Enam Chowdury is using his passion for technology to make a difference for small business owners across the world. I founded EkkBaz in March 2017 after more than 5 years in Microsoft. Through EkkBaz, we aim to empower and transform root level small businesses in any remote corner of the earth. EkkBaz will make available artificial intelligence and Blockchain powered sophisticated tools that small businesses can use with ease. The desire to help the small guys is rooted in my upbringing.

Techstars, one of the largest startup accelerator organizations on the planet, currently has 40 accelerators in 25 cities around the world. Some of its startup accelerators focus on helping early-stage companies grow, while others aim for specific sectors, like programs run with Amazon for Alexa startups and Target for retail companies. This fall, Techstars will open its very first AI startup accelerator in Montreal, a city that in the past year has welcomed Facebook AI Research, Microsoft Research, Google AI, and as of last month Samsung Research. The accelerator is being launched in tandem with Real Ventures, a prominent seed fund investor in Montreal, and includes advisors from Google, as well as Element AI and other companies that call Montreal home. In roughly the past year, Google AI, Microsoft Research, Samsung Research, and Facebook AI Research have all opened research labs in Montreal.

Autoblog recently went to Japan to drive cars, ride trains, and talk to carmakers about automotive history and the future of mobility. This video is part of a larger in a series of special reports from Japan. YOKOHAMA, Japan -- On our recent trip to Japan, we spent a day driving the new Nissan Leaf through some unfamiliar territory. Despite the challenges of driving in a foreign country on the opposite side of the road, the Leaf proved to be a calm and willing companion thanks to its smooth electric powertrain and ProPilot driver assistance system. Following our drive, we met up with Nissan's EV director, Nicholas Thomas, at the company headquarters to talk a bit about the future of electrification and automated driving, pillars of what the automaker calls "Nissan Intelligent Mobility." You can watch the interview in the video above, or, if you're more of a reader, scroll down to read the Q&A.

Research in the social sciences is increasingly based on large and complex data collections, where individual data sets from different domains are linked and integrated to allow advanced analytics. A popular type of data used in such a context are historical censuses, as well as birth, death, and marriage certificates. Individually, such data sets however limit the types of studies that can be conducted. Specifically, it is impossible to track individuals, families, or households over time. Once such data sets are linked and family trees spanning several decades are available it is possible to, for example, investigate how education, health, mobility, employment, and social status influence each other and the lives of people over two or even more generations. A major challenge is however the accurate linkage of historical data sets which is due to data quality and commonly also the lack of ground truth data being available. Unsupervised techniques need to be employed, which can be based on similarity graphs generated by comparing individual records. In this paper we present initial results from clustering birth records from Scotland where we aim to identify all births of the same mother and group siblings into clusters. We extend an existing clustering technique for record linkage by incorporating temporal constraints that must hold between births by the same mother, and propose a novel greedy temporal clustering technique. Experimental results show improvements over non-temporary approaches, however further work is needed to obtain links of high quality.

As part of our AI For Growth executive education series, we interview top executives at leading global companies who have successfully applied AI to grow their enterprises. Today, we sit down with Kevin Scott, Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft. As the CTO of Microsoft, Kevin drives the technology giant's AI strategy and services. In this interview, he focuses on the intersection of AI and IoT and reveals how enterprises have successfully leverage the combination of these two emerging technologies to drive real business value. He also shares insights from his visits to industries ripe for disruption by AI and automation and key learnings for how managers can best prepare their workforces for the future.

AI Breakthrough, an independent organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global Artificial Intelligence (AI) market, announced the winners of the inaugural AI Breakthrough Awards program. The winning AI Breakthrough selections showcase AI and machine learning technologies and companies that have both succeeded in pushing ingenuity and exemplifying the best in AI solutions across the globe. "The global AI market is expected to be worth over seven billion dollars this year, and the industry is growing exponentially with numerous exciting technological developments progressing daily," said James Johnson, managing director at AI Breakthrough. "With this amazing rate of market growth and development, AI Breakthrough is determined to recognize the standout AI solutions and companies. We are grateful for all of the nominations submitted and we are thrilled to announce the results of our inaugural program.

Artificial Intelligence(AI) may be the next big thing (or it is already?). Until now, it has proven to be useful. Companies like Google, Uber, and others using AI to power self-driving cars. Its impact has also been seen in the personalized learning, sports, natural language, chatbots, and much more. So, what do you think about the future of artificial intelligence?

Today's blog post is a Q&A session with top fintech influencer and founder of Unconventional Ventures, Theodora Lau. Named one of 44 "2017 Innovators to Watch" by Bank Innovation, ranked No. 2 Top FinTech Influencers 2018 by Onalytica, and named to the list of LinkedIn Top Voices 2017 for Economy and Finance, she's a powerful voice in the industry. If you probe into the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives in the enterprise, it quickly becomes clear what's behind it: big data. In a 2018 NewVantage Partners survey of Fortune 1000 executives, 76.5 percent cite the greater proliferation and availability of data is making AI possible. As Randy Bean in an MITSloan Management Review article puts it, "For the first time, large corporations report that they have direct access to meaningful volumes and sources of data that can feed AI algorithms to detect patterns and understand behaviors….these

In this extended interview from Employment Law This Week (Episode 122: Week of June 25, 2018), Michelle Capezza, a Member of the Firm at Epstein Becker Green, explains how recent legal developments have prepared employers for their future workforce, which will include artificial intelligence technologies working alongside human employees. She also discusses the strategies employers should start to consider as artificial intelligence is incorporated into the workplace. Tune in each week for developments that may affect your business. Click here to subscribe by email - select the checkbox next to Employment Law This Week. Please contact [email protected] and mention whether you were at home or working within a corporate network.

Joy Buolamwini is a poet of code on a mission to show compassion through computation. As a graduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab, she leads the Algorithmic Justice League to fight coded bias. Her research explores the intersection of social impact technology and inclusion. In support of this work, Buolamwini was awarded a grant as the Grand Prize winner of a national contest inspired by the critically acclaimed film Hidden Figures, based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly. As a technologist, I have always been hopeful about the potential of artificial intelligence to improve the lives of individuals around world.