Stealthy MedyMatch emerged in February with plans to improve emergency room care using cognitive analysis and artificial intelligence. Now, in its first collaboration with a U.S. hospital, the company is developing its first real-time decision-support tool using data from New Jersey-based Capital Health. Under the agreement, Capital Health will supply Israel-based MedyMatch with anonymized data to help it develop the tool, which will target stroke patients. It will analyze medical images and provide the ER radiologist with information to help him or her determine the course of treatment. It combines "deep vision, advanced cognitive analytics and artificial intelligence" to analyze images and identify anomalies that may be invisible to the human eye.

PRO: Chris Bishop, director of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, said earlier this year that he believes the hyperbole around the AI risks could jeopardise any future developments that may in fact assist humanity. "Any scenario in which AI is an existential threat to humanity is not just around the corner," he told the Guardian. Referring to the views of high-profile cynics like professor Stephen Hawking, Bishop said: "I think they must be talking decades away for those comments to make any sense. Right now we are in control of that technology and we can make lots of choices about the paths that we follow." Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for AI and professor of computer science at the University of Washington, meanwhile says the popular dystopian vision of AI is wrong because it "equates intelligence with autonomy".

The first death has been reported in self-driving cars. Our worst fears about artificial intelligence are already beginning to come true. A test man working with Tesla motors was killed after the autopilot feature failed to see a bright-white 18-wheeler which was poorly contrast against the bright lit sky. It is unfortunate, and spooky, since white is the most common color for tractor trailers, and the big rigs account for the most deadly accidents. One wonders how a tiny, smart car making decisions of a computer would stand up to such a vehicle. Not "sophisticated enough to overcome blindness from bright or low contrast light."

The popular name for Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) these days is "Deep Learning" (DL) or Deep Neural Network (DNN). Researchers at Google, Facebook, IBM, Nvidia, and potentially a number of other companies are experimenting with their own variations of DL algorithms based on CNN. Twitter recently acquired a company called Magic Pony to increase focus on DL. Applications for DL range from vision processing for self-driving car applications to natural language processing and face/object recognition, for potential applications in security, advertising, gaming, VR/AR, etc. A neural network is a computational algorithm that is loosely based on mechanics of the learning process in animals.

VentureBeat has an article titled: "Rise of the Chatbots and Why You Should Care" I decided to set a stopwatch for placing a real order on Mezi and one on my own. Since the chatbot A.I. only works for flowers, flights, and hotels, I searched for a flight to San Francisco. My own search took about 15 minutes, start to finish. I asked about a flight from MSP to SFO, and a chatbot (plus a human rep) got to work. While it took half an hour to get the results, it took me 30 seconds.

Artificial intelligence (AI) that can understand and answer any work-related question it is asked has been made available in the UK for the first time. The computer software, called Starmind, uses machine learning to understand queries, then finds answers from previous staff conversations on a subject or tracks down experts in the company who are able to help. Its creators refer to it as "brain technology", adding its aim is to become a central knowledge bank within any company, an instant database of information that can be accessed by anyone. Starmind co-founder Pascal Kaufmann said of the technology: "Thousands of human brains connected can outsmart any machine today. "But if you can find ways for humans and AI-inspired technologies to autonomously collaborate rather than focusing on ways for them to compete, you can bring out the best in both." The algorithm within the system, which was developed in Switzerland, becomes more powerful the more it is used and is able to build a map of the people in a business and the areas in which all of them are experts, or are able to provide relevant information. "Starmind acts like an artificial hyperbrain that seamlessly exists at the core of a company," Mr Kaufmann added. "The algorithm is then fuelled by the know-how stored inside the brains of everyone that engages with the system." Several major companies in Europe, including UBS and Bayer, are using the system. A new version of the software - called Starmind NOW - has also been launched. It enables the software to be accessed outside a company intranet for the first time. Starmind says that makes the technology more "intuitive and seamless" to use. Former Microsoft executive Peter Waser has also joined the company as CEO. "It's a new technology that has never been available on the market in this form," he said. "Brain technology is the latest technology in the megatrend of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

German engineering powerhouse Siemens today announced that it has set up an innovation unit named'next47' (as the company was founded back in 1847) to "foster disruptive ideas more vigorously and to accelerate the development of new technologies", more specifically in the fields of artificial intelligence, blockchain, autonomous machines and what it calls'decentralized electrification'. Effective October 1, 2016, the unit intends to pool all of Siemens' existing startup activities, fuelled by 1 billion in funding for the first five years. Siemens CTO Siegfried Russwurm will head the new unit on an acting basis. "Siemens itself was a startup in 1847 – founded in a rear courtyard in Berlin," said Joe Kaeser, president and CEO of Siemens. "With next47, we're living up to our company founder's ideals and creating an important basis for fostering innovation as we continue Siemens' development." Next47 will have offices in Berkeley, Shanghai and Munich and cover all regions of the world from those locations.

One additional note: unlike the wall-of-equations that make up most machine learning papers, the IML literature is profoundly inviting and largely friendly to non-experts. I encourage you to dive into the original papers wherever a particular topic piques your interest. I've gathered links to all of the papers in Knox's syllabus here to make doing so especially convenient.

Today was a day for the history books. The UK has voted to leave the European Union and opened a deep crack in the heart of Europe. As a consequence of this result, Prime Minister David Cameron will step down by October urging for a fresh leadership. At this point nobody knows the repercussions of these results. Will the Brexit hurt the economy of the UK and ignite a new recession?

Here are upcoming meetings and conferences, for July 2016 and beyond. Save 10% with the KDNUGGETS registration code. Aug 29 - Sep 1, Image Processing, Computer Vision and Machine Learning based on Optimization and PDE. Use code CDOINSUR to save 10% on registration. Sep 23, MLconf Atlanta Machine Learning Conference - mention "KDNuggets" and save 18%.