Intelligent Business Applications are a significant priority for Microsoft. We just announced our future direction, Microsoft Dynamics 365 in July of 2016. We've seen tremendous momentum in business apps with the launch of our ground-breaking ERP in the cloud and nearly doubling our CRM Online business in FY16. The power of One Microsoft is where we differentiate Dynamics 365 from any other business application provider in the market. We're tying together the power of business processes and data, productivity tools, big data, IoT and device data, and advanced analytics to elevate our message and story around Intelligent Business Applications that help companies drive digital transformation to engage customers, empower employees, optimize operations ad transform product.

Research suggests that airline passengers are open to personalization and even expect airlines to anticipate their needs. Singapore Airlines is one of Panasonic Avionics' partners leveraging passenger data to create a more consistent experience throughout a customer's entire flight journey. The two companies collaborated to create a mobile app, myKrisWorld, that acts as a personalized portal for passengers at every stage of their travel: from pre-flight booking, mobile check-in, and luggage tracking. They can also customize the portal to a specific language, bookmark favorite content and be served recommended content based on their browsing and viewing history.

Lightning regularly kills people and animals, starts fires, damages power lines and keeps aircraft grounded. Until now it has been virtually impossible to predict lightning, with no simple technology for predicting when and where it will strike the earth. Engineers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne's (EPFL) School of Engineering developed a simple and inexpensive system to predict when lightning will strike. The research led by Farhad Rachidi, resulted in a method of predicting lightning between 10 and 30 minutes before it strikes, within a 30km radius. Using a combination of Artificial Intelligence and meteorological data, researchers are now planning to use this technology in the European Laser Lightning Rod project, a project designed to draw lightning away from areas that are susceptible to lightning damage, the project is shown in the video bellow.

After looking at standard ECG tests, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help identify patients most likely to die of any medical cause within a year, claim researchers. To reach this conclusion, researchers from Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania analyzed the results of 1.77 million ECGs and other records from almost 400,000 patients. The team used this data to compare machine learning-based models that either directly analyzed the raw ECG signals or relied on aggregated human-derived measures (standard ECG features typically recorded by a cardiologist) and commonly diagnosed disease patterns. The neural network model that directly analyzed the ECG signals was found to be superior for predicting one-year risk of death. Surprisingly, the neural network was able to accurately predict risk of death even in patients deemed by a physician to have a normal ECG.

We have progressed from the development stage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technology into widespread implementation across industries. This advanced technology is everywhere, but most people don't know they interact with it daily. From virtual personal assistants like Siri and Alexa to the recommended shows that Netflix serves up based on viewing habits, ML powers these tools we've become so accustomed to using -- even if we don't stop to think about how it happens. What's the difference between AI and ML? AI is computer science that is focused on the capabilities of machines to imitate intelligent human behavior. AI allows computers to process large amounts of information and data and provide a computer-generated conclusion.

That's how much data humanity generates every single day. And the amount is increasing; we've created 90% of the world's data in the last two years alone. It should come as no surprise, then, that businesses today are drowning in data. That's because much of that data is unstructured; it takes the form of documents, social media content and other qualitative information that doesn't reside in conventional databases and is can't be parsed by traditional algorithms or machine analysis. Cognitive services not only cut through the deluge of data, but also bring meaning to it through human-like understanding of natural language queries.

Two years ago, I owned a bar with over 300 different gins -- one of the largest collections of juniper-flavored spirits at any establishment in the United States. None of those gins was designed by a computer, a fact that my bartenders would likely have explained was for the best: A gin's non-juniper botanicals are what make it distinctive, and the most popular recipes have traditionally come from experienced distillers. But now that we're in the AI-as-possible-gourmand era, what if a trained AI system took over the process of formulating, naming, labeling, and even marketing a new type of gin? Could artificial intelligence -- aided somewhat by humans -- create a viable product? Somewhat surprisingly, the answer is "yes." This weekend, Bristol, UK-based Circumstance Distillery and creative technologists Tiny Giant debuted Monker's Garkel as "the world's first gin created by artificial intelligence," and though I was skeptical about AI's actual role in the project, machine learning had a greater influence in the outcome than might be imagined.

NEW YORK – Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is being criticized for calling the murder of a Washington Post columnist "a mistake" and comparing it to the death of a pedestrian struck by one of the company's autonomous vehicles. Khosrowshahi later said he regretted his comments, made during an interview with Axios on HBO. He tweeted Monday that there's no forgiving or forgetting what happened to the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and he was wrong to call it a mistake. Critics say Khosrowshahi is downplaying Khashoggi's grisly murder to placate one of the company's biggest investors. Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, known as The Public Investment Fund, holds about $1.9 billion worth of Uber stock, making it the company's fifth-largest stakeholder.

"We lived and breathed data science," DataRobot CEO Jeremy Achin says of himself and his cofounder ... [ ] Tom de Godoy. "And we asked ourselves, 'How would we automate our jobs?'" DataRobot wants to make machine learning so simple that a business analyst with basic training can run predictive models without breaking a sweat. The Boston-based startup just raised a $206 million Series E funding round led by Sapphire Ventures to expand the business, which sells software that helps companies across industries develop and deploy in-house AI models. The billion-dollar valuation makes it the highest-ranking of the "picks-and-shovels" startups featured on Forbes' inaugural AI 50 list (meaning the companies that provide tools to help their customers develop their own AI).

You might have years and years of equilibrium, with little improvements here and there, and then all of a sudden a massive technology and/or business model change takes us to a new level. For example, the taxis of 1950 looked a lot like the taxis of 2010. Then along came ride-sharing apps. Now, as we look forward to self-driving cars, I would say that the "rent-a-ride" market is in the middle of an explosion of rapid change – how it will end, we don't know. Looking at how technology has changed the healthcare industry, I would argue that we have already had one explosion of rapid change, and we are in the middle of a second one now.