Baidu Inc. has raised more than US$1.9 billion for its newly spun-off financial services division from TPG, Carlyle Group and other investors, creating one of China's best-funded fintech companies. Taikang Group and other backers also joined the funding round for the newly formed company, which will be called "Du Xiaoman Financial" and use artificial intelligence to provide short-term loans and investment services. Baidu Senior Vice President Zhu Guang will run the business as an independent entity, according to a statement Saturday. The news comes a day after Baidu said it planned to sell a majority stake in the business, without providing a timetable. Baidu turns to AI to police online content, but is the technology reliable?

Lattice Engines, a provider of account-based marketing tools driven by artificial intelligence, on Thursday announced the launch of Lattice Atlas, positioning it as the first customer data platform for ABM. The new platform synchronizes all customer data across a single, integrated view, the company said, making it easier for customers to see their data, no matter the source. Customers often have to view data across multiple tools and workflows -- for example, in order to compare data with existing versus new customers, noted Nipul Chokshi, vice president of product marketing at Lattice. "We realized that our customers needed a customer data platform that unifies all data," he said, one that "enables AI-driven audience creation as well as omnichannel activation and personalization all in one centralized place, and provides enterprise grade marketing governance." The new platform employs the ABM identity graph, using patent-pending adaptive match technology to resolve identities by matching first-party to third-party data in Lattice Data Cloud, which has more than 20,000 curated insights, Chokshi added.

The developments in Google's Cloud Computing segment, especially the Cloud Machine Learning service, have been so rapid that Google calls it one of its fastest growing product areas. Google has been ramping up their Cloud Platform quite aggressively in recent months. Just a few weeks ago, the Google Cloud Platform opened its newest zone in Tokyo, increasing the total number of regions they are present in to six - three in the US and one each in Belgium and Taiwan and Tokyo. Not long ago, the company announced its acquisition of Orbitera, a cloud commerce company. The developments in Google's Cloud Computing segment, especially the Cloud Machine Learning service, have been so rapid that Google calls it one of its fastest growing product areas.

Written on 06 October 2017. If you believe its cheerleaders, such as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, we're at the start of a new industrial revolution, with boundless productivity growth ahead. If you believe the naysayers, including Tesla founder Elon Musk, then computer super-intelligence is humankind's largest existential threat. Whatever the future holds, an AI-powered world will have huge consequences for investors – the trouble is working out which companies will prosper, and which will be left in the history books. Here, though, I want to make the case that shareholders as a group will do very well.

Waze has struck a data-sharing agreement with Waycare, an artificial intelligence-based traffic management startup, the two companies announced today. The deal will allow them to combine anonymized navigation information crowdsourced from the 100 million drivers who use Waze with Waycare's proprietary traffic analytics. The collaboration is now active in Nevada, Florida, California and Nevada, with plans to expand over the next year. It is part of Waze's Connected Citizens Program, which gives cities around the world access to anonymized driver data to help them manage traffic and road infrastructure. A representative told TechCrunch that data supplied by Waycare to Waze will be incorporated into the app's usual interface, while data from Waze will be added to Waycare's platform alongside its other data sets. Founded in 2016, Waycare is a cloud-based platform that enables municipalities to gather data from many sources, including on-board devices, navigation apps, sensors and road camera feeds, and analyze them using proprietary deep learning algorithms to figure out how to improve traffic and road conditions.

Adopted by over 430 hospitals across 60 countries, SOPHiA AI has proven to be a robust and standardized decision support technology for clinicians. SOPHiA is the first AI to analyze over 200,000 patients' genomic profiles around the world. This illustrates the rapid adoption of this technology which is trusted by clinicians to support their clinical decisions. The recent use of digital technology in healthcare is creating a new world of opportunity to help better diagnose and treat patients. The development of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), in particular, promises to enhance patient care for patients suffering from hereditary diseases and cancer.

While slightly more than one-quarter (27%) of working Canadians fear their job is at risk due to the potential introduction of A.I./machine learning/automation in their workplaces, nearly one-in-three (31%) believe the introduction of these new approaches would help them do their job better – more so than any other mainstream technology available today. Three-in-five (59%) said they believe A.I. and automation will have a positive impact on the workforce overall in the future. "Much of the narrative around A.I. and automation in the workforce to date has included speculation about job loss," said Holger Kormann, President, ADP Canada. "However, the reality is that many Canadian employees see these tools as the next wave of resources to help them improve personal productivity and performance and not as a threat to job security or future employment prospects." Nearly all respondents (97%) say that technology has impacted the way they work each day, with smartphones (83%), laptop (80%) and desktop (79%) computers and social media (61%) having the greatest impact.

New Delhi: French multinational oil and gas company Total announced it has signed an agreement with Google Cloud to jointly develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for subsurface data analysis for oil and gas exploration and production. "Total is convinced that applying artificial intelligence in the oil and gas industry is a promising avenue to be explored for optimizing our performance, particularly in subsurface data interpretation. We are excited to work with Google Cloud towards this goal. This builds on the strategy being developed at Total, where A.I. is already used, for example, in predictive maintenance at facilities," said Marie-Noëlle Semeria, Senior Vice President, Group CTO at Total. The agreement will focus on the development of AI programs which will make it possible to interpret subsurface images, notably from seismic studies (using Computer Vision technology) and automate the analysis of technical documents (using Natural Language Processing technology), the company said.

Surex Direct, Canada's fastest growing online insurance brokerage, continues to propel the artificial intelligence and machine learning movement – from a broker's perspective – as evident by their latest feature in CI Top Broker magazine. Already incorporating AI to automate and optimize billing processes, Surex Direct is focused on researching and developing AI and machine learning processes in-house. ''We take pride in being a trailblazer in the online insurance space,'' Lance Miller, CEO of Surex Direct, said. Aside from the development and deployment of AI, Surex Direct plans to license products, allowing other brokerages to increase their efficiencies. ''We're fully invested in the AI and machine learning movement,'' Matthew Alston, COO of Surex Direct, said.

The Commission is proposing a three-pronged approach to increase public and private investment in AI, prepare for socio-economic changes, and ensure an appropriate ethical and legal framework. This follows European leaders' call for a European approach on AI. Vice-President for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip said: "Just as the steam engine and electricity did in the past, AI is transforming our world. It presents new challenges that Europe should meet together in order for AI to succeed and work for everyone. We need to invest at least €20 billion by the end of 2020. The Commission is playing its part: today, we are giving a boost to researchers so that they can develop the next generation of AI technologies and applications, and to companies, so that they can embrace and incorporate them."