In recent years, natural language processing (NLP) has become a part of our everyday lives. Smartphones now come equipped with NLP-powered voice assistants that interpret and understand human speech in order to provide relevant responses to user queries. NLP also helps translation apps break down communication barriers by analyzing input in one language and transforming it into another language. Even word processors rely on NLP to check the grammar, logic, and syntax of written input. And NLP is now an integral part of customer service; it's used to guide people to the right representative through verbal commands. Yet, few people actually understand how NLP plays a role in making them possible.

NFL and AWS will use data and analytics to co-develop the "Digital Athlete," a platform that aims to improve player safety, treatment, and ultimately, predict and prevent injury Building on the existing Next Gen Stats (NGS) partnership and as the NFL marks its 100th season, AWS and NFL will innovate together to shape the future of football. The partnership aims to leverage AWS's artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services to provide a deeper and more profound understanding of the game than ever before, making transformational change possible in football, other sports, and potentially other industries. The NFL and AWS will develop new tools and generate deeper and better-informed insights into player injuries, specifically the impact of a variety of factors such as game rules, equipment, and rehabilitation and recovery strategies. Over time, the collaboration aims to also build the capability to predict the risk of player injuries before they happen. "The NFL is committed to reimagining the future of football," said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

The adoption of new technologies such as artificial intelligence could lead to the UK legal sector shedding 13,000 jobs, according to a report by the Law Society of England and Wales. The report on the future shape of the legal workforce projected a 13,000 fall in the number of jobs by 2027, equivalent to a four per cent drop. The body said the number of legal secretaries is projected to fall by nearly two thirds and other office support staff by a quarter. Many major law firms have already axed support staff, particularly in expensive locations such as London. Magic Circle firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer offered voluntary redundancy to all 180 of its secretaries in London in 2017, while both Ashurst and Baker McKenzie have made staff cuts in the City this year.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos warned American technology companies to resist bowing to employee pressure to "turn their backs" on the Pentagon and the defense of the United States. "One of the things happening inside technology companies is there are groups of employees who, for example, think that technology companies should not work with the Department of Defense," said Bezos during a discussion at the Reagan National Defense Forum on Friday, which is also available on Fox Nation. "People are entitled to their opinions," continued Bezos, "but it is the job of the senior leadership team to say, 'No.'" In 2018, Silicon Valley giant Google made the controversial decision to withdraw its bid to work on a Pentagon initiative called Project Maven, which used artificial intelligence to analyze data captured by U.S. government drones. More than 3,000 Google employees signed a letter addressed to company CEO Sundar Pichai protesting Google's involvement.

Over the past decade, the term "disrupt" became synonymous with innovation and success. A Google Trends search reveals a steady climb of the term's use throughout the 2010s to a peak in July 2019. As the 2010s come to a close, the big question for enterprises is how to start leveraging all of this disruptive technology to create true transformation. Here are five areas of disruption that hold significant promise to move from hype to driving true value for businesses and consumers over the next decade. Earlier this year, IBM (via Nanalyze) spoke with 30 of AI's most influential researchers and thought leaders to ascertain their predictions on the future of conversational AI.

When the weather turns bad, the signs that there's a tornado on the horizon are always ominous -- but they're rarely obvious. "The sky turned the weirdest color of gray I'd ever seen," Mark Ausbrooks, survivor of a 2014 tornado in Mayflower Arkansas, told NBC News. "You always hear how still it gets, and there was not a leaf moving." An average person with no knowledge of meteorology can pick up on these abnormalities, but they will have difficulty processing this information into a clear message: "DANGER AHEAD! In the same way, telltale signs of an impending major IT incident may be everywhere, but they will be ignored if they are not assembled together in a way that can indicate and anticipate risk. What IT needs to predict, and possibly avert, these incidents is a system like the one the National Weather Service uses to predict and alert people to possible severe weather activity.

Nines, a tele-radiology and artificial intelligence startup, unveiled its software platform alongside news of a $16.5 million Series A raise. The funding was led by Accel and 8VC, with individual participants also taking part. The two-year-old startup's efforts are broken into two camps. On the one hand is a tele-radiology service that's staffed by live specialists, and according to the company is bolstered by partnerships with institutions such as the Mount Sinai Health System. Its other work involves the startup's investigational machine learning platform intended to support imaging data analysis.

The world did take notice when China was laying out plans for becoming the worldwide leader in artificial intelligence by the end of 2029. While the clear figure has not been mentioned by Beijing regarding the scope of its total Artificial Intelligence investment, assumptions are being made by many that the 2nd largest economy of the world would be backing its national artificial intelligence plan with the necessary resources. Two years back, when Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan was published by China, it was decided by the country to account for 48% of the total equity funding for Artificial Intelligence start-ups as compared with 38% funded by the United States and 13% by the rest countries of the world. However, according to the estimates by the United States think tank, the reports of China's investment on artificial intelligence might be exaggerated, and that it has likely not been greatly outspending the United States government on artificial intelligence research and development since it revealed the national plan. This month, researchers at the Centre for Security and Emerging Technology examined in an issue brief that public investment of China in Artificial intelligence research and development was in the order of a couple of billion US dollars a year ago, just like the United States' planned spending for the financial year 2020, instead of the tens of billions earlier suggested in a few quarters.

If Google's Pixel 4 is your daily driver, good news: It's now able to screen robocalls -- and more. Google announced this morning an update to the Pixel 4's Call Screen feature in the U.S. that automatically declines calls from unknown parties and filters out suspected robocallers, alongside an improved video calling experience on Duo, the rollout of the new Google Assistant to more users, and a zippier software experience made possible by memory usage optimizations. It's a part of what Google's calling feature drops, which will deliver "bigger updates" to Pixel devices with "more helpful and fun features" going forward. The first arrives starting today, with others to follow on a monthly cadence. "Pixel phones have always received monthly updates to improve performance and make your device safe," wrote Google group product manager Shenaz Zack in a blog post.

In discussions of AI ethics, there's a lot of talk of designing "ethical" algorithms, those that produce behaviors we like. People have variously called for software that treats people fairly, that avoids violating privacy, that cedes to humanity decisions about who should live and die. But what about AI that benefits humans' morality, our own capacity to behave virtuously? That's the subject of a talk on "AI and Moral Self-Cultivation" given last week by Shannon Vallor, a philosopher at Santa Clara University who studies technology and ethics. The talk was part of a meeting on "Character, Social Connections and Flourishing in the 21st Century," hosted by Templeton World Charity Foundation, in Nassau, The Bahamas.