to Assistive Technologies and Smart Environments (WS-16-01), AI, Ethics, and Society (WS-16-02), Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security (WS-16-03), Artificial Intelligence for Smart Grids and Smart Buildings (WS-16-04), Beyond NP (WS-16-05), Computer Poker and Imperfect Information Games (WS-16-06), Declarative Learning Based Programming (WS-16-07), Expanding the Boundaries of Health Informatics Using AI (WS-16-08), Incentives and Trust in Electronic Communities (WS-16-09), Knowledge Extraction from Text (WS-16-10), Multiagent Interaction without Prior Coordination (WS-16-11), Planning for Hybrid Systems (WS-16-12), Scholarly Big Data: AI Perspectives, Challenges, and Ideas (WS-16-13), Symbiotic Cognitive Systems (WS-16-14), and World Wide Web and Population Health Intelligence (WS-16-15).

There are many arguments surrounding whether or not marijuana should be grown and used for medical reasons. But the impact on the climate is one factor in the debate that may have been overlooked, - until now. A new report, by a clean energy policy research institute, has found growing marijuana makes up one per cent of energy use in states like Colorado and Washington. The impact on the climate is one factor in the debate that may have been overlooked, until now. A new report, by a clean energy policy research institute, has found growing marijuana makes up 1 per cent of energy use in states like Colorado and Washington.

The folk at Orion Health have been busy following the announcement of its intention to put machine learning to work in its products within a year. It has just released a report, in conjunction with the University of Auckland, which makes clearer how that will work. The Introduction to Machine Learning in Healthcare report is co-authored by Dr Kevin Ross and Dr Kathryn Hemstalk, with an introduction by Orion Health CEO Ian McCrae. Among other things, the report lifts the lid on data that is useful for the practice of precision medicine, and which will become part of an electronic health record and provides an introduction to different types of machine learning models. The report's publication coincides with the official launch of Precision Driven Health at the University of Auckland, which the company described in a statement as'one of the largest data science research initiatives to be undertaken in this country'.

Whether they practice medicine in a hospital or a community clinic, healthcare workers are facing an exponential increase in the amount of patient information needed to effectively treat their patients. This will require the application of sophisticated'big data' techniques such as machine learning to process, analyse and surface information that will assist in creating more personalised healthcare plans. That's according to Orion Health CEO Ian McCrae, whose company has today released a report on the application of machine learning in healthcare. The report's publication coincides with the official launch at the University of Auckland of Precision Driven Health - one of the largest data science research initiatives to be undertaken in this country, which aims to position New Zealand at the forefront of precision health globally. "The electronic health record is fast becoming the most powerful tool in the medical toolkit. Today it contains a patient's medical record, soon it will include genetic, environmental and social data and will be critical in the application of precision medicine or personalised healthcare," Mr McCrae says.

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO--(Marketwired - October 05, 2016) - Cherwell Software, a global leader in IT service management (ITSM) solutions, announced today to customers at its annual conference that the Cherwell Service Management platform is utilizing Microsoft Azure Machine Learning to integrate predictive analytics into its ITSM solution. Azure Machine Learning, part of the Microsoft Cortana Intelligence Suite, provides a cloud-based service that enables companies to apply statistical techniques to large amounts of data and leverage analytics to solve problems and create smarter applications. Cherwell customers can now harness the power of Azure Machine Learning to analyze incident and ticket data stored within Cherwell Service Management, and utilize pattern recognition to create algorithms that assist with incident prioritization, triage, and resolution. "Azure Machine Learning and the Cortana Intelligence Suite offer an easy way to add powerful intelligence to existing applications. By integrating Azure Machine Learning with Cherwell Service Management, Cherwell has introduced the next generation of service management," commented Dawson Stoops, VP of Technical Alliances at Cherwell.

My questions have been prompted by recent stories about a robot to patrol an emergency room parking lot, a robot therapist treating soldiers with PTSD, and a robot leading a fitness class in a nursing home. No doubt you have many more. "A robot who listens without prejudice, responds kindly, and asks all the right questions has been hailed as an alternative to human doctors that will have huge benefits in the world of mental health," writes Nathan Jolly. The robot, which gathers evidence and track cues in patients suffering post-traumatic stress, is designed to "help patients be more truthful in therapy." "Ellie [the robot] may be adept at listening and responding, but she doesn't offer any treatment," Jolly admits.

Google took on rivals Apple, Samsung and Amazon in a new push into hardware Tuesday, launching premium-priced Pixel smartphones and a slew of other devices showcasing artificial intelligence prowess. The unveiling of Google's in-house designed phone came as part of an expanded hardware move by the US company, which also revealed details about its new "home assistant" virtual reality headset and Wi-Fi router system. The San Francisco event marked a shift in strategy for Google, which is undertaking a major drive to make Google Assistant artificial intelligence a futuristic force spanning all kinds of internet-linked devices. "We are evolving from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said. "Our goal is to build a personal Google for each and every user."

San Francisco (AFP) - Google took on rivals Apple, Samsung and Amazon in a new push into hardware, launching premium-priced Pixel smartphones and a slew of other devices showcasing artificial intelligence prowess. The unveiling of Google's in-house designed phone came as part of an expanded hardware move by the US company, which also revealed details about its new "home assistant" virtual reality headset and Wi-Fi router system. The San Francisco event marked a shift in strategy for Google, which is undertaking a major drive to make Google Assistant artificial intelligence a futuristic force spanning all kinds of internet-linked devices. "We are evolving from a mobile-first world to an AI-first world," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said. "Our goal is to build a personal Google for each and every user."