"To keep the intellectual property with the developer is of great importance for Agorize," say Lisa Leibold and Aurélie Wen from Agorize in Canada, as we speak about open innovation and hackathons as a service against the background of one of their latest projects, the "Discover AI challenge: Sustainable Life" for Microsoft Canada. How do you describe open innovation processes from your point of view: How did they evolve and what are they about? Open innovation includes the public into innovation processes, it utilizes resources of an ecosystem as well as from the public to develop new ideas and innovate. In comparison, the traditional innovation approach is that of a closed innovation, where companies want to protect their knowledge and innovation is seen as the business of conventional experts. This process started to open up more and more.

Embedding AI in learning technology facilitates internal processes, helps employees advance their careers, and serves a core business need. To say the IT software and services industry is fast-moving is an understatement.

Dr. Lance B. Eliot is a world-renowned expert on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and especially Autonomous Vehicles (AV). As a seasoned executive and high-tech entrepreneur, he combines practical industry experience with deep academic research to provide innovative insights about the present and future of AI and ML technologies and applications. Formerly a professor at USC and UCLA, and head of a pioneering AI lab, he frequently speaks at major AI industry events. Author of over 30 books, 300 articles, and 200 podcasts, he has made appearances on media outlets such as CNN and co-hosted the popular radio show Technotrends. His particular specialty in AI is Autonomous Vehicles and advances in self-driving driverless cars.

This year, self-driving cars started getting pretty good. Deep fakes video started getting pretty convincing. Our virtual assistants got to the point where they could understand us well enough to do some simple things, like tell us the weather or get driving directions home. When it comes to artificial intelligence, we have reached an inflection point. The technology is good enough to use. Next year promises to be a breakout year for AI, as it starts to permeate all aspects of our lives. Here are predictions for 2020 from some of the world's top AI experts. Jen Snell is VP of product marketing at Verint, where she leads a product strategy team focused on intelligent self-service, conversational AI, automation, and analytics. She is a frequent speaker and a leading contributor on topics shaping the development and design of interactive technologies. Follow her on Twitter @JenniferLSnell and on LinkedIn.

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?