Clear link found between AI adoption and business growth. Infosys has released its multinational research findings on the business impact of Artificial Intelligence, market maturity and expectations. A clear link has been shown to exist between a company's revenue growth and its AI maturity, with those reporting faster revenue growths more likely to be ahead in AI adoption. The report also found that AI is perceived as a long-term strategic priority in innovation. The majority of respondents, totalling to 85 percent, aim to train employees on the benefits and use of AI.

That's the premise of Nugit, a Singapore-based startup focused on marketing that raised $5.2 million in fresh funding from Sequoia Capital's India fund this week. Nugit landed undisclosed seed funding from 500 Startups and The Hub Singapore last year. Founded by Australia-born marketing executive David Sanderson, Nugit sits between its customers and their data platforms -- it supports 15 right now, including Facebook Ad Manager, Google AdWords and DoubleClick -- to help make sense of realms of information. The idea is to make a digital marketer's job easier by cutting down on noise and producing "decision-ready reports," such as PowerPoint presentations, graphics and other visualizations. The company started out automating many of the processes that marketers are faced with when dealing with data, such as cleaning information and aligning it, until Sanderson -- formerly of GroupM and other ad agencies -- realized that computers could go beyond that and deliver insight that is difficult or seriously time-consuming for humans.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler AG (OTCPK:DDAIF) (OTCPK:DDAIY) announced a partnership for AI powered Mercedes cars. These cars, which are expected to be available within the next year, will feature self-driving capability as well as an active driver assistance function called "Co-Pilot." Co-Pilot may well be the most intelligent human-machine interface ever devised. The announcement at CES of the Nvidia/Daimler partnership came only a day after Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang gave his keynote at CES. Since the announcement of the Nvidia/Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) partnership last year, the automobile industry has been waking up to the fact that the race to build the first commercially available self-driving car is all but won.

Artificial intelligence (AI) on its own isn t enough to compete -- companies need industry-specific solutions to business problems. So said Martin Schroeter, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) s company senior vice president and chief financial officer, on the company s quarterly earnings call Thursday afternoon. Cognitive computing technology (IBM s term for AI) is just "table stakes," said Schroeter, claiming that his company is going the extra mile. IBM is building datasets for Watson to serve specific industries, including healthcare and finance. "You need more than public data or algorithms to solve real-world problems," Schroeter said.

Artificial intelligence (AI) on its own isn't enough to compete -- companies need industry-specific solutions to business problems. So said Martin Schroeter, IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)'s company senior vice president and chief financial officer, on the company's quarterly earnings call Thursday afternoon. Cognitive computing technology (IBM's term for AI) is just "table stakes," said Schroeter, claiming that his company is going the extra mile. IBM is building datasets for Watson to serve specific industries, including healthcare and finance. "You need more than public data or algorithms to solve real-world problems," Schroeter said.

IBM's chief financial officer, Martin Schroeter, made a bold statement on the future of technology on Thursday -- and he got some pushback. "The debate about whether artificial intelligence is real is over," Schroeter said, referring to IBM's cognitive computing platform, Watson. "And we're getting to work to solve real business problems." Katy Huberty, managing director at Morgan Stanley, challenged IBM on the topic during Thursday's earnings conference call. Huberty: "My other question is Watson: From the outside, it seems this business gets a pretty significant share of the press, but not contributing to revenue. Do you have visibility yet to when we can expect an inflection in revenue recognition from Watson? Or should we just not think about this as a contributing factor, or moving the needle in our models over the next couple of years? Schroeter: "....Watson is a silver thread.

Iris Automation Inc. has raised $1.5 million to bring "sense and avoid" technology, and truly self-flying capabilities, to drones used for industrial tasks. Even for human pilots, identifying obstacles and deciding precisely how to maneuver a fast-flying aircraft around them poses a serious challenge. Iris' technology analyzes and draws insights from videos captured by cameras onboard a drone in real time. "We're designing this to work like a human pilot's vision and decision-making process," says Iris Automation CEO and co-founder Alexander Harmsen. Iris Automation, a Y Combinator company, is not alone in the quest to develop computer vision systems that can make unmanned aerial vehicles, and eventually other robotics and vehicles, truly autonomous.

One of Canada's largest banks and a multinational software firm are both announcing expanded investment in artificial intelligence (AI) that will include partnerships with Canadian universities, according to announcements made Wednesday morning. Microsoft Corp. just announced its acquisition of Montreal-based AI startup Maluuba Jan. 13 and now it says it wants to double the size of that team over the next two years. That investment will be paired with a $6 million gift to the Universite de Montreal and $1 million to McGill University to be spent on AI research over five years. The announcement was made by Microsoft President Brad Smith from the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he was joined by Navdeep Bains, Canada's Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. "Microsoft's investment is proof of Canadians' world-renowned expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning," Bains is quoted as saying in a press release.

Iris Automation Inc. has raised $1.5 million to bring "sense and avoid" technology, and truly self-flying capabilities, to drones used for industrial tasks. Even for human pilots, identifying obstacles and deciding precisely how to maneuver a fast-flying aircraft around them poses a serious challenge. Iris' technology analyzes and draws insights from videos captured by cameras on-board a drone in real time. "We're designing this to work like a human pilot's vision and decision-making process," says Iris Automation CEO and cofounder Alexander Harmsen. Iris Automation, a Y Combinator company, is not alone in the quest to develop computer vision systems that can make unmanned aerial vehicles, and eventually other robotics and vehicles, truly autonomous.

The pioneer in intelligent automation, ServiceNow can further increase productivity for its customers by applying machine‑learning capabilities and data models developed by DxContinuum. As more Internet of Things devices make service requests, it is increasingly important that those requests be categorized, routed and responded to. Hundreds of thousands of machine and manual work requests can now be effectively and automatically categorized and routed for each ServiceNow customer, bringing the "intelligent automation" of today's manual processes one step closer. While artificial intelligence and automation are rapidly changing the consumer world from self‑driving cars to smarter homes, the workplace still relies on manual processes. Every day employees deal with IT incidents, HR cases, customer requests, and security alerts with back‑and‑forth emails, calls and spreadsheets.