Norwalk, Conn.--June 8, 2016-- TMC announced today the conference program for the Smart Machine Conference, held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV from July 11 – 14, 2016. The Smart Machines conference is dedicated to exploring the business advantages of technologies like AI, Autonomous Robots, Chat bots, Neural Networks, Deep Learning, Cloud, Big Data, Virtual Reality Assistants and so much more. The conference program includes keynotes, case studies, networking opportunities and a robust exhibit floor. "The smart machine revolution is here and disrupting society as a whole whether it's fraud detection powered by machine learning, customer service chat bots or a champion chess playing computer," said TMC's CEO, Rich Tehrani, the conference's Executive Producer. "At the Smart Machine Conference attendees will learn the competitive advantages of these technologies and what the industry's future holds."

Since the second half of the 1990s, productivity growth has accelerated in the US due to the Information Technology (IT) Revolution. However, the productivity effects of traditional types of IT were exhausted by mid-2000 (e.g. Today, the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics?referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution?on the future economy and society is attracting attention, and many speculative arguments have arisen regarding the possible effects of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In particular, the substitution of human labour by AI and robots is being hotly discussed. The Japanese government has begun efforts to develop and diffuse AI and robotics technologies.

On June 6, 2016, Riverside County District Attorney, Michael Hestrin, announced that seven people were indicted for insurance fraud and conspiracy for one of the largest workers' compensation (healthcare) fraud investigations in the County. In two separate but related grand jury indictments, a result of a joint investigation by the Riverside County District Attorney's Office and the California Department of Insurance, 98 million was fraudulently billed, resulting in 12.4 million being paid by 18 insurance companies allegedly defrauded in this scheme. But that was no easy feat until smartC was introduced as one of the tools to help the prosecution. Once the data was accessible, the software was able to quickly analyze the content and ultimately help the district attorney file charges against those individuals who filed false workers compensation claims. Working closely with Infinilytics, a team of claims professionals, data scientists, and law enforcement professionals with a background in insurance investigations and special investigation unit (SIU) protocols, the DA successfully won their case after evidence was presented to the grand jury over a six-week period.

We all need a little help sometimes. After all, what are cloud-based, artificially intelligent software agents for? By now we're all familiar with the usual suspects: Siri, Google Now, Cortana and Alexa. They introduced most of us to the idea of talking to, rather than via, a phone, computer or home appliance. But let's face it: These virtual assistants have become boring, banal commodities.

Musk was an early investor in AI firm DeepMind, which was later acquired by Google, and in March made an investment San Francisco-based Vicarious, another company working to improve machine intelligence. Speaking to US news channel CNBC, Musk explained that his investments were, "not from the standpoint of actually trying to make any investment return… I like to just keep an eye on what's going on with artificial intelligence. I think there is potentially a dangerous outcome there." "There have been movies about this, you know, like Terminator," Musk continued. "There are some scary outcomes. And we should try to make sure the outcomes are good, not bad."

Cylance, an Irvine, California-based cybersecurity startup that taps machine-learning and artificial intelligence (A.I.) to thwart malware, has raised 100 million in a Series D round led by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and Insight Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors. The company was founded in 2012 by Stuart McClure, who sold an Internet security firm to McAfee for 86 million eight years ago and came on board as McAfee's chief technology officer (CTO). Prior to this round, Cylance had already raised about 77 million, including a 42 million round last July and 20 million the previous year. McClure has an interesting background -- his venture into the security realm was influenced by a deadly plane crash he was involved in back in 1989, one which resulted in the death of nine passengers. The event was apparently caused by a flaw in the Boeing 747's locking mechanism -- a known fault that the company ignored.

The top U.S. vehicle safety regulator said on Wednesday the government needs to be more nimble in designing rules for self-driving vehicles. The industry "is on version 238.32 by the time we get regulations out," National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) administrator Mark Rosekind said during an appearance at an industry conference in suburban Detroit. U.S. Department of Transportation guidelines expected in July will offer different approaches to oversight of self-driving, or autonomous, vehicle technologies, Rosekind said. Regulations that remain static for years "will not work for this area," Rosekind said. "We will have something different in July."

One of the lesser-known projects being pursued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the development of software that learns automatically to find patterns in scientific data. Now, the project could get its computer hardware from an oddly familiar source: the agency's former chief, Dan Goldin, who founded a startup making chips to better handle those calculations The company, KnuEdge, has modeled its computer chip on the human brain in an attempt to increase the speed of programs that fall under the umbrella of machine learning. The new chip could be plugged into data centers to teach itself such jobs as sorting images, understanding language, and following trends in streams of data. Goldin founded the company in 2005, keeping its operations secret until he revealed the new chip on Monday morning, along with voice recognition software that excels in noisy environments. Over the last 10 years, he has supervised the slow process of building the new chip from scratch.

Two investments announced by Microsoft Ventures this week provide additional insight into the types of startups that the company's newly announced venture fund will be backing. Microsoft Ventures participated along with Canvas Ventures and Trinity Ventures in a 10 million investment round in CrowdFlower, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup whose platform combines training data, machine learning and human input. The company also participated in a 12 million funding round in Comfy, an Oakland, Calif.-based company that offers a smartphone app for building tenants to regulate air conditioning and other aspects of their work environment from their phones. The round was led by Emergence Capital, with other investors CBRE Group and existing investors Claremont Creek Ventures and Westly Group. Earlier this week, Microsoft Ventures was among the investors in a 23 million Series B financing round announced this morning by Helpshift, a San Francisco-based company that offers technology for in-app customer support on mobile devices and the web.

Mendix today announced a new version of its low-code mobile development platform, designed to help developers build "Smart Apps" with connectors to accommodate emerging trends such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data and machine learning (ML). A key feature of the new Mendix 7 platform is the inclusion of drag-and-drop connectors that can be used to wire up those IoT, Big Data and ML services. "Without writing any code, developers can seamlessly leverage these component services to make connected things and insights actionable, delivering new experiences for customers, partners and employees," the company said in a statement today. In addition to those built-in connectors, the Mendix 7 platform provides a connector kit so developers can roll their own connectors through the use of a data mapper, native REST API calls, Java extensions and database connectors. The Mendix platform is one of many low-code/no-code industry offerings created to empower "citizen developers" or ordinary business users who need to develop mobile apps to help their organizations keep pace in the new "mobile-first" world where experienced mobile developers are hard to find.