IBM earned a record 9,100 U.S. patents in 2018, marking the 26th year in a row the Armonk, New York-based company has been the top recipient. Samsung was second with 5,850 patents while tech giants Apple and Microsoft also appeared in the top ten, according to a list compiled by research service IFI Claims. IBM's latest patent haul, which topped the 9,043 it received last year, includes a growing number of inventions related to artificial intelligence and quantum computing, which many people see as critical technologies of the future. Google, which came in at number seven on last year's list, did not crack the top ten patent recipients for 2018. Meanwhile, Apple rose to ninth from eleventh.

Last year, IDx-DR became the first-ever so-called "autonomous AI" system cleared by the FDA to provide a screening decision without the oversight of a doctor. Since then, IDx Technologies, the company behind the product, has begun to roll out this tool designed to detect diabetic retinopathy. Over 30 million people are living with diabetes in the US alone. "The disease itself is bad," said Michael Abramoff, a University of Iowa ophthalmologist and computer scientist, "but the complications make it even worse." One of those complications is diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in American adults.

SHANAHAN: Without question there are some of those. Computer vision is well-established in commercial industry. However, I have not seen in any case yet [where] you just take a commercial capability and immediately apply it to a military problem. First of all, the data set ... you've got to train it against the different kind of datasets. With Maven, we had to get real, full-motion video from the Middle East, tens of thousands of hours of it, curate it, label it, train against it.

Microsoft and AstraZeneca have announced an artificial intelligence (AI) collaboration for the benefit of healthcare patients, by introducing the AI Factory for Health. Founded in partnership with Inria, the French national research institute for the digital sciences, the AI Factory embodies Microsoft's determination to contribute actively to the deployment and development of AI. Since its founding, 27 startups have enjoyed the support of the AI Factory – each benefiting from a partnership encompassing technical, marketing and business elements. From mentoring to technical advice on their solutions, to recommendations on how best to promote and market them through co-marketing or co-selling, Microsoft offers each startup personalized advice at every stage of its growth. With the benefit of two years' maturity, Microsoft and its ecosystem have now identified five key sectors for the AI Factory to pursue: health, environment/energy, transport, financial services and food production.

For the last few weeks, we've been watching a plant grow on our windowsill. A seed blew into the window box and took root, and started to shoot up. This ebook, based on the latest ZDNet / TechRepublic special feature, advises CXOs on how to approach AI and ML initiatives, figure out where the data science team fits in, and what algorithms to buy versus build. There was nothing growing in that end-of-the-window box, so we left it until we could see whether it was a weed or a nice plant. The seed had been long and black, and the stem grew tall and spindly.

When that happens, we need to make sure that computers (AI) have goals aligned with ours" Professor Stephen Hawking 4. Matthew James Bailey, Powering IoT, 2019 Plante Moran Tech Summit, Denver 2019 Artificial Intelligence will change Business B https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/reshaping-

Please join us for what is sure to be a great discussion with your peers and an enjoyable afternoon of rugby. Gordon D'Arcy, from Wexford, Ireland, is Ireland's longest-serving rugby player with an international career that spanned a'mere' 15 years and 304 days – surpassing that of the great Mike Gibson by 176 days. A stalwart of the Leinster Rugby team, he has represented Ireland on 84 occasions, winning three Triple Crowns, one Six Nations Championship and was also an integral part of the 2009 Grand Slam-winning team. As a standup Jarlath has earned tour support spots for Ardal O'Hanlon, Marc Maron and Jack Whitehall, invitations to the world's biggest comedy festivals and television appearances on the BBC, NBC and Comedy Central. As a presenter and podcaster, he has won a legion of loyal fans through the creation of his multi-award-winning global hit podcast "An Irishman Abroad".

Hail can be among the most damaging of severe weather phenomena, but predicting whether a passing thunderstorm might start spitting pea-sized (or golf ball–sized) hailstones is notoriously difficult. A new approach using machine learning techniques related to facial recognition technology is giving meteorologists a new tool for mapping how various components of a storm might add up to dangerous hail conditions. Some types of thunderstorms, such as supercells, are more likely to produce hail than others. But the sheer scale of thunderstorms, which can stretch for kilometers and contain multitudes of intrastorm interactions, makes it difficult for computers to accurately model and predict storm behavior, said David John Gagne, a machine learning scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., and lead author of the new study, published in Monthly Weather Review. Drawing upon machine learning technology sometimes used to identify features of individual faces, Gagne and colleagues at NCAR trained a deep learning model called a convolutional neural network to recognize various storm features known to produce hail.

Tempo Automation's Jeff McAlvay: His big idea was to make hardware development happen at the speed of software development. San Francisco isn't known as a manufacturing center. But in the heart of the city, not far from the highway, a venture-backed startup, Tempo Automation, is manufacturing electronics for big-name clients. Tempo, which has raised a total of $75 million from investors that include Point72 Ventures, Lockheed Martin and Lux Capital, isn't your typical, mass-production contract manufacturer. Instead, in its tucked-away basement factory, Tempo is helping companies like Lockheed Martin, General Electric, Hitachi and NASA produce small runs and prototypes of printed circuit boards quickly and accurately thanks to its proprietary software, machine learning and automation. On a recent visit, workers wearing white or gray smocks and special yellow tape in their shoes to draw static electricity into the ground, moved blue trollies of electronic components that are scanned by digital QR code into position.

Edge2AI Talk Details Machine learning models find patterns in data and can automate decisions that are critical for businesses today. Please join us for a chat with Jordan Birdsell from phData and our usual great pizza, drinks, and conversation! Jordan Birdsell will provide you with a 4 step action plan for how to build an enterprise Machine Learning application that can solve real business problems. The tutorial introduces you to building an end-to-end machine learning solution using MiNiFi, NiFi, Kafka, Kudu, Impala, Spark, and CDSW. With more than 10 years of experience launching successful Analytics and Data Science organizations at large enterprises, Jordan Birdsell now brings his expertise and knowledge to our clients around the globe.