However, factors like reluctance in the transition phase from conventional business process to automation along with shortage in technical expertise required during deployment and integration of RPA solution are challenges which might affect the growth in this market.

WHEN manufacturers think of artificial intelligence (AI), they think of its ability to produce insights from data. Most manufacturers are keen on using AI to analyze demand and factor in lags in the supply chain to optimize operations, but forget the heavy equipment they're using. According to a new whitepaper, McKinsey argues that companies with heavy assets can reap great dividends if their operators start using AI to review their workflows and make necessary alterations. "AI can deliver improvements without capital-intensive equipment upgrades and thus produce attractive returns quickly," it says. The consulting giant finds that despite the advances in technology, operators of heavy machinery still rely on judgment and intuition to manually monitor signals and adjust settings, troubleshoot and run tests, and perform other tasks that strain the limits of their human capacity.

Every year, the AICPA and CPA.com gather top executives from the accounting software vendor community along with accountants, media members, and thought leaders. Over the course of a couple of days, attendees hear from experts and discuss the future of technology and how the vendors can work with CPAs -- and even one another -- in innovative ways to move forward together. Executive Roundtable took place recently in New York, and I was privileged to attend as one of the invited thought leaders. This year's event had a laser focus on audit and compliance services, covering topics such as data-driven audits powered by artificial intelligence and how to create more future-proof firms. At the roundtable, AICPA President and CEO Barry Melancon, CPA, CGMA, referenced the 2018 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report, which lists accountants and auditors (as well as accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll clerks) among the jobs most likely to decline due to automation.

As scientists continue to toil away at creating machine learning algorithms that will one day enslave humanity save us all, artificial intelligence researchers have discovered that computers are outpacing human doctors in a number of important areas. We've already seen the ability of AI to spot things like cancer, and a new study reveals that a digital brain may also be better at predicting overall mortality and specific conditions such as heart attack with greater accuracy than a trained individual. The research, which was presented at the International Conference on Nuclear Cardiology and Cardiac CT, suggests that we may be fast approaching a day when artificial intelligence works hand-in-hand with medical professionals to anticipate life-threatening problems before they occur. The researchers, led by Dr. Luis Eduardo Juarez-Orozco of the Turku PET Centre in Finland, trained a machine learning algorithm on a data set of nearly 1,000 patients. The data, which spanned six years for each patient, included dozens of variables that the computer had to digest in order to draw correlations between instances of death and heart attack with data on various heart and blood flow readings.

The growing use of artificial intelligence comes with more than just technology challenges. Ethical questions are emerging as government agencies use AI for a range of purposes, from customer service chatbots to mission-critical tasks supporting military forces. This increasing reliance on AI introduces concerns about bias in its foundation, especially related to information on gender, race, socioeconomic status and age. Potential for bias can be built into AI algorithms by the humans who create them. This can happen intentionally or by accident resulting from biases developers don't realize they have.

When the Amazon Prime Day deals roll into town in July, it's a no-brainer that the Amazon Echo Dot will get a big discount like it does every year. The thing is, it'll be nowhere near as good as this one - and it ends at 9am tomorrow. This is a UK-only deal, but we've rounded up the latest top deals in the US over on our Memorial Day sales page. UK readers, be sure to check out the Bank Holiday sales this weekend too. We're expecting Prime Day to bring the Echo Dot down to £29.99 as per usual, or £24.99 at the very best if Google aggressively price cuts the Google Home Mini as the search giant can't help but wind Amazon up any chance it gets with its line of rival smart speakers.

New technologies are rocking the field of health care, making inroads and influencing medical approaches and advancements. Whether the innovation is invisible during a clinical visit, or as obvious as the electronics we wear or see in an emergency room, they contribute to the excellence of health care delivery in Canada. Big data comes with a big imprint. Patient data -- from routine checkups, remote and virtual care, and personal health wearables -- is driving medical research. Precision medicine requires even larger data sets and now increasingly specific genomes.

Norwegian chemical company Yara International has teamed up with tech giant IBM to transform the future of farming. The two companies together endeavour to build the "world's leading" digital farming platform which, they say, will provide holistic digital services and instant agronomic advice. Yara and IBM Services will jointly innovate and commercialise digital agricultural solutions that will help increase global food production. The collaboration will draw on Yara's agronomic knowledge – backed by more than 800 agronomists and a century of experience – and IBM's digital platforms, services and expertise in AI and data analytics. "Our collaboration centres around a common goal to make a real difference in agriculture," said Terje Knutsen, EVP Sales and Marketing in Yara.

It has recently been published that Facebook's development center in Israel is increasing its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The company has established a team, called Data.AI, for developing AI tools that are intended to help build and improve software infrastructure and systems for data research on facebook. According to Facebook, these tools are intended to improve and optimize the work that Facebook's international engineers and programmers handle. "If up until now most of Facebook's efforts in the AI field has focused on advancing and improving the user's experience, then now another dimension is being added by the Israeli team – the development of AI based capabilities towards the improvement of infrastructure and the capabilities of the internal interfaces of the company," Facebook mentions.

As technology advances, companies continue to push the boundaries with virtual assistants and conversational AI, striving in most cases to more closely approximate real-life person-to-person interactions. The implication is that "more human" is better. AI doesn't need to be more human to serve human needs. It's time for companies to stop obsessing over how closely their AI approximates real people and start focusing on the real strengths that this transformative technology can bring to consumers, businesses, and society. The desire to strive for more humanity within technology is understandable. As a species, we've long taken pleasure in the personification of animals and inanimate objects, whether it's chuckling when you see a dog wearing a tiny top hat or doodling a smiley face on a steamy bathroom mirror.