Over the last several weeks, I've been supporting business and technology leaders with a live training series to teach them exactly how to select an optimal big data use case for their organization. In groups like this, the business benefits of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies are pretty obvious to group members – yet, in most cases, the level of corporate investment in said technologies is nowhere near where it needs to be for organization's to see results. That's one of the reasons that this year's RELX survey on the impact of emerging technologies on business really caught my eye… It does a masterful job of quantifying what's happening across corporate America with respect to big data, analytics, machine learning and the business benefits of artificial intelligence. In this blog post, I'll be sharing with you some of the larger takeaways from this telling study. As I mentioned, the statistics I'll be sharing with you today were generated in a comprehensive study conducted by RELX.

A number of recent articles by CMS highlight that the increasing use of AI has the potential to revolutionise the business environment across a wide range of sectors. However, with opportunities come new challenges for businesses and their directors. As the field of AI continues to move quickly in transforming business operations, and with the technology continually evolving, this article explores the impact of the increased use of AI for directors and senior managers and the potential repercussions for Directors & Officers' liability insurers. Directors ultimately bear responsibility for the implementation of AI within a business. They have an obligation to assess the benefits of using AI systems and to consider what new liabilities may arise as a result.

Some problems in science are so hard, we don't really know what meaningful questions to ask about them -- or whether they are even truly solvable by science. Consciousness is one of those: Some researchers think it is an illusion; others say it pervades everything. Some hope to see it reduced to the underlying biology of neurons firing; others say that it is an irreducibly holistic phenomenon. The question of what kinds of physical systems are conscious "is one of the deepest, most fascinating problems in all of science," wrote the computer scientist Scott Aaronson of the University of Texas at Austin. "I don't know of any philosophical reason why [it] should be inherently unsolvable" -- but "humans seem nowhere close to solving it." Now a new project currently under review hopes to close in on some answers. It proposes to draw up a suite of experiments that will expose theories of consciousness to a merciless spotlight, in the hope of ruling out at least some of them.

SAN FRANCISCO - The knock-down, drag-out battle in the video game world heads to the cloud as the premier industry event looks to adapt to a consumer shift to streaming services. New blockbuster titles will be on center stage as usual at the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) opening in Los Angeles on Tuesday, but the big question for the sector will be how consumers play. The E3 opens with gamers gradually moving away from traditional console play and Google seeking to capitalize on that trend with a new Netflix-style service allowing people to play cloud-powered games on any connected device. Adapting to the new trends will be critical for players in the massive video game industry, which last year generated more than $135 billion globally, and $43.4 billion in the United States. According to the Entertainment Software Association, which runs E3, more than 164 million adults in the United States play video games, and 3 out of 4 U.S. households have at least one video game player.

Even as artificial intelligence (AI) is forecast to exceed human capabilities across a range of industries it is also predicted to augment human labor. In finance, AI is already helping financial advisors augment financial planning while enhancing investment strategy. And in medicine, AI diagnostics systems have proven to be far more accurate than doctors in diagnosing heart disease and cancerous growths. In fact, McKinsey lists some 400 use cases representing $6 trillion in value across 19 industries in which AI will augment human work. What will the impact of AI be on the nature of government?

Are you prepared for the Age of Machine Intelligence? That's a time when machines anticipate consumers' choices before they are made. That age is nearer than many people realize, according to author/futurist Mike Walsh, who said business leaders need to understand how the new reality impacts the decisions they make. The National Automatic Merchandising Association show, held last week in Las Vegas, made an appropriate setting for Walsh's message, given the number of exhibits and education sessions featuring artificial intelligence. While these new technologies impact many industries, the convenience services industry has experienced a significant boost in recent years thanks to AI, micro markets, cashless readers, digital signage, telemetry-based remote machine monitoring, smart sensor shelving, facial detection and voice technology.

What makes artificial intelligence intelligent? Is it able to learn from errors or recognize, say, the letters of the alphabet in a set of random shapes like a human can? These are some of the questions developers of AI ask. What began as sluggish programs on hulking machines has taken the form of code that anyone in a particular field could test out and manipulate to suit their needs. Jae Ho Sohn, a radiologist at the University of California at San Francisco, is adapting and working with an AI algorithm to analyze thousands of positron emission tomography (PET) scans to search for early signs of Alzheimer's.

Add Novant Health to the growing list of health systems that have opened institutes dedicated to artificial intelligence. The health system, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, launched the Novant Health Institute of Innovation & Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will use AI to enhance personalized patient care. The institute will focus on the advanced technologies required to provide highly personalized care and accelerated solutions with actionable data and insights for preventive prediction, diagnosis and treatment to Novant Health's patients, the health system said. Novant Health consists of 640 care locations, including 15 hospitals and hundreds of outpatient facilities and physician clinics servicing patients in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. To drive this work, Novant will partner with the health system's physicians as well as technology companies, research organizations, universities and other healthcare organizations to leverage the work already in place within Novant Health's digital products and services team.

However, reaching consensus is likely to prove difficult on some key issues, in particular those involving trade. Participating nations have clashing interests, most notably the U.S. and China. "First, I would like to stress the importance of tapping into data, which is the source of innovation," Hiroshige Seko, minister of economy, trade and industry, said at the beginning of the digital economy session. Seko said that "ensuring the free flow of data internationally is indispensable to the economic development of the world as a whole." He then introduced a concept called "Data Fee Flow with Trust," or DFFT, which he said would promote free data flows while securing trust related to privacy and security.