Privacy restrictions are pushing many marketer toward the use of artificial intelligence in order to ... [ ] delive more targeted messages. The trend toward greater focus on privacy issues has been going on for some time and is starting to come to a head. More restrictions on the sharing and merging of data on individuals has been leading to advertisers to look for effective ways to target and reach consumers, including using the use of behavioral targeting supplemented by the use of artificial intelligence (AI). At a time when privacy regulations are sometimes fragmented and confusing but changing, it is critically important for marketers to monitor changes in the regulatory environment. Against this backdrop, I interviewed Sheri Bachstein, IBM's Global Head of Watson Advertising to get her insights and predictions on the future of privacy regulation and how it will affect advertisers, particularly as regards the use of AI and came away with three major takeaways: The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act are already leading to the devaluation of traditional third-party cookies and the way many advertisers do business.

Over the last decade, we have heard a lot of doom-saying about how artificial intelligence (AI) would result in the loss of huge numbers of jobs. However, the picture (across both public and private sectors) is now starting to look not only more nuanced but also more positive. A 2017 report from consultancy PWC suggested that embedding AI across all sectors is likely to create thousands of jobs. In the UK, one estimate suggests that it could contribute as much as 5% of GDP within 10 years. That's not to say that we won't lose jobs, because we undoubtedly will.

Ahmed started his career at Cornell's Autonomous Systems Laboratory focusing on human-robot interaction and Bayesian data fusion as well as building algorithms for autonomous cars. What initially attracted you to AI and data science? I fell in love with how people make decisions. Starting with psychology, to social engineering, and finally to how we reason about uncertainty. This led me to dive into Bayesian mathematics and the world started making more sense.

At the core of good marketing lies in-depth customer insight. Before technology took over the world, customer insight was a lot tougher because it meant physical surveys, in-person interviews / meetings / conversations, etc. With technology allowing us to do many things at the click of a mouse, it is much easier to gather knowledge about what customers want, what they like, what they dislike, how they react to different marketing tools, etc.  Data Science and Analytics used to be a field associated with those in technical workspaces. However, it has become critical to digital marketing as well. Data science allows you to collect data about your customers while analytics segregates that into segments of different categories. Basis the quality of data acquired, this information can be the ammunition required to create a successful marketing strategy.  IAMAI’s recent research revealed that there are around 500 million active internet users in India. This is a HUGE opportunity for brands because it allows them to gather data from different geographies and demographics, tabulate it, infer from it and thereby utilise it to their advantage.  Was the content engaging? Did it reach the right people? How did the target audience react to the marketing targeted at them? What worked best? What didn’t work well? These are typical questions in the mind of any marketing professional that data science and analytics can answer. It also mitigates the risk massively because you can now offer a service / product that has a market, rather than use guesswork to create something.  Another huge change has been the extensive use of artificial intelligence, which is transforming digital strategies completely. Be it google AI, Siri, Alexa or any other assistant that caters to all our questions, we are slowly becoming heavily reliant on AI. It is believed that AI will become indispensable in all future digital tools and products, especially those connected to marketing.  If you are one of those that doesn’t use voice search through an assistant, you may think that artificial intelligence has not made its entry into your life but you are definitely mistaken. AI is also behind showing you relevant products based on your searches and purchases. It tracks your digital journey, recognises and analyses your behaviours and then shows you what you may like to see. This proves to be a win-win for both the customer and the brand as there is a higher chance of conversion.  Artificial intelligence is also effective in implementing good Customer Relationship Management through tools like AI chatbots. Programming the chatbot with relevant questions and answers can reduce the work of multiple people, thereby reducing costs in the long run. Global tech giants are choosing to combine data science, analytics and artificial intelligence in order to create a machinery that can be depended on for customer inputs and insight.  Although India is still in its nascent stage in terms of heavy use of this technology, it is catching up quickly. Some of the biggest firms across the country are realising its value and walking down this path. The question that arises always though is – how much is too much? How far should a brand dive into the lives of its potential customers for its benefit? What do you think? By Mr. Vikram Kumar, Co-Founder & Managing Director, SRV Media Pvt. Ltd. The post WHY DATA SCIENCE AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ARE DRIVING FORCES BEHIND DIGITAL MARKETING appeared first on NASSCOM Community |The Official Community of Indian IT Industry.

