Would a race of thinking, autonomous, conscious machines be our slaves, our masters, or our partners? Computers have already surpassed us in their ability to perform certain cognitive tasks. Perhaps it won't be long till every household has a super intelligent robot who can outperform us in almost every domain. While future AI might be excellent at appearing conscious, could AI ever actually become conscious? Would forcing conscious robots to work for us be akin to slavery?

I've never really thought about how important personalized medical care is until I was diagnosed with breast cancer myself - it gets real personal real quick. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and also my anniversary of being diagnosed and now cancer free! So, I felt it appropriate to focus on AI developments in early detection. I am healthy, active and do not have the gene for breast cancer. Matter of fact, on the human medical doctor prediction scale it was a 3% chance my abnormal mammogram would come back anything but precancerous tissue.

In 2011, scientists made one of the most important discoveries in the history of AI development. They found that graphics processing units (GPUs) are far better at simulating biological learning than central processing units (CPUs). In retrospect, it seems obvious. Human brains are much more like GPUs than CPUs. Both brains and GPUs rely on parallel processing that simulates and predicts real world physics.

Text analysis is a process that derives meaning from written communication. In the context of the customer experience, text analysis means checking the text that you write or write about. Find the patterns and topics you are interested in, then take practical action based on what you learn. This market report is a thorough analysis of the existing situation and the anticipated condition for Text Analytics Software Market. Investigation for gathering the content for this report is done in-depth and meticulously.

Two thirds of financial services firms currently deploy machine learning and expect to increase their use of the technology within the next three years. The Bank of England and the UK Financial Conduct Authority conducted a joint survey this year on the current use of machine learning, a methodology where computer programmes fit a model or recognise patterns from data, without being explicitly programmed and with limited or no human intervention. This contrasts with'rules-based algorithms' where the human programmer explicitly decides what decisions are being taken under which states of the world. The study said the median firm uses live machine learning applications in two business areas and this is expected to more than double within the next three years. Bank of England's machine learning paper is also interesting.

The use of artificial intelligence in sports isn't a major surprise, given the advancement in technology. Rise in computing power, availability of massive amount of data and an increased willingness of stakeholders to leverage such tools are the three principal reasons why the role of artificial intelligence in sports has gained a lot more importance recently. Someone who thinks the application of artificial intelligence in sports is limited to improving the performance of players is in for a pleasant shock. That's because there are many more avenues where AI is used. Here we list 9 applications that AI has found in the world of sports.

Jazz, Pakistan's leading digital communications company, and Afiniti, a multinational advanced analytics company, have partnered to implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions in customer service contact centers across Pakistan, fostering significant gains in customer satisfaction and revenues. As part of its long-term commitment to meet and exceed customer satisfaction, Jazz engaged Afiniti to use their AI powered contact centre technology to optimize call outcomes at Jazz's customer service contact centres. By analyzing call histories and other CRM data, Afiniti's algorithm predicts patterns of interpersonal behavior and matches callers with Jazz's contact centre agents best equipped to serve them. "Industries globally are advancing rapidly thanks to AI and we wanted to use this technology for the benefit of our customers," said Aamir Ibrahim, CEO Jazz. "Afiniti's solution is intuitive, seamless and measurable, and a part of Jazz's broader customer obsession motto. "Afiniti is the world's premier provider of applied artificial intelligence solutions, having delivered billions of dollars in measurable economic value to its clients around the world.

OnviSource announced today it has started the deployment of its AI-driven solutions powered by its new proprietary Artificial Intelligence software, called iMachine . Company's solutions are able to utilize the most optimized AI engine pertinent to their specific application. For example, Company's Intelligent Virtual Agent or smart bot, called Liaa, primarily utilizes iMachine's NLP/NLU engine; while Intellecta multichannel analytics and Automata RPA products may use iMachine's ML and DL engines for a variety of their AI-driven features. Use of iMachine by Company's solutions in analytics, RPA and IVA significantly enhances their capabilities in effectively addressing today's enterprise and contact center challenges in workforce optimization, customer experience management and business process automation; as well as automating the management of enterprise contents. Content of calls, audio files, email, chat, text, and structured or unstructured documents can be analyzed by iMachine for discovering intent, purpose, compliance, categories, sentiment, root causes and complex information otherwise undetected by analytics that do not use AI engines.

Security operators tasked with monitoring multiple camera feeds have a difficult job. It's virtually impossible for them to give their full attention to more than one camera at any given moment. Threat scenarios vary so operators must also be able to react swiftly and appropriately. False alarms could be costly and missed detections could be deadly, so control rooms are operating under tremendous pressure, which in turn increases the risk of errors. That's why the United Kingdom's Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) recommends a 20 minute shift for CCTV control room operators because of vigilance decrement. Vigilance decrement is characterized not just by attention decreases but also by an increase in oversight for tasks requiring intense sustained attention.

Compared to other industries, in life sciences putting a new product to market is nothing short of a miracle, as it comes with extremely high costs and risk. It is estimated that getting a drug to market bears a cost in excess of $2 billion, with approximatively 60% linked to clinical development. It takes around 15 years to develop a new potential treatment, with no certainty of it ever getting to patients. The attrition rate is extremely high, with an estimated 15% of potential drugs in development successfully reaching the launch phase. To reduce the cost and increase the probability of success, life sciences would seem a model industry to benefit from the implementation of artificial intelligence tools -- and yet as an industry we are still lagging behind others in taking advantage of the benefits of advanced AI. Why? Let's get back to some basics.