Some water utilities have so much data at their disposal it is hard to sift through it all and use it effectively, but software has the potential to change that. "One tool for working with potentially valuable truck loads [of data] is an artificial neural network -- a software system that uses machine learning techniques to process tons of data and intelligently answer questions," Ars Technica reported. OmniEarth, a geographic analytics company, is using IBM's Watson technology to give meaning to water data. Watson, a machine learning system, became a household name when it managed to outdo some formidable Jeopardy contestants. The project has deployed this technology to help water managers understand whether ratepayers are using water efficiently.

Artificial Intelligence is the latest hotness. We've heard how bots are going to be the new apps allowing natural conversational interfaces. Siri, Cortana and Google Now are no longer a gimmick and are becoming more useful every day. Machine Learning sits behind artificial intelligence and on the surface it may seem like a deeply technical, scientific topic. We are here to tell you that it is more accessible than you think.

As a UK-focused venture capital investor, Oxford Capital is fortunate that the UK is a world leader in AI (although to avoid topical accusations of British exceptionalism, it's definitely worth mentioning that there are centres of excellence in AI and machine learning (ML) throughout Europe). We have just completed an as-yet undisclosed investment in the AI space, and we're evaluating several other opportunities. Along with taking an interest in AI companies that approach us for funding, we've mapped out recent activity in the sector across the UK. Innovation starts with talented individuals, and AI is no exception. Many of the UK's most respected universities have AI research groups, such as the Intelligent Systems group within UCL and the joint Oxford-Cambridge Strategic AI Research Centre.

Internet of Things (IoT) bot maker Mosaic announced today that it has been selected for the Y Combinator summer program and has released a new beta version of its assistant on Amazon Alexa, Slack, SMS, and Facebook Messenger. Mosaic connects a single chatbot to more than a dozen wearables and IoT devices, ranging from lightbulbs to Tesla cars. Essentially, the chatbot takes all the data we compile in our personal lives and helps us make sense of it. Mosaic wants to give people advice based on all the data accumulated by wearables and internet-connected devices and can also explain things like water usage and how to get energy. In the future, Mosaic wants your fitness wearable to talk to you about personal fitness challenges, make sure you're getting enough sleep, and tell you when you need to exercise "This is definitely on our roadmap and one of the most interesting things we're going to do," said cofounder Sumang Liu.

The new plugin gives businesses a simple way to create and deploy customer support messenger bots; providing their customers with a real-time chat experience that combines a hybrid of AI self-service support and on-demand live agent chat. Integrated with Inbenta's powerful semantic search technology, the Chatbot Creation Platform enables a company to leverage its existing knowledge base to create the chatbot experience. The knowledge base -- or customer FAQs -- are no more than a sequence of answers to common questions; because the content is founded on natural language, the customer exchange becomes a two-way conversation. Inbenta specializes in Natural Language Processing and semantic search to improve the customer experience online through Artificial Intelligence-powered technology that helps businesses increase the efficiency of its customer service, call centers, e-Commerce, FAQs and social media platforms. Support services such as dynamic FAQs, knowledge management and and virtual assistants improve business website searches, customer self-service, and e-Commerce conversions.

With the rising anxiety about robots taking over human jobs, now even lawyers may have a reason to be on the edge of their seats. A 19-year-old Stanford University student, Joshua Browder, impressively taught himself how to code and ended up creating what he claims is the "world's first robot lawyer," according to The Guardian. Over the past 21 months, the artificial intelligence (AI) lawyer chatbot has successfully helped void 160,000 parking tickets in London and New York. The bot has done it all for free. Remarkably, DoNotPay chatbot has taken on a quarter of a million parking ticket cases, and the AI lawyer has won 64 percent of them. To quantify the impact, the chatbot has saved about 4 million in fines that no longer have to be paid.

Last week New York University hosted the final workshop of a series sponsored by the White House on the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence. Rather than focusing on the technical bits and bytes, the NYU-hosted schedule centered around the near-term social and economic impact of automation, mass data collection and new analytics. This leads directly into the White House's July 22nd deadline for its Request for Information on "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence." While we often fantasize about the fallout from the coming robot apocalypse, that is simply not today's challenge. Today, we need to focus on the near-term impact of smart-er automation systems on labor and social structures.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The funders had no role in the preparation of the article. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

SEBASTOPOL, CA–(Marketwired – July 07, 2016) – The inaugural O'Reilly Artificial Intelligence Conference explores the real-world opportunities of applied AI on September 26 and 27, 2016, in New York City. O'Reilly Media founder and CEO Tim O'Reilly says that the explosion of intelligent software has just begun. Companies and developers working on applied AI require a different kind of knowledge than the research presented by existing academic conferences. The O'Reilly AI Conference fills that need with deeply practical sessions on AI today -- how to implement and interact with AI, use cases, and best practices -- as well as inquiries into the future of intelligence engineering. Peter Norvig and Tim O'Reilly serve as honorary program chairs for the first O'Reilly AI conference, with Ben Lorica and Roger Chen as program chairs.

Tesla has admitted that its autopilot feature was activated when one of its cars crashed on Sunday. However, the electric carmaker has suggested that the function was not being used correctly at the time. The motorist survived the accident, but another Tesla owner died in an earlier crash blamed on the driver-assist function failing to detect another vehicle in its path. Chief executive Elon Musk said Tesla had no plans to disable autopilot. However, he told the Wall Street Journal that his company would publish a blog highlighting how drivers should make use of the technology. He also tweeted that it was right that Tesla should be "taking the heat for customer safety".