One week into shelter-in-place last year, Jeremy Bailenson was talking to a BBC reporter and had an epiphany. There's no need for us to be on Zoom," he thought. A phone call would have sufficed. This kernel of realization became an op-ed article that Bailenson penned in the Wall Street Journal titled, "Why Zoom Meetings Can Exhaust Us." Bailenson, a professor of communications and founder of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, wanted to dig deeper. So he wrote an academic paper, published Tuesday in Technology, Mind, and Behavior, that boils down four underlying causes of videoconferencing fatigue.

Eleni Vasilaki is Professor of Computational Neuroscience and Neural Engineering and Head of the Machine Learning Group in the Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield. Eleni has extensive cross-disciplinary experience in understanding how brains learn, developing novel machine learning techniques and assisting in designing brain-like computation devices. In this interview, we talk about bio-inspired machine learning and artificial intelligence. I am interested in bio-inspired machine learning. I enjoy theory and analysis of mathematically tractable systems, particularly they can be relevant for neuromorphic computation.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google GOOG, is the leading tech company that decided to invest a lot of resources and funding in artificial intelligence. So much so, that the WSJ recently announced that AI is central to Google's future. Not surprisingly, Google has been dealing with different challenges concerning its top AI executives and researchers. Activists shareholders are also showing interest in this. Recently, there is a rise in shareholder proposals calling on boards to ensure proper AI governance.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again? Okay, I'll hold while you do." Diana hit the mute icon on her iDesk and threw a screwed-up ball of paper at Mark, sitting opposite. It'd save so much effort." "I'd want a whole support phrasebook.

Edmund Melson Clarke, Jr., a celebrated American academic who developed methods for mathematically proving the correctness of computer systems, died on December 22, 2020 at the age of 75 from complications of COVID-19. Clarke was awarded the A.M Turing Award in 2008 with his former student E. Allen Emerson and the French computer scientist Joseph Sifakis, for their work on model checking. "I've never liked to fly, although I've done my share of it. I wanted to do something that would make systems like airplanes safer," Clarke said in a 2014 video produced by the Franklin Institute when he was awarded their 2014 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Sciencea "For his leading role in the conception and development of techniques for automatically verifying the correctness of a broad array of computer systems, including those found in transportation, communications, and medicine." Model checking is a practical approach for machine verification of mathematical models of hardware, software, communications protocols, and other complex computing systems.

On January 20th, while the world's attention was focussed on the Inauguration, David Lynch quietly turned seventy-five. He spent the day the way he's spent almost every day since the pandemic began: sheltered in his Los Angeles home, engaged with self-prescribed daily routines. "If you have a habit pattern," Lynch told me, over Zoom, "the more conscious part of your mind can concentrate on your work, and you can get ideas and do those things, and the rest sort of takes care of itself in the background." It sounded practical and wholesome, until Lynch related an example: a "famous criminal case" that he'd heard about, involving a man who hacked up his parents with an axe. The mother was killed in the act, but, Lynch said, "the father didn't die right away. He was wounded terribly, in the head, but, in the morning, when it was his time normally to wake up, covered in blood he got out of bed--he didn't even notice that his wife was dead right next to him--he just woke up and made his way down to do his habitual program. . . . Fixed breakfast, but he spilled his cereal all over the place. He made coffee, he made a mess of everything, but he knew the habits, he knew the routine. He went to get his paper, like he does every morning, and he came in with the paper and just bled out, right there in the foyer, and that was the end of him."