Tech investors are betting that automated IT operations will be among the first significant enterprise applications for AI. Artificial intelligence for IT operations, or AIOps, and the application of machine learning to data is beginning to attract venture capital as investors look for nuts-and-bolts automation applications that will deliver quick returns on investment. The latest beneficiary is BigPanda, an autonomous operations startup, which this week announced a $50 million funding round. The Series C investment will be used to extend its "open" AIOps platform from IT and network operations through to DevOps teams. BigPanda, Mountain View, Calif., said the round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Sequoia, Battery Ventures and Mayfield Fund.

American Express will open a consumer experience in New York City that uses technology to show what the future of retail could look like over the next 10 years. Ahead of the financial service firm's 10th anniversary on Nov. 30, the brand conducted a survey of 1,000 nationally representative U.S. adults and found that 77% of Americans observe the holiday as a national tradition. The campaign to drive more customers to local businesses has grown into an important post-Black Friday event for independent retailers across the country. The experience and overall campaign also aim to shed light on issues small businesses face today. According to the Shop Small Consumer Impact survey conducted by Morning Consult on behalf of American Express in October, 73% of people feel that empty storefronts are a national issue.

People are often a little suspicious of automation. The Industrial Revolution sparked fear in workers that they'd become superfluous to modern production. But the reality was much different. Humans and machines work together, with the former using the latter to improve their roles. AI, with capabilities never seen before in machines, adds a fresh element to this long-standing human narrative.

Artificial intelligence and the digital transformation must be inclusive and generate benefits for all Europeans, including vulnerable groups. At the high-level conference on Artificial intelligence, robotics and digital services for the wellbeing of citizens, organised by the EESC in Helsinki on 21 November 2019 in cooperation with the Finnish EU Presidency and the Finnish Ministries of Social Affairs and Health and Transport and Communications, EESC members reaffirmed that people must remain at the core of new technological developments. Ariane Rodert, president of the EESC Section for the Single Market, Production and Consumption (INT), underlined that artificial intelligence was one of the main political priorities of the EESC's current presidency and said: Artificial intelligence must be developed in a safe, unbiased way and, above all, must be in keeping with the values of the EU. We need to ensure that artificial intelligence and its applications promote people's wellbeing and empowerment, with due respect for fundamental rights. On the same wavelength was Pierre Jean Coulon, president of the EESC Section for Transport, Energy, Infrastructure and the Information Society (TEN), who declared: Digitalisation is everywhere: in health, transport and energy, and it affects the lives of everyone.

Technology has helped cardiologist Eric Topol save lives. While on an airplane several years ago, a flight attendant asked if there was a doctor on board--a man was suffering from chest pain at 30,000 feet. Topol was able to obtain an electrocardiogram from the man by using a heart activity–reading gadget that attached to his smartphone, made by the medical device company AliveCor. "It turned out to be a big anterior heart attack I could see right on my smartphone," says Topol, director and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in San Diego. "I had to tell the folks to land the plane. He wound up doing pretty well."

Eight years ago in Germany, three college friends–Bastian Nominacher, Alexander Rinke and Martin Klenk–started Celonis with 12,500 euros. They saw an opportunity to leverage process mining to transform the operations of large companies. From the start, Celonis was profitable and grew quickly. It was actually not until June 2016 that the company raised its first round of institutional capital ($27.5 million from Accel and 83North). Then there was a Series B for $50 million two years later.

Digital innovation requires enterprises to learn how to understand, manage and change increasingly complicated processes. A new generation of process mining tools promises to make it easier to automatically interpret the digital exhaust of modern enterprises to help improve decision-making, drive innovation, and offer new products and services. "By understanding how processes really operate, companies can create operational fluidity to drive more efficient and productive operations that create better customer experiences," said Alexander Rinke, CEO and co-founder of Celonis, a process mining platform based in Germany. "Instead of simply identifying areas of friction, AI will further evolve process mining by allowing businesses to implement recommended changes with employees, enhancing productivity while also saving resources." The core idea of process mining lies in finding new ways to create and calibrate models of how things work with event logs.

When you're marketing a product, persona, or idea, you must communicate your message effectively. Your proposition is meaningless if it does not resonate with your audience. Measuring that effectiveness becomes challenging when you lack reliable and consistent Key Performance Indicators. Political campaigns provide a prime example. Election polls have self-selection bias and election results are too infrequent and definitive to be useful.

The House Financial Services Committee, Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, has scheduled a hearing for December 6th. The hearing is entitled, "Robots on Wall Street: The Impact of AI on Capital Markets and Jobs in the Financial Services Industry." The AI Task Force is relatively new, created by House Financial Services Committee Chairwomen Maxine Waters and announced in May of this year. This specific hearing has yet to publish an agenda nor panelists testifying before the Task Force. The importance of AI, machine learning and automation of financial services is growing rapidly.

Something curious is happening in Finland. Though much of the global debate around artificial intelligence (A.I.) has become concerned with unaccountable, proprietary systems that could control our lives, the Finnish government has instead decided to embrace the opportunity by rolling out a nationwide educational campaign. Conceived in 2017, shortly after Finland's A.I. strategy was announced, the government wants to rebuild the country's economy around the high-end opportunities of artificial intelligence, and has launched a national program to train 1 percent of the population -- that's 55,000 people -- in the basics of A.I. "We'll never have so much money that we will be the leader of artificial intelligence," said economic minister Mika Lintilä at the launch. "But how we use it -- that's something different." Artificial intelligence can have many positive applications, from being trained to identify cancerous cells in biopsy screenings, predict weather patterns that can help farmers increase their crop yields, and improve traffic efficiency.