We have a fraught relationship with chatbots. Designed to help resolve many of our customer support issues, most tend to complicate matters more, frustrate us and leave us in the precarious position of wanting to speak to a representative. Though companies are pouring significant sums of money into artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, and more emerging technologies promising to make speaking to a bot pleasurable, the fact remains that most consumers still don't like them. Arash Rod, lead artist for San Francisco startup GameOn, doesn't think it needs to be that way. His company has developed successful chatbots for major sports brands and gaming companies, allowing them to engage more dynamically with their fans and vice versa.

Former Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, who has announced a new AI startup with USD 50 million fund, believes India has the potential to become a world leader in artificial intelligence but the key to this is integrating AI into the country's education system in a massive way. India is at "an inflection point" when it comes to AI or artificial intelligence, Sikka said. Over the next 20-25 years, AI is going to be "a very, very big disruptor" for the Indian society because what one is seeing now in terms of automation and job losses because of automation is just the beginning, said Sikka, who announced his startup Vianai Systems last week. "But on the other hand, if we are able to bring AI education, the ability to build AI systems to India at a very large scale, and I'm talking about like billion plus people, then India can really leap frog and become the world's leader in artificial intelligence, in AI skill and AI talent," Sikka told PTI in an exclusive interview. Doing that requires working on multiple dimensions in parallel, he said.

The Times of India spoke to Kathy Bloomgarden, Global CEO of Ruder Finn, on the role of emerging technologies, its impact and challenges for global industries and businesses. Q: What brings you to India? A: India has fantastic potential and I think more and more people are beginning to realize this. Even though you see some slow down and people are concerned about it, it's still amongst the fastest growing economies in the world. With the focus being on digitisation means you will be increasing your ability to be productive, to go into new areas, to bring new innovations globally.

Update: As of August 2019, the Bitfusion acquisition has closed. We would like to welcome Bitfusion and its staff to VMware. Increasingly businesses are applying artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to differentiate and advance their processes and offerings. Today, I am pleased to announce our intent to acquire Bitfusion to help businesses more efficiently use AI technologies on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments. Hardware acceleration for applications--which can take the form of GPUs (graphics processor units), FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays), and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits)--delivers efficiency and flexibility into the AI space including subsets such as machine learning.

I actually got my degree in Business Administration, Political Science and International Relations. After graduating, my first job was in sales for a company that pioneered in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) for enterprise back in 2006, called Nstein Technologies. This is where I fostered an interest in AI, NLP and machine learning and from there I moved to Lexalytics, where I saw the need for democratised, cloud-based analytics. I left Lexalytics and started Semantria which was later acquired by Lexalytics, before starting People.ai in 2016. How did you come to found People.ai and what were your reasons for believing in your proposition?

I recently caught up with Ashutosh Garg, CEO at Eightfold.ai to discuss how he and his team have deployed AI and machine learning to help with the needs of the talent management industry. With 6000 research citations, 50 patents, 35 peer-reviewed research publications, and the outstanding Ph.D. thesis award from UIUC for his Ph.D. thesis in Machine Learning, it's fair to say that Ashutosh is one of the world's experts in machine learning. After his time managing Search and Personalization efforts at both Google and IBM Research, Ashutosh founded Bloomreach, a leading vendor for Digital Experience Platforms. Now, he is applying his experience to the problem he is most truly passionate about --helping the world's talent find their most meaningful and fulfilling work. Can you give us a sense for what form of AI/machine learning is being used in your product?

Faster and more accurate diagnosis of lung cancer is helping save lives in China. Dr. Yang Yang is a very busy man. Although he agreed to a video interview, he doesn't really have time to talk. Cameras and lights are set up in a small brick-walled room at the end of a narrow hallway in the largest pulmonary hospital in Shanghai, but we are unsure when he will show up to discuss how it came about that he is using machine learning to diagnose lung cancer in his patients. Click the button below to load the content from Youtube.

Estonia is a pioneer in digital initiatives. The Estonian government-initiated AI strategy counts with over 20 machine learning-based solutions live in the Estonian public sector. In Estonia, citizens are always the owners of their own data. None of this comes as a surprise, though, in a country which has been named the most advanced digital society in the world by many. Below, the opening to the third annual Tallinn Digital Summit that took place on September 16 - 17.

Raghav serves as Content Lead at Emerj, covering our major industry areas and conducting research. Raghav has a personal interest in robotics, and previously worked for research firms like Frost & Sullivan and Infiniti Research. Four months ago we launched our AI in Banking podcast where we covered some of the most critical topics related to AI adoption and implementation in banks and financial institutions each month. Our series was based on interviews with AI industry experts, many of whom also shared their valuable insights during our first comprehensive banking research project, the AI Vendor Scorecard and Capability Map. For the fifth month, we reached out to the research advisors who had a hands-on role in helping us with our research with the aim of having them speak directly to banking leaders to help them understand how to prepare for AI disruption in banking.

I t wasn't long ago that technology was a topic only discussed among techies. In fact, technology was an elective course in many graduate school programs until very recently. Today, technology is part of our daily lives so it's not surprising that technology is very much a part of any industry. It's also not surprising to see the direction technology has taken. It has evolved from a way to communicate with each other and store important information, to a way to interact with each other, express ourselves and manage our lives. The drive to monetize our personal information for the purpose of creating the latest and greatest target marketing algorithm has paved the way for artificial intelligence or AI. Google was a pioneer and early adopter of this type of AI, gathering information about our interest based on our searches and pairing businesses and products we would likely use. It is this type of AI that brings customers to businesses like an arranged marriage. Collection of data through cloud-based applications originally created for business solutions slowly evolved for consumer convenience for everything from banking to entertainment. Amassing raw data to create solutions for everyday activities helped to speed the process of AI for the birth of AI. Had we not partaken in taking information once only saved on our desktops and placing it on cloud servers, AI may not have evolved into the presence of daily life today. Years ago, reluctance and lack of understanding of how digital information is used kept many people who are not computer savvy from partaking in this community. Today, thanks to companies like Facebook and Amazon, people readily share their information with companies with a basic trust that the information will only be used for the purpose intended. This is why, even though the information is occasionally breached, we are so willing to join communities like Citizens app and Waze which use crowd sourcing for the collective purpose of helping each of its participants. Crowd sourcing applications can then place ads as a form of revenue, though not all do. This rather invasive, though passive, business model hones in on our inherent need to share information in order to benefit from the information shared by others.