The ride-hailing company Lyft is now sending self-driving cars to pick up passengers in a Boston neighborhood. The cars will have backup human drivers at the wheel and will be limited to short routes within the city's Seaport District, a burgeoning tech startup hub. Lyft and its Boston-based partner nuTonomy, which builds self-driving software, announced Wednesday that the pilot project has begun. The Renault Zoe EVs will be limited to short routes within the city's Seaport District The cars will initially be a small number of Renault Zoe EVs, which Nutonomy began road-testing in Boston starting last November. Nutonomy engineers are already working on integrating Lyft software into'a couple of' vehicles, to be deployed sometime'in the coming months,' for actual customer pickups, though no more specific timeline was given.

LAS VEGAS & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Accenture (NYSE:ACN) has completed a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and the ease of voice to help older people manage the daunting challenges of navigating their care delivery and well-being. The Accenture Liquid Studio in London developed an AI-powered platform (the Accenture Platform) that can learn user behaviors and preferences and suggest activities to support the overall physical and mental health of individuals ages 70 and older. The Accenture platform, which runs on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, includes a'Family and Carer' portal that lets family and caregivers check on the individual's daily activities, such as whether they have taken their medication or made new requests for caregivers. The Accenture platform can also spot abnormalities in behavior and alert family or friends, based on user defined permissions. Other services provided by the Accenture platform helped participants find local events as well as potential new friends, encouraging them to become more active and social.

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Automotive Artificial Intelligence - Global Market Outlook (2017-2023)" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering. The Global Automotive Artificial Intelligence Market accounted for $563.58 million in 2016 and is expected to reach $5,265.81 million by 2023 growing at a CAGR of 37.6% during the forecast period. The automotive industry has seen the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, and is among the industries at the forefront of using AI to augment human actions and to mimic the actions of humans. The arrival of standards such as the adaptive cruise control (ACC), blind spot alert, and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and rising demand for convenience and safety presents an opportunity for OEMs to build up novel and innovative artificial intelligence systems that would attract customers. Although 2016 was spoiled by some technological failures in self-driving cars, the year als-observed a couple of successful test runs in the US.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Domino Data Lab (Domino), a leading solution for data science acceleration, announced today that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Machine Learning (ML) Competency status. This designation recognizes Domino for providing business analysts, data scientists and ML practitioners with automated, cutting-edge tools to create and deploy predictive models on AWS. While already an Advanced Technology Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN), achieving the AWS ML Competency differentiates Domino as an APN member that has built solutions to help organizations solve their data challenges, enable machine learning and data science workflows or offer API-based capabilities that enhance end applications with machine intelligence. Attaining the AWS ML Competency demonstrates to customers that Domino has proven expertise in AI and ML on AWS. "We've found that data science workloads are perfectly suited for the cloud, and many mature data science organizations run Domino on AWS," said Scott Armstrong, head of business development at Domino.

Google announced today that its Cloud Video Intelligence API is generally available, along with a new Content Classification feature for its Cloud Natural Language API. The updates are aimed at giving customers new capabilities for making their applications smarter using prebuilt machine learning systems. As their names imply, the two services are designed to provide developers with tools that they can use to make applications understand the content of videos and text. That, in turn, is supposed to help with the creation of more intelligent apps that would have previously been the domain of the tech titans. In addition to becoming generally available, the Cloud Video Intelligence API can now be used to transcribe the contents of video fed into it, along with its existing support for detecting objects within footage, spotting shot changes in a single video, and spotting explicit content in footage.

