After winning 74 consecutive games and earning $3.3 million in prize money, he finally lost to his fiercest opponent -- a newcomer, no less, that went by a single name: Watson. Really, though, it was no contest. With four years of training and a huge research budget, Watson had been born for this moment. If a computer can be born, that is. Created by IBM to answer questions posed in natural language, Watson was initially designed to excel at Jeopardy! but after its win it began tackling other projects: assisting in the treatment of lung cancer patients at New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; conversing with kids via smart toys; teaming up with education company Pearson to tutor college students; even helping H&R Block customers file their taxes.

A group of data, technology, digital services and other organizations on Tuesday launched the AI Global Marketplace. The marketplace is, in essence, an artificial intelligence app store. It will host more than 2,000 high-value AI assets focused on customer engagement and process intelligence problems for the banking, insurance, healthcare and digital commerce markets. The launch group includes CognitiveScale, HyperGiant, the IEEE, USAA, the Saxena Foundation, the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, and the University of Texas at Austin. Software assets in the AI Global Marketplace will be based on the beta version of an open interface: the Cognitive Agent Modeling and Execution Language, or CAMEL.

Most of the debates surrounding advantages and drawbacks of democracy seem to be focused on issues like inefficient government, potential centralization of power, the tyranny of the majority, and so on. In fact, democracy suffers from so many deficiencies that as one great historian said, if you want to obtain a lucrative book contract, you should just propose to write a book "The Crisis of American Democracy" -- though it is worth noting that democracy, as W. Churchill famously said, is the worst system of all, except for all the others. However, with rising political polarization and governmental gridlock, another challenge is emerging -- what I call the tyranny of the independent minority. Its advent is so gradual and subtle that few people seem to notice it. Yet the tyranny of the minority will pose a threat to the most foundational ideas of democracy. Above all, the increasing use of AI in politics is going to accelerate this trend.

Researchers from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have recently created a machine learning algorithm that can help physicians in deciding how to treat a patient's stroke. The artificial intelligence (AI) driven technology is designed to assist doctors outside of major stroke treatment facilities in determining whether an ischemic stroke patient would benefit from undergoing an endovascular procedure that removes the blood clot. Their work was published online on September 24 in the journal Stroke. This procedure, endovascular thrombectomy, is performed to remove an arterial blood clot causing an ischemic stroke. It involves the insertion of a catheter into the femoral artery of the thigh, which is followed to the patient's brain where the clot must be removed.

According to Accenture, artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to help increase labour productivity by up to 40% and potentially double annual economic growth rates by 2035. But for organisations to capitalise on these and other benefits, decision-makers must ensure AI effectively integrates into existing operations. AI must be treated like any other hyped technology; the focus must be on addressing specific business challenges that provide a return on the investment needed. Adding impetus to the rush towards implementing AI and its related technologies is the perception that the majority of early adopters have already achieved economic benefits, as outlined in the 2017 Deloitte State of Cognitive Survey. Even so, AI hasn't always enjoyed positive reviews. Some see it as threatening employment.

Program also includes a short greeting from Switzerland, Tero Keski-Valkama. The rest of the program will be updated here.

Econsight's patent analytics show Microsoft with a commanding lead in the race for AI patents going into 2019. These and many other insights are from an excellent presentation recently given by Kai Gramke, Managing Director of EconSight titled Artificial Intelligence As A Key Technology and Driver of Technological Progress. EconSight clients include the Swiss Federal Council, German Federal Chancellery, leading European think tanks, research institutes and half of the German DAX-30 companies. The presentation and information shared in this post were generated using the PatentSight analytics platform. PatentSight is a LexisNexis company and you can learn more about them here.

Fully autonomous robots that are able to inspect damaged wind farms have been developed by Scots scientists. Unlike most drones, they don't require a human operator and could end the need for technicians to abseil down turbines to carry out repairs. The multi-million pound project is showing how the bots can walk, dive, fly and even think for themselves. They're being developed by Orca - the Offshore Robotics for Certification of Assets hub. The hub bills itself as the largest academic centre of its kind in the world and is led from Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh universities through its Centre for Robotics.

Australian IBM cybersecurity engineers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system to analyse network connections and employee communications at an enterprise scale. The model detects changes in users' behaviour and can automatically triggers investigations even if the changes occur across multiple platforms. IBM research found the root cause for 52 per cent of data breaches in Australia was malicious or criminal attacks which often use methods like phishing and social engineering. The new IBM solution, developed in the company's Gold Coast cybersecurity lab as part of a hackathon, uses AI to monitor changes in employee behaviour and flags indicators of compromise. It was debuted to the industry at last week's Australian Cyber Conference in Melbourne as a way of showing what can be done but the solution is not something that can be bought directly from IBM. Currently known as "QRadar Insider Threat Detector with Watson" it uses IBM's AI model, Watson, to analyse user generated content – like emails, Word documents, and Slack messages – to detect both the tone of content and employees' typical behaviour or "personalities".

Walt Disney is synonymous with mainstreaming of animation. He was a visionary beyond his time. His creativity and imagination turned simple 2-D characters based on a mouse and a duck into a multi-billion dollar business conglomerate. However, back then animation used to be an extremely labour intensive exercise and animators/cartoonists had to frame by frame draw the entire film. That is how things used to be until the arrival of the year 1972 when two researchers from the University of Utah, Ed Catmull and Fred Parke created a computer animated short video of Catmull's left hand.