Google-owned Waymo is adding as many as 62,000 Fiat Chrysler minivans to its autonomous fleet in an expanded collaboration announced by the companies on Thursday. Delivery of the Chrysler Pacifica minivans was expected to begin later this year, with the automaker also exploring the potential to build Waymo technology into a self-driving car it might add to its model line-up for consumers. 'FCA is committed to bringing self-driving technology to our customers in a manner that is safe, efficient and realistic,' chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne said. John Krafcik, CEO of Waymo, is seen in a 2017 photo with a customized Chrysler Pacifica that is being used in the Google-owned firm's autonomous car project'Strategic partnerships, such as the one we have with Waymo, will help to drive innovative technology to the forefront.' Waymo plans to launch the'world's first self-driving transportation service' this year, with people able to summon rides from driverless vehicles using a smartphone application.

The Vision Fund's investment values the business at $11.5 billion. GM shares surged 11% to $42.07 in morning trading. The Vision Fund's investment will come in two tranches: an initial $900 million payment, and another of $1.35 billion once Cruise's autonomous vehicles are ready for commercial deployment, GM said. The deal will "afford GM increased flexibility with respect to capital allocation" as it plows more money into developing a network of autonomous ride-share vehicles, targeted for sometime next year, the company said. For years, GM's shares have languished as valuations for upstarts like electric-car maker Tesla Inc. and ride-share firm Uber Technologies Inc. soared on expectations of heady growth.

U.S. drivers' fears of fully autonomous (self-driving) vehicles has risen in the past several months according to a new survey by AAA. SAN FRANCISCO -- Waymo's self-driving mission is about to mushroom. The Alphabet-owned autonomous car company announced Thursday that it is significantly ramping up its partnership with Fiat Chrysler and over time will add up to 62,000 Pacifica Hybrid minivans to its fleet. That's a significant bump from a January announcement in which Waymo, which started out as Google's self-driving car project in 2009, said it would add "thousands" of new FCA minivans. The news speaks to the quickening pace of Waymo's development of fully self-driving vehicles, which have been testing around the Phoenix area for more than a year.

New price forecasting application combines Alpaca's technology with Bloomberg's real-time market data Tokyo – Bloomberg today announced the launch of a new price forecasting application for investment professionals powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The "Alpaca Forecast AI Prediction Matrix" is an application (app) that provides short-term market price forecasts for major markets such as USD/JPY, EUR/USD, AUD/JPY, CME Nikkei 225 Futures Index and US 10-year treasury bonds, using Bloomberg's Market Data Feed (B-PIPE). Developed jointly with AlpacaJapan, a startup that specializes in AI solutions for financial trading, the app uses a cutting-edge deep learning engine to analyse tick data at a speed and volume beyond the ability of the human eye. AlpacaJapan's AI technology recognizes patterns in the waves of price movements instantly, making market predictions possible. Kuni Ishibashi, Bloomberg's head of Japan said, "We are thrilled to introduce this new app as it embodies our mission to fuel innovation in the financial market place. By bringing Bloomberg's real time market data and AlpacaJapan's specialized technology together, we have developed a leading-edge forecasting tool which can help financial professionals make better investment decisions and improve trade workflow efficiency."

Six clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across south east London will soon be able to access VisualDX's AI-powered visual diagnostic tool, as per terms of a deal between the NHS and the healthcare software company. The move, which focuses on enhancing diagnostic accuracy and aiding therapeutic decisions and diagnosis, marks a first for VisualDX, as it launches its first foothold into the UK's National Health Service (NHS). Art Papier, chief executive officer of VisualDX, said: "This agreement with NHS CCGs in South East London helps patients and clinicians alike to share in the decision-making process to optimise patient-centred outcomes in the pursuit of clinical excellence." According to the ECRI Institute, misdiagnoses took the top spot for safety concern among patients. While the cause for each misdiagnosis varies, VisualDX has build a library of more than 41,000 peer-reviewed medical images to help physicians, especially generalists, to make better informed diagnoses by allowing direct imagery comparison and offering diagnostic possibilities.

