They beat us at chess and trivia, supplant jobs by the thousands, and are about to be let loose on highways and roads as chauffeurs and couriers. Now, fresh signs of robot supremacy are emerging on Wall Street in the form of machine stock analysts that make more profitable investment choices than humans. At least that's the upshot of one of the first studies of the subject, whose preliminary results were released in January. Buy recommendations peddled by robo-analysts, which supposedly mimic what traditional equity research departments do but faster and at lower cost, outperform their flesh-and-blood counterparts over the long run, according to Indiana University professors. "Using this type of technology to make investment recommendations or to conduct investment analyses is going to become increasingly important," Kenneth Merkley, an associate professor of accounting and one of the authors, said by phone.

Last year, Ted Serbinski called his accelerator, Techstars Detroit, the "'comeback city's' startup ecosystem." Since 2015, the accelerator had supported and mentored 54 transportation-related companies, with funding from some big transportation names, like Ford, Honda, AAA, and Nationwide. Success stories included Cargo, a startup that helps ride-hail drivers make supplemental income by running rider-friendly "convenience stores" out of their cars; Splt, a ride-share company acquired by Bosch in 2018; and Acerta, which applies machine learning to automotive manufacturing. Instead, it's shutting down, as earlier reported by TechCrunch. "Right now, there is no funding," says Serbinski, the accelerator's managing director.

Your IT service management platform and related tools are the workhorses and frameworks of operating any kind of successful IT organization, providing a way to track work, prioritize tasks, and make sure user issues get solved. It may not be the most glamorous technology in your organization's tech stack, but it gets the job done. Yet today even ITSM and related tools and platforms are poised to change in a significant way -- driven by the data revolution. "IT is where digital transformation begins, and we are a powerful strategic partner for CIOs all over the world," said Bill McDermott, in his first earnings call on January 29 as CEO of ServiceNow, which provides ITSM and other tools and frameworks to the IT industry. McDermott joined ServiceNow in October 2019 from SAP where he also served as CEO.

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 04, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Labelbox, the leading training data platform for enterprise machine learning applications, today announced the close of a $25 million Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz with General Partner Peter Levine joining the Labelbox board of directors. Previous investors First Round Capital, Gradient Ventures (Google's AI-focused venture fund) and Kleiner Perkins also participated. To date, Labelbox has raised $39 million in venture funding. Labelbox offers a training data platform for machine learning teams to build real-world artificial intelligence. The platform consists of label editor tools, batch & real-time labeling workflows, collaboration, quality review, analytics, and an optional, fully managed and dedicated labeling workforce.

TOKYO/SAN, FRANCISCO – Tesla Inc.'s stock surged 20 percent on Monday in its largest one-day gain since 2013, fueled by a quarterly profit at Panasonic's battery business with the U.S. carmaker and an investor report predicting its shares would rise more than ten-fold by 2024. Shares of Tesla have rallied by over 30 percent since the car maker run by Chief Executive Elon Musk posted its second consecutive quarterly profit last Wednesday, which was viewed as a milestone for the company competing against established heavyweights including General Motors Co. and BMW. The stock is up over 300 percent since early June, helped by Tesla's better-than-expected financial results and ramped up production at its new car factory in Shanghai. Monday's rise came after Panasonic Corp. reported the first quarterly profit in its U.S. battery business with Tesla, which followed years of production troubles and delays. "We are catching up as Tesla is quickly expanding production," Panasonic Chief Financial Officer Hirokazu Umeda told an earnings briefing, referring to battery cell production. "Higher production volume is helping to push down materials costs and erase losses."

And so, after eight years spent leading one of the world's oldest and most famous technology businesses, IBM's CEO Ginni Rometty will step down in April. Stepping up to the CEO role is Arvind Krishna, who currently serves as the senior VP for the company's cloud and cognitive software unit. When the news came out on Thursday, IBM's shares jumped as much as 5%. Fingers can easily be pointed at Rometty's mixed legacy: during her tenure, the company's stock price dropped over 25% and while the company has been keen to trumpet its artificial intelligence work (in the form of IBM Watson) and its reinvention as a cloud company (thanks to Red Hat) there is still plenty of work to do if IBM is to every approach its former glories. Sure, the latest earnings published by IBM earlier this month beat Q4 expectations.

We've reached the end of January – hooray! To celebrate, there's a myriad of stats to get your teeth into in this week's roundup, including data on customer recommendations, digital out-of-home (DOOH) and financial results for some big companies. Before we get started, subscribers can take a look at our Digital Statistics Index for more? A survey conducted by Vitreous World and Phrasee has found that 68% of global marketers feel they don't understand what AI is and think it's simply an overused buzzword. Additionally, a worrying 67% of those surveyed say they don't know how to implement AI to effectively deliver results. This shows a large gap in knowledge when it comes to one of the biggest trends shaping the world of marketing today and the near future – and it is thought to be costing companies millions in revenue.

Facebook has agreed to pay a $550 million settlement over its use of facial recognition technology nearly a decade ago. This comes just days after a relatively unknown startup selling facial recognition systems to police departments caught the attention of Congress. It seems, after years of civil liberties advocates worrying, facial recognition technology is more powerful and more prevalent than ever. Neither a mammoth new settlement nor the piecemeal legislation nationwide seem suited to stop the takeover. As it announced in the company's quarterly earnings report on Wednesday, Facebook will shell out half a billion dollars to settle a 2015 class action lawsuit over its facial recognition software that suggested tags for people it identified in users' photos.

Nintendo Co. fell the most in nine months after it missed estimates for quarterly profit and forecast full-year earnings that were short of expectations, raising concern about demand for its Switch game console. The shares fell as much as 4.7 percent in early trading in Tokyo on Friday, the biggest intraday drop since April 26. A day earlier, Nintendo reported operating income of ¥168.7 billion ($1.5 billion) in the three months ended December, but that underwhelmed versus the ¥175.4 billion average projection. The lackluster results may fuel worries about the Switch console's longevity, especially in a year when Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp. are preparing to launch new machines for the holidays. Nintendo released a lower-cost Switch Lite in the fall, reaching out to more mainstream users, and that console has sold 5.19 million units to date, the company reported.

NetBase, the industry leader in social media analytics, announced it will merge with Quid, a leader in AI driven text analytics. The combined company is the next generation consumer and market intelligence platform. The platform will deliver contextual insights that reveal business trends from across all forms of structured and unstructured data. The two companies will join forces under their new collective name, NetBase Quid. In today's age of information overload, NetBase Quid will deliver businesses an unprecedented solution that is faster, more accurate and actionable and with access to billions of indexed resources -- from social media posts, consumer reviews, product reviews, news articles to business filings, to patent applications, and forums – which can be aggregated, analyzed, and visualized in order to discover consumer and market insights.