BENGALURU: Business process management companies Genpact and EXL Services are seeing growth quicken for digital services, as clients increase investment in data analytics to improve customer mining. Among the top five BPM companies, US-listed Genpact grew more than 20% in the June quarter on big deals with large-format retailer Walmart, while EXL Services grew 15.9%, both typically faster than IT services companies. WNS, the other big BPM player, has shown high single-digit growth. Digital technology-led delivery is boosting growth for large BPM firms as more business applications are digitised and processes automated across businesses, said Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief executive officer, Greyhound Research. "The confluence of Internet of Things, analytics and artificial intelligence is transforming their business models. And, investments in these areas are now paying off," he said.

Zenuity, the autonomous driving software company headquartered in Sweden, has become the first automotive company to team up with CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in the development of fast machine learning for autonomous drive cars. A fundamental challenge in the development of autonomous drive (AD) cars is the interpretation of the huge quantities of data generated by normal driving conditions, such as identifying pedestrians and vehicles with the sensors on the car, including cameras, lidar and radars. Addressing these issues is crucial for the development of safe AD cars and is a key part of Zenuity's long-term ambition to speed up the development of vehicles that will completely eliminate car collisions and associated injuries and fatalities. Broadly speaking, it is hoped this collaboration with CERN will ultimately help Zenuity develop AD cars that can reach decisions and make predictions more quickly, thus avoiding accidents. One of the main quests at CERN is to study the standard model of particle physics by collecting large quantities of data originating from particle collisions produced by CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Mix the rise of e-commerce in Japan with a chronic labor shortage and a graying society and what do you get? "I'm delivering delicious food," announced CarriRo Deli, a robot the size of a cooler box that was navigating a South Korean apartment complex in April, bringing food and drinks to residents during a trial of its "last-mile" delivery service. The robot's maker, Tokyo-based ZMP Inc., has already held a number of delivery trials at university campuses and elsewhere in Japan and is looking for partners to help it develop the business further. Aside from having a 50 kg cargo capacity and a speed of 6 kph, the robot speaks short phrases like "hello" and "thank you" and has LED eyes, a feature aimed at making it more lifelike and engaging when interacting with people. "It would be scary if a simple box was running around places," ZMP Manager Hiromasa Iwano explained at a gathering in Tokyo in late July, adding the company took into account how people would react to the robots. "We wanted to create a robot that is well-received, socially." ZMP CEO Hisashi Taniguchi said at the same event that CarriRo Deli was the world's only autonomous delivery robot with eyes when it was revealed last year, noting that although eyes had long been a feature industrial designers avoided, others are now following suit.

It is not surprising that machines are an integral part of our eco-system driven by technology. Reaching a point in technical pinnacle was made easier from the time machine started learning and reasoning even without the intervention of a human being. The world is changing from the models developed by machine learning, artificial intelligence and deep learning which adapt themselves independently to a given scenario. Data being the lifeline of businesses obtaining machine learning training helps in better decision-making for the company to stay ahead of the competition. Machine learning interview questions may pop up from any part of the subject like it may be about algorithms and the theory that works behind it, your programming skills and the ability to work over those algorithms and theory or about your general insights about machine learning and its applicability.

A team of MIT researchers is making it easier for novices to get their feet wet with artificial intelligence, while also helping experts advance the field. In a paper presented at the Programming Language Design and Implementation conference this week, the researchers describe a novel probabilistic-programming system named "Gen." Users write models and algorithms from multiple fields where AI techniques are applied -- such as computer vision, robotics, and statistics -- without having to deal with equations or manually write high-performance code. Gen also lets expert researchers write sophisticated models and inference algorithms -- used for prediction tasks -- that were previously infeasible. In their paper, for instance, the researchers demonstrate that a short Gen program can infer 3-D body poses, a difficult computer-vision inference task that has applications in autonomous systems, human-machine interactions, and augmented reality.

Waymo hopes its autonomous driving tech can withstand Florida's notorious rainy season. The company announced today that it will be rain testing a set of Chrysler Pacificas and a Jaguar I-Pace throughout the Sunshine State over the next several weeks. The aim will be to see how the vehicle's sensor suite -- which includes lidar, cameras and radar -- hold out during Florida's hurricane season. "Heavy rain can create a lot of noise for our sensors. Wet roads also may result in other road users behaving differently. Testing allows us to understand the unique driving conditions, and get a better handle on how rain affects our own vehicle movements, too," wrote Waymo in a blog post.

Shanghai expects to sign over 70 major artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G deals with leading tech companies and institutions at the three-day World Artifical Intelligence Conference in the city this week, Caixin has learned. These include a tie-up between the Pudong district government and telecommunications giant Huawei to build a 5G "innovation center," as well as a 5 billion yuan ($697.7 million) deal between the district and facial recognition company CloudWalk. The hope is that the conference, which runs from Thursday to Saturday, can turn Shanghai into a national AI hub. IBM is expected to partner with Shanghai's Zhangjiang high-tech zone to set up a research center for the IBM Watson AI project. Shanghai's Communist Party secretary Li Qiang said during the event's opening ceremony that AI is now the city's priority, and that the government will "actively plan" and accelerate the local development of AI projects.

In the intensely competitive digital landscape, Oracle has used its traditional strengths in databases to go with full force in the cloud. In India, in line with the huge surge in digital initiatives taken by different corporate organisations, Oracle has seen huge adoption for its solutions. As a result, India has been conferred the best performing region within JAPAC for the last three years consecutively. Some smart innovations such as the'Cloud at Customer' offering (which provides the opportunity for customers to take advantage of the cloud model behind the customer's own firewall), and the Oracle Autonomous Database (touted as the industry's first'self-driving, self-securing and self-repairing' database), have seen Oracle gain faster acceptance in the market. SBI for example, uses the Cloud at Customer' offering, while Federal Bank is using the Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse for ATM performance analysis.

The 3-0 decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco over Facebook's facial recognition technology exposes the company to billions of dollars in potential damages to the Illinois users who brought the case. It came as the social media company faces broad criticism from lawmakers and regulators over its privacy practices. Last month, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion fine to settle a Federal Trade Commission data privacy probe. "This biometric data is so sensitive that if it is compromised, there is simply no recourse," Shawn Williams, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the class action, said in an interview. "It's not like a Social Security card or credit card number where you can change the number.