According to a recent press release, "Alteryx, Inc., a leader in self-service data analytics, today announced that customers can take advantage of one-click, self-service predictive model deployment capabilities of the Alteryx solution on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Alteryx has also achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Machine Learning (ML) Competency status. The designation recognizes Alteryx for providing business analysts, data scientists and ML practitioners with automated, cutting-edge tools to create and deploy predictive models on AWS." The release goes on, "Deployment of predictive models continues to be a major challenge for many companies, with only 13% of data scientists surveyed by Rexer Analytics saying their models always get deployed. Alteryx Promote was designed to help customers address the labor-intensive process of getting models into production by providing an end-to-end data science system for developing, deploying and managing predictive models and real-time decision APIs. Alteryx Promote was also designed to allow data scientists and analytics teams to build, manage and deploy predictive models to production faster -- and more reliably -- without the need for writing any custom deployment code."

Volkswagen has unveiled an all-electric minibus to target urban customers who prefer to pay for use rather than own a vehicle, furthering the German company's push into new forms of online-controlled personal transport services. Volkswagen's (VW) new MOIA'mobility services' division on Monday announced plans for a fully electric international ride-pooling service that aims to remove 1 million cars from European and U.S. cities by 2025. The new division aims to take on Uber with its services. The six seater all electric minibus will target urban customers who prefer to pay for use rather than own a vehicle, furthering the German company's push into new forms of online-controlled personal transport. The business prospects are huge, consultants A.T. Kearney said in a study published in October. The global market for self-driving vehicles and related services may surge to $282 billion by 2030 from $51 billion in 2020, the firm said.

Jim Beam, the maker behind the world's best-selling bourbon and last year's groundbreaking Jim Beam Apple Watch, is making history yet again, taking its knack for innovation to create the first-ever "smart decanter." A "HomeBar" engineered with more than 200 years of bourbon know-how, "JIM" is advancing the technology of shot pouring and drinking, providing bourbon lovers a high-tech way to enjoy America's Native Spirit. A preview of the whiskey world's most innovative piece of technology can be viewed on YouTube, and is available in limited quantities to those 21 years of age or older for pre-order on www.JimBeam.com Unlike other smart home devices, "JIM" not only answers life's most important questions, but also offers groundbreaking shot pouring functionality that allows legal drinking age consumers to serve up a drink from the comfort of their couch. Voiced by 7th Generation Master Distiller Fred Noe, the decanter-turned virtual voice assistant includes a sleek compartment for bourbon storage and voice command capabilities.

WIRE)--H2O.ai, the leading company bringing AI to enterprises, today announced it has completed a $40 million Series C round of funding led by Wells Fargo and NVIDIA with participation from New York Life, Crane Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Transamerica Ventures, the corporate venture capital fund of Transamerica and Aegon Group. The Series C round brings H2O.ai's total amount of funding raised to $75 million. The new investment will be used to further democratize advanced machine learning and for global expansion and innovation of Driverless AI, an automated machine learning and pipelining platform that uses "AI to do AI." H2O.ai continued its juggernaut growth in 2017 as evidenced by new platforms and partnerships. The company launched Driverless AI, a product that automates AI for non-technical users and introduces visualization and interpretability features that explain the data modeling results in plain English, thus fostering further adoption and trust in artificial intelligence. H2O.ai has partnered with NVIDIA to democratize machine learning on the NVIDIA GPU compute platform.

Remark Holdings, Inc. (MARK), a global technology company focused on artificial intelligence, was selected to be one of 35 VIP speakers to present at the 4th World Internet Conference. Past speakers include the founders of leading Chinese companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi, Baidu and JD.com. Remark Holdings' Chairman and CEO Kai-Shing Tao will be speaking to the more than 1,500 attendees representing guests from governments, international organizations, enterprises, technical communities and non-governmental organizations from around the world to discuss the digital economy, cutting-edge technology, the Internet and society, cyberspace governance and exchanges and cooperation in five aspects focused on the theme of "Promoting Open and Shared Digital Economy – Building a Community of Destiny in Cyberspace Together." The 4th World Internet Conference will be held in Wuzhen, Tongxiang, Zhejiang from December 3, 2017 to December 5, 2017. This is the largest and highest-level Internet conference held by China and is also the summit of the world's Internet field.