It would be easy to wonder what Zachi Attia is doing in the cardiac operating rooms of one of America's most prestigious hospitals. He has no formal medical training or surgical expertise. The first time he watched a live procedure, he worried he might faint. But at Mayo Clinic, the 33-year-old machine learning engineer has become a central figure in one of the nation's most ambitious efforts to revamp heart disease treatment using artificial intelligence. Working side by side with physicians, he has built algorithms that in studies have shown a remarkable ability to unmask heart abnormalities long before patients begin experiencing symptoms.

"Q: How worried do you think we humans should be that machines will take our jobs? A: It depends what role machine intelligence will play. Machine intelligence in some cases will be useful for solving problems, such as translation. But in other cases, such as in finance or medicine, it will replace people." This Q&A is taken from Tom Standage's description of how he interviewed AI (language model GPT-2) for The Economist The World in 2020. As readers of this column's annual roundup of AI predictions know, this year's first installment of 120 AI predictions for 2020 featured my interview of Amazon AI in which Alexa performed slightly better than the previous year. For the new list of 99 additional predictions, I repeated Standage's question to Alexa, and got the response "Hmm, I'm not sure." The following AI movers and shakers are a lot more confident in what the near future of machine intelligence will look like, from robotic process automation (RPA) to human intelligence augmentation (HIA) to natural language processing (NLP).

AI and Machines Learning Innovations from H2O.ai Drive Personalized and Better Experiences for Jewelers and Consumers H2O.ai, the open source leader in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), announced Jewelers Mutual, one of the United States' and Canada's most established and trusted providers of affordable and comprehensive insurance for jewelers and consumers, has chosen its award winning AI platforms to provide AI and machine learning capabilities to better serve its customers. As a leader in driving customer-focused innovation and providing the latest technology to a long-standing industry, Jewelers Mutual is using H2O-3 open source and H2O Driverless AI to deliver exceptional customer experiences, prevent losses, and provide better protection and policies for both jewelers and customers. "We have been in the jewelry insurance business for over 100 years, and our leadership team has been looking to raise the bar for technology-driven innovation in the industry. After two years of experimentation with AI and machine learning, we came to place a high value on model transparency and explainability. Our business end-users demanded it. The initial AI platform we used was lacking in this area so we began searching for a new platform," said Andrew Langsner, Senior Manager, Embedded Analytics at Jewelers Mutual.

This research was sponsored by the DoD Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) and was conducted within the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community. This report is part of the RAND Corporation research report series. RAND reports present research findings and objective analysis that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors. All RAND reports undergo rigorous peer review to ensure high standards for research quality and objectivity. Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete.

The cybersecurity provider landscape is cluttered with impossible claims, misrepresentations, and a confusing mix of inconsistent terminology. Worse, every minute you delay making a decision is another minute hackers have to gain access and knowledge about your network. With so much on the line, choosing what kind of platform and which company to trust with your company's data privacy can become a stressful decision. Leaning toward an AI-enabled platform is a step in the right direction, but which platforms actually do what they say they do? Luckily, you don't have to become an expert in AI cybersecurity to learn how to evaluate the efficacy of AI-enabled cybersecurity platforms.

RALEIGH – With numerous artificial intelligence startups in the Triangle and Charlotte, demand for workers with AI skills is surging. But other skills from automation to software to systems management are also needed as high-tech job openings across North Carolina continue to grow. So reports talent management firm Greene Resources, which compiles data used for the monthly IT Job Trends Report from the North Carolina Technology Association. "Automation and artificial intelligence were two skillsets that grew notably [in November]," reports Jason deFreitas, Vice President of Recruiting Solutions at Greene Resources. "From 2018, the demand for Automation in positions grew 3110% while jobs requiring artificial intelligence skills increased 204 percent."

In GTC China yesterday, NVIDIA made a series of announcements. Some had to do with local partners and related achievements, such as powering the likes of Alibaba and Baidu. Partners of this magnitude are bound to generate impressive numbers and turn some heads. Another part of the announcements had to do with new hardware. NVIDIA unveiled Orin, a new system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed for autonomous vehicles and robots, as well as a new software-defined platform powered by the SoC, called Nvidia Drive AGX Orin.

Speech recognition is definitely one of the areas where artificial intelligence is showing its power and effectiveness. And what is the last thing that journalists, secretaries, and assistants wish to take care of? But whether for interviews or parliamentary reports, new AI-based applications emerge as useful support tools to let the machine do the boring part of the job and allow people to focus on more demanding and intellectually challenging tasks. In the next year, the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) is set to introduce HANS – AI system that will be a valuable ally to the work of lawmakers and employees of the Riigikogu. By deploying speech recognition, it will increase the efficiency and accuracy in transcripts of the sessions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by the RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP) in Japan has successfully found features in pathology images from human cancer patients, without annotation, that could be understood by human doctors. Further, the AI identified features relevant to cancer prognosis that were not previously noted by pathologists, leading to higher accuracy of prostate cancer recurrence compared to pathologist-based diagnosis. Combining the predictions made by the AI with predictions by human pathologists led to an even greater accuracy. According to Yoichiro Yamamoto, the first author of the study published in Nature Communications, "This technology could contribute to personalized medicine by making highly accurate prediction of cancer recurrence possible by acquiring new knowledge from images. It could also contribute to understanding how AI can be used safely in medicine by helping to resolve the issue of AI being seen as a'black box.'"

Consumer-centric applications for artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are helping to stamp out the public perception that these technologies will only benefit businesses and negatively impact jobs and hiring. The conversation from human replacement to human efficiency has become more mainstream as we see AI applications in healthcare, social media, mass transportation, financial industries and many more. Andrew Ng – Computer scientist and adjunct professor of computer science at Stanford – has recently referred to AI as "the new electricity," pointing out that most industries will see the value from AI significantly expand over the next decade. Recent advancements have helped to overhaul mundane and outdated processes and provide advanced data analysis and enhanced or, "augmented," intelligence to support not just companies, but individual employees and consumers. In 2018 and 2019, AI was tapped to disrupt and improve multiple industries, and was the prime target for VC funding with investments well into the billions.