I believe 2018 will be the year in which businesses of all sizes engage with the hype and get to grips with the difference between tech for tech's sake and understanding how it can be used to augment human capability. This is the year to overcome the tech fear.

Care Angel's innovative patient engagement, monitoring and management platform, SmartCare 3.0, brings Angel to life through a simple phone call on any voice-driven device, like a landline, cell phone or smartphone allowing providers to actively engage and manage their patient population in real-time. Care Angel's Virtual Nurse Assistant, Angel, conversationally checks-in with at-risk patient populations leveraging AI technology to enable scalable engagement with a focus on condition-specific health communication. Recent studies of at-risk populations have demonstrated patient engagement rates of 83 percent, readmission reduction of 63 percent and a $41 per patient per month net savings, by leveraging the Care Angel solution. Care Angel closes gaps in care between visits for the highest risk, highest cost patients while reducing hospitalization and readmissions. Under the agreement, Care Angel will work with FLAACOs and its ACO members to take a proactive approach to implementing Care Angel's patient engagement, monitoring and management solution, to support FLAACOs members' patient care and financial goals.

Everybody is talking about how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world and how it is the future of just about everything. Even communications professionals are abuzz with their desire to jump on the AI bandwagon for their media analytics. It's true; AI can be pretty impressive. It is already recommending products to consumers, catching credit card fraud, and targeting advertising with uncanny accuracy and effectiveness. Even doctors are starting to get assistance from AI in diagnosing disease through analysis of symptoms and lab results.

Facebook will let you know when someone posts a photo of you -- even if you aren't tagged in it -- becoming the latest tech giant to add more facial recognition technology to users' everyday lives. The new feature, which Facebook frames as a control measure for a user's image, is one of three new applications of facial recognition technology the Menlo Park, Calif., company announced Tuesday. These new additions expand on how Facebook already uses facial recognition, which is primarily through "tag suggestions" -- a feature started in 2010 that suggests which of your friends should be tagged in photos that you upload to the site. If you've already opted out of that feature, you will also be automatically opted out of the new facial recognition features. But Facebook is putting all of these features under one setting, meaning that if you want the notifications about where your face appears on friends' accounts or strangers' accounts, then you'll also have to be all right with automatic tagging.

Cognovi Labs, developer of the SaaS platform for emotion-based artificial intelligence, saw their Oct. 22 prediction of a Doug Jones victory realized in Tuesday's Alabama Senate election. Acting well ahead of poll data, Cognovi made the prediction almost three weeks before the sexual harassment claims surfaced against Moore. The prediction was based around Cognovi Emotion AI findings that showed Jones' superior ability to trigger an intense emotional bond with the electorate, which allowed him to generate the required turnout to win the election. This result follows a string of successful Cognovi predictions for several high-profile outcomes, including predicting the Brexit referendum hours before the polls closed; and foretelling the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In addition to political events, Cognovi utilizes its AI platform to make predictions for businesses, investors, corporations, ad agencies and public figures.

By listening to the acoustic signal emitted by a laboratory-created earthquake, a computer science approach using machine learning can predict the time remaining before the fault fails.

A machine learning technique called a neural network has identified two new exoplanets in our galaxy, NASA scientists and a Google software engineer announced today, meaning that researchers now know about two new worlds thanks to the power of artificial intelligence. Discovering new exoplanets--as planets outside our solar system are called--is a relatively common occurrence, and a key instrument that scientists use to identify them is the Kepler Space Telescope, which has already spotted a confirmed 2,525 exoplanets. But what's novel about this announcement is that researchers used a AI system to spot these two new worlds, now dubbed Kepler-90i and Kepler-80g. The planet known as 90i is especially interesting to astronomers, as it brings the total number of known planets orbiting that star to eight, a tie with our own system. The average temperature on 90i is thought to be quite balmy: more than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. The newly-discovered Kepler-90i – a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days – was found using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers "learn." In this case, computers learned to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded signals from planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets.

TOKYO, Dec 14, 2017 - (JCN Newswire) - Lockheed Martin and NEC Corporation (TSE: 6701) today announced that Lockheed Martin will use NEC's System Invariant Analysis Technology (SIAT) in the space domain. SIAT's advanced analytics engine uses data collected from sensors to learn the behavior of systems, including computer systems, power plants, factories and buildings, enabling the system itself to automatically detect inconsistencies and prescribe resolutions. NEC's advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities and Lockheed Martin's space domain expertise offer new opportunities in developing enhanced integrated satellite and spacecraft operations with uniquely developed prescriptive analytics. These include rapid assessments of changes in performance and the space environment, such as the potential influence of space weather on electronics. With this information, operators can improve product performance and lifecycle efficiency.

"When big changes happen it is often because regulation, user preference and technology converge – mobile telephony is one example, the car another. We have picked the trends that we think are both illuminating and important to stay on top of ahead of the New Year," says Bjørn Taale Sandberg, Head of Telenor Research. Consumer-trends such as face recognition, on-demand services and 360-photos aside, what seismic shifts in the broader technology landscape might shake things up in 2018? Looking ahead, scientists and technology analysts at Telenor Group's research arm, Telenor Research, see seven tech trends coming our way: Facebook users are posting less and the amount of relevant information on the Facebook newsfeed is dropping, giving way to an increasing amount of professional and paid content – of varying relevance. Users are also likely becoming more critical as awareness rises around "fake news" seeping into their feeds.