CHICAGO & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Artificial Intelligence (AI) is widely expected to drive important benefits across the health system, from increasing efficiency to improving patient outcomes, but it also may be key to making healthcare more human. Benefits range from increasing the amount of time clinicians can spend with patients and on cross-care team collaboration to enhancing the ability to deliver preventative care. According to a new study of more than 900 healthcare professionals in the U.S. and U.K. conducted by MIT Technology Review Insights with GE Healthcare, nearly half of medical professionals surveyed said AI is already increasing their ability to spend time with and provide care to patients. Additionally, more than 78 percent of healthcare business leaders who reported they have deployed AI in their operations also reported that AI has helped drive workflow improvements, streamlining operational and administrative activities and delivering significant efficiencies toward transforming the future of healthcare. "Of any industry, AI could have the most profound benefits on human lives if we can effectively harness it across the healthcare system," said Kieran Murphy, President and CEO, GE Healthcare.

Technology and the ways data are being used to make trading decisions and better understand markets continue to evolve quickly for financial services firms. Those at the forefront of fintech innovation and integration are rapidly gaining advantages over competitors. In this piece, we talk with Michael Alexander, president of Broadridge North America Wealth and Capital Markets Solutions, about technology trends and how they're reshaping the way financial services firms do business. What new technology trends do you expect to see in 2020 when it comes to financial services? How will the industry continue to evolve?

Last year, Finland launched a free online crash course in artificial intelligence with the aim of educating its citizens about the new technology. Now, as a Christmas present to the world, the European nation is making the six week program available for anyone to take. Finland is relinquishing the EU's rotating presidency at the end of the year, and decided to translate its course into every EU language as a gift to citizens. But there aren't any geographical restrictions as to who can take the course, so really it's to the world's benefit. The course certainly proved itself in Finland, with more than 1 percent of the Nordic nation's 5.5 million citizens signing up. The course, named Elements of AI, is currently available in English, Swedish, Estonian, Finnish, and German.

In the 1997 movie Gattica, Ethan Hawke displayed the brute-force determination of the human spirit in an hypothetical, transitional to full CRISPR, gene-editing future that 23 years later we are now in, where all parents who wanted their children to succeed were forced to make a hard choice. To edit, to give you children the'best' of your genes, or let mother nature randomly recombine them to produce an'uncertain' outcome. Ethan succeeded in all mental and physical tasks to become an astronaut in that fictional world populated by supposed physically perfect geniuses, but, setting aside exactly how the Gattica scientists determined the criteria for'the best genes', the reality we are facing in 2020 is an interesting one that has some of the features of this movie. While the Chinese geneticist He Jiankui is now missing, he may historically be the person credited with making a Gattica future real. Every parent with the financial means may decide to travel to countries with less strict gene control laws and decide to do this, either on in utero children or on themselves.

Christmas is just over a week away, which means the holiday shopping season is in full swing. Consumers are spending billions of dollars per day on gifts in anticipation of the big day. But the fraudsters are also out in force to steal a piece of the action. Luckily, AI and machine learning are getting better at identifying these grinches before they ruin things for the rest of us. The math is pretty simple: The bigger the holiday buying season, the bigger the pay day for fraudsters.

An autonomou truck from startup Plus.ai took three days to drive 2,800 miles, from Tulare, CA, to Quakertown, PA, to deliver 40,000 pounds of butter for Land O'Lakes. Startup Plus.ai has completed what is being called the first commercial freight cross-country trip by an autonomous truck, a 2,800-mile-run from Tulare, CA, to Quakertown, PA, that took three days to deliver 40,000 pounds of butter for Land O'Lakes. A human safety driver was aboard the autonomous 18-wheeler to take over if needed, accompanied by a safety engineer. The company said the trip was a smooth one with zero "disengagements," which occur when a self-driving system has to be suspended because of a problem. Ten to 15 companies in the U.S. are working on autonomous freight delivery, said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities, who believes the trucking industry will be the first to adopt autonomous technology on a mass scale.

Artificial Intelligence offers great potential and, for some, risks for humans in the future. While still in its infancy it is being employed in some interesting ways. Here we explore some of the main AI trends predicted by experts in the field. If correct, 2020 should see some very exciting developments indeed. According to sources like Forbes, some of the next "big things" in technology include, but are not limited to: Further to the above, here are some more AI trends to look out for in 2020.

The question seems somewhat ironic if you think about it. Are the creations--intelligent systems--set to replace or displace their creators--programmers--in the future? It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie, doesn't it? The more important question, though, is: Can it be true? A recent future of employment study predicts that nearly 50% of the jobs in the U.S. are likely to be automated by 2030.

Wild animals are experts at staying out of sight, but a new partnership between Google and the conservation organization Wildlife Insights will try to help scientists capture and analyze pictures of them in their natural habitat. The program will use an artificial intelligence program to sort through photographs taken by small sensor driven camera installations placed in wilderness areas around the world. Google's AI and Cloud services will help researchers analyse and archive the enormous volume of images captured through the program as part of an effort to improve animal conservation strategies all around the world. The camera traps were originally developed in 1990 and in the intervening years have been placed everywhere from Mexico to Madagascar. To date, 4.553 million pictures have been taken from 8,209 camera deployments.

The Russian space agency Roscosmos is planning to install a nuclear-powered observatory on its future moon base to held spot deadly Earth-threatening asteroids. Establishing a permanent presence near the lunar south pole has been a priority for Roscosmos ever since NASA announced plans to return to the moon earlier this year. The base's telescopes will work in tandem with spacecraft placed in orbit around the Earth to help provide humanity with a space-rock early warning system. In addition, the lunar facility's permanent crew will be made up of robots -- with cosmonauts only visiting to handle more complicated tasks. The plans to establish an observatory on the future moon base were announced by Alexander Bloshenko, Roscosmos' Executive Director for Science and Long-Term Programs, Russian news outlets RT and TASS reported.