Technology, in all its guises, is changing the way we live and what exactly it means to be humans. From artificial intelligence (AI) to cryptocurrency and e-commerce, CIOs and IT leaders must ensure they are helping their organisations adapt in this rapidly changing world. In Japan, a restaurant is trialling AI robotics technology to allow employees with limited mobility to remotely pilot robotic waiters. Companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft and Ford are hosting virtual career fairs tailored to the needs of neurodiverse candidates. Enterprise Rent-A-Car has implemented braille-reader technology into its booking system for blind employees.

East Japan Railway Co. said Tuesday a robotic guide utilizing artificial intelligence and an unstaffed convenience store will feature at a new station slated to open in Tokyo in April 2020. JR East hopes to make Takanawa Gateway Station on the Yamanote Line a model for its future stations by using cutting-edge technology, officials said. The new station is expected to attract many visitors because a public viewing site will be established there for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. The robot and digital signs will provide station information in four languages: Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean. The station will also employ autonomous patrol and cleaning robots on a trial basis until September next year.

How can data make a loyal traveller feel more valued? Where do airlines stand in the journey of personalization and in delighting their passengers by recognizing them, plus anticipating and delivering what they are looking for? No denying that passenger loyalty has become an ever more complex discipline, especially with travellers expecting something more than just a transactional relationship. Airlines have no option, but to live up to such expectations. There is no reason why airlines should be lagging behind the likes of Facebook and other tech companies when one thinks of personalization, asserts airline loyalty and big data expert, Mark Ross-Smith.

The transport literature is dense regarding short-term traffic predictions, up to the scale of 1 hour, yet less dense for long-term traffic predictions. The transport literature is also sparse when it comes to city-scale traffic predictions, mainly because of low data availability. The main question we try to answer in this work is to which extent the approaches used for short-term prediction at a link level can be scaled up for long-term prediction at a city scale. We investigate a city-scale traffic dataset with 14 weeks of speed observations collected every 15 minutes over 1098 segments in the hypercenter of Los Angeles, California. We look at a variety of machine learning and deep learning predictors for link-based predictions, and investigate ways to make such predictors scale up for larger areas, with brute force, clustering, and model design approaches.

Causal inference goes beyond prediction by modeling the outcome of interventions and formalizing counterfactual reasoning. In this blog post, I provide an introduction to the graphical approach to causal inference in the tradition of Sewell Wright, Judea Pearl, and others. We first rehash the common adage that correlation is not causation. We then move on to climb what Pearl calls the "ladder of causal inference", from association (seeing) to intervention (doing) to counterfactuals (imagining). We will discover how directed acyclic graphs describe conditional (in)dependencies; how the do-calculus describes interventions; and how Structural Causal Models allow us to imagine what could have been. This blog post is by no means exhaustive, but should give you a first appreciation of the concepts that surround causal inference; references to further readings are provided below. Messerli (2012) published a paper entitled "Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates" in The New England Journal of Medicine showing a strong positive relationship between chocolate consumption and the number of Nobel Laureates. I have found an even stronger relationship using updated data2, as visualized in the figure below. Now, except for people in the chocolate business, it would be quite a stretch to suggest that increasing chocolate consumption would increase the number Nobel Laureates. Correlation does not imply causation because it does not constrain the possible causal relations enough. If two random variables $X$ and $Y$ are statistically dependent ($X \perp Y$), then either (a) $X$ causes $Y$, (b) $Y$ causes $X$, or (c) there exists a third variable $Z$ that causes both $X$ and $Y$. Further, $X$ and $Y$ become independent given $Z$, i.e., $X \perp Y \mid Z$. An in principle straightforward way to break this uncertainty is to conduct an experiment: we could, for example, force the citizens of Austria to consume more chocolate, and study whether this increases the number of Nobel laureates in the following years.

The fast-changing, uncertain and ambiguous environments that organisations operate in today, require organisations to re-think all their internal business processes and customer touchpoints. Besides, due to the availability of Emerging Information Technologies such as big data analytics, blockchain and artificial intelligence, it has become easier for startups to compete with existing organisations. Often these startups are more flexible and agile than Fortune 1000 companies, and they can become a significant threat if not paid attention to. Therefore, focusing purely on the day-to-day operation is simply not enough and organisations have to become innovative and adaptive to change if they wish to remain competitive. When big data, blockchain and AI are combined, it will change collaboration among individuals, organisations and things, moving from pure human-to-human collaboration to increasingly human-to-machine collaboration and machine-to-machine collaboration. It will turn every organisation into a data organisation.

Origami, a leading technology provider to the energy industry, is expanding its advisory board team with the appointment of Paul Clarke. Paul currently serves as CTO for Ocado, who provide a cutting-edge technology platform for online grocery. "I am delighted to welcome Paul to our advisory board," said Peter Bance, chief executive officer, Origami. "During his time at Ocado, Paul has pioneered the technology that powers their e-commerce, fulfilment and logistics platform and built a world-class technology brand. Paul's experience and guidance will be invaluable as we continue to build our own technology to support the transformation of the energy industry."

Silicon Valley is abuzz with Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) and blockchain vendors seeking the Holy Grail of Retail: mass consumer markets where their technology can help fashion designers and retailers survive the "retail apocalypse." At the recent San Francisco Tech Fashion Week, retail experts provided invaluable insights that could save millions of designers, major retailers and small shops from bankruptcy. Here are key insights from three panels. In 2014, Macy's learned that "omnichannel marketing is the way to go." Instead of targeting customers with one channel, whether online or in-store, retailers must pursue multiple channels. For example, small retailers can also sell on Amazon to leverage its free shipping, which is a major competitive advantage.

Two years ago, Toxic Comment Classification Challenge was published on Kaggle. Discussing things you care about can be difficult. The threat of abuse and harassment online means that many people stop expressing themselves and give up on seeking different opinions. Platforms struggle to effectively facilitate conversations, leading many communities to limit or completely shut down user comments. In this post, we develop a tool that is able to recognize toxicity in comments.

Risk managers are grappling with a fear of the unknown. AI hasn't been adopted at a large scale and the unintended consequences aren't fully documented, according to Steve Culp, senior managing director for finance and risk at management consulting firm Accenture PLC. "Before there were ships," he said, "we never had shipwrecks." Eleven percent of risk managers in banking, capital markets and insurance say they aren't fully capable of assessing AI-related risks, according to a survey of 683 risk managers in nine countries released this week by Accenture. Respondents expressed a similar comfort level with assessing the possible downsides associated with blockchain technology, quantum computing and other emerging areas of technology.