The need to provide an enhanced customer experience is the primary factor augmenting the growth of the AI in BFSI market. As the competition among the market players is mounting day-by-day, companies have started to focus on providing a better experience to the customers to gain the customer loyalty. This encourages financial institutes to integrate advanced analytics tools and solutions to analyze customer data to fulfil their requirement, understand the customer experience, and to make smarter predictions about their behavior and requirements. Furthermore, companies are also looking forward to connecting with the customers on their choice of channels to provide a more seamless experience. Furthermore, as digitalization is spreading across the globe, customers are becoming more empowered.

University College London Hospitals (UCLH), one of the largest hospitals in London, announced today that it will recruit artificial intelligence to carry out some tasks currently undertaken by doctors and nurses, with the goal of improving emergency room admittance rates, follow-up appointment attendance, and speed for routine tests. Machine learning algorithms supplied by the Alan Turing Institute will pore over admittance data to track how doctors and patients move through the hospital and identify potential bottlenecks. According to a March survey published by the U.K.'s National Health Service, just 76.4 percent of patients requiring urgent care at London hospitals were treated within four hours -- the lowest proportion since 2010, when records began. UCLH CEO Marvel Levi told the Guardian that a future version of the software might prioritize patients based on the severity of their symptom, such as fast-tracking a person suffering from abdominal pain who is likely to have appendicitis, kidney disease, or another critical ailment. A second project, which was developed by UCLH clinical research associate Parashkev Nachev, will flag patients who are most likely to miss appointments, taking into account factors such as age, address, and weather conditions, and will automatically text reminders or even reschedule visits.

Related Editorial The rise of artificial intelligence is fast disrupting the financial universe and establishing new paradigms of understanding and action. Computers now drive market velocity, and because the volume of available financial information has expanded exponentially over the last few decades, machines have become indispensable to deciphering these mountains of megabytes in order to create clear-cut actionable intelligence. Given the large data sets and quantitative nature of the modern-day financial services sector, artificial intelligence (AI) has innumerable applications that are poised to revolutionize the industry over the next few years. AI saves companies time and money through the use of algorithms to generate insights, improve customer service and make calculated performance predictions. Because of the ability to foresee market trends and deliver analysis and insights far better than humans, information behemoths and financial titans such as S&P Global Inc. (NYSE: SPGI), Euronext NV (OTC: EUXTF), The Blackstone Group, L.P. (NYSE: BX) and Thomson Reuters Corp (NYSE: TRI) are integrating and increasingly acquiring machine-learning, artificial intelligence technologies such as those provided by AnalytixInsight Inc. (TSX.V: ALY) (OTCQB: ATIXF) (ATIXF Profile), which offers investors a compelling opportunity to participate in this industry shift.

The Mapbox Vision SDK provides augmented reality (AR) navigation, driver alerts for speed limits, pedestrians, vehicles and other event-based triggers for responsive apps. The integration with Azure IoT Hub will provide developers with a holistic solution that aggregates cloud data using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning technologies to send reports. Mapbox plans to integrate the open-sourced Azure IoT Edge runtime, which provides custom logic, management and communications functions for edge devices. Events detected from the Vision SDK integrated with Azure IoT Edge will enable developers to build responsive applications that both provide immediate feedback to the driver as well as stream semantic event data into Microsoft Cognitive Services for additional analysis. Reports include sending collision incidents to an insurance platform, providing information about heavy traffic or blocked roadway alerts to a dispatch network, or activity about a crossing intersection to a business intelligence platform analyzing route paths.

Bank of America is rolling out the first widely available AI-driven virtual assistant of its kind in financial services, Erica, to its 25 million mobile clients. This latest innovation reflects the bank's continued investment in digital capabilities as part of its high-tech, high-touch client experience, including the Digital Mortgage Experience, mobile car shopping tool, Merrill Edge Guided Investing, and Business Advantage. "Everything we do is based on what we hear from our clients: how they want to interact with us and how we can make their financial lives better," said Michelle Moore, head of digital banking at Bank of America. "Erica delivers on this in many ways, from making it easy for clients to find what they are looking for to providing new and interactive ways to do their banking using voice, text or gesture. Through Erica, we are also delivering personalized solutions at scale by providing insights, such as how you can improve your credit score or create a budget."