I first started working in the world of virtual agents in 2000 and, even though the technology was very much in its infancy at the time, saw huge potential for innovation and growth in the industry. Having now led my own company in this space for over 15 years, I have a unique perspective on the advancements of conversational AI technology and the ways it can be used. I was pleased to share some of my insights with the AI Time Journal recently in an interview for their Conversational AI Initiative. Whether you use chatbots, virtual agents, conversational AI or one of the other numerous terms in the market today to describe this technology, one of the biggest challenges the industry faces (besides the inconsistent terminology!) is the lack of understanding within organisations about deploying these solutions. Just a few years ago this was due to them not really knowing much about virtual agents or how these tools can be used to improve the customer and employee experience.

For tens of thousands of years, humans have reigned as our planet's only intelligent, self-aware species. But the rise of intelligent machines means that could change soon, perhaps in our own lifetimes. Not long after that, Homo sapiens could vanish from Earth entirely. "Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end," he says in the book, "Novacene." "The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call'cyborgs' that will have designed and built themselves."

Priya Lakhani is an entrepreneurial adrenaline junkie. She has founded two successful companies, won numerous business awards, and acted as an advisor to the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills. Her life's aim is to change the world for the better, and to that end she has funded meals in India, vaccinations in Africa, and her current project improves education for thousands of UK children. Remarkably, she has achieved all this despite a constant barrage of people telling her to "quit and go home". In this podcast Priya takes us through her astonishing career, from unloading boxes of sauce outside Victoria Street Station, to writing a book for preschoolers.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) founder Bill Gates was speaking to a group of college students in 2004. According to The New York Times, Gates was a bit concerned about the decline in the number of computer science majors, as well as the notion that the field had matured and there weren't many breakthroughs left to achieve in the area. One student expressed doubt that there would ever be another tech company as successful as Microsoft. ''If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts.'' Fast-forward to today, and of course someone has figured it out.

Google launched a new video series that answers a single question. The first episode was about links but in my opinion it did not adequately answer the question. "Does linking to other websites help or hurt SEO?" The SEO community has thought of outbound links as ranking signals since at least 2002. I hope to show you how and why outbound links for SEO was invented.

On August 9, 2019, Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker signed into law first-of-its-kind legislation regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Illinois.

The financial services industry has seen a great deal of disruption from digital-based alternatives. Many of these challengers use advanced technology and expanded data sets to offer apps that provide financial solutions at a lower cost, with less friction and greater personalization than traditional bank or credit union offerings. Toronto-based startup Flybits believes that the best way to compete in the future is not just by developing innovative products and services, but by becoming the repository of choice for data in addition to money. "I definitely see that banks are in a perfect position, if they innovate right, to be the perfect data vaults for the future – managing the privacy and also the data of their customers," says Hossein Rahnama, CEO and Co-Founder of Flybits, in an exclusive interview for Banking Transformed, a new podcast from Jim Marous and The Financial Brand. "Using AI and machine learning, there is the potential to build a'data marketplace' for banks, fintechs and other data providers to partner and build more services together."

The concept of randomness is easy to grasp on an intuitive level but challenging to characterize in rigorous mathematical terms. In "Algorithmic Randomness" (May 2019), Rod Downey and Denis R. Hirschfeldt present a comprehensive discussion of this issue, incorporating the distinct perspectives of "statisticians, coders, and gamblers." Randomness is also a concern to "modelers" who depend on simulation models driven by random number generators or analytic models built using probabilistic assumptions. In such cases, the underlying mathematical model is often an ergodic stochastic process, and the issue is whether the output of the simulator's random number generator or the observed behavior of the real-world system being modeled is "random enough" to establish confidence in the model's predictions. In a sense, this highly pragmatic perspective represents a less restrictive approach to the issue of randomness: if any of the strong criteria described by the authors are satisfied, the output of the simulator's random number generator or the observed behavior of the system being modeled should be sufficiently random to establish confidence in a model's predictions.

In the interview, Ms. Huang relates some interesting patterns she has observed with regards to AI adoption. The sorts of companies BMW iVentures is seeing and investing in are primarily using AI to focus on streamlining workflows, optimizing processes, and reducing overall costs. Since AI holds the ability to analyze complex datasets and identify data patterns very quickly, it can provide fast results and identify very specific needs or circumstances without necessarily relying on a team of people who need to try to process more than they can reliably count on. Already, AI has managed to identify trends that have helped to innovate the ways that companies do business, by providing customized customer interactions and identifying needs for clients. The biggest struggle with data, particularly in the automotive industry where the actual process of taking customer feedback and turning that into a future product can take several years, is ensuring that the data being referenced is still relevant.

Natural language processing is a particular interest of mine, as I assume it is for many of you. Keeping up on the rapid advances in NLP is one thing. Filtering these advances through the lens of seasoned researchers and innovators is another. I find that following a well curated list of NLP folks on social media can help in both of these challenges. In that regard, this is my list of suggested NLP researchers and innovators to follow.