With billions of sensors, smart machines and connected devices generating data every second, the Internet of Things (IoT) is placing unprecedented demands on organisations' data storage, processing and analytic capabilities. Cloudera (NYSE: CLDR), the modern platform for machine learning and analytics, optimized for the cloud, announced that more enterprises across an array of sectors are turning to Cloudera Enterprise Data Hub to power their IoT journey, generate actionable insights and as a result, disrupt their own industries. Cloudera is enabling real-time data insights and predictive analytics to help companies use IoT to drive operational efficiencies, introduce new products and services, improve the customer experience and create wholly new business models. Customers today are increasingly utilising components such as Apache Kudu and Apache Spark to drive real-time processing, machine learning, and analytics on all of their IoT data, including data in motion and data at rest. "Organisations who use machine learning and analytics to deliver new insights from the explosion of IoT data, have enormous power to disrupt entire industries," said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer at Cloudera.

Oracle OpenWorld -- Oracle today announced new artificial intelligence-based apps for finance, human resources, supply chain, manufacturing, commerce, customer service, marketing, and sales professionals. The new Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps are built into the existing Oracle Cloud Applications to deliver the industry's most powerful AI-based modern business applications. "The new Adaptive Intelligent Apps enable business users from across the organizations to quickly and easily take advantage of the latest advancements in artificial intelligence," said Steve Miranda, executive vice president of applications development, Oracle. "To make this possible we have eliminated the need for more integrations and embedded AI capabilities across Oracle Cloud Applications. The new AI capabilities combine first- and third-party data with advanced machine learning and sophisticated decision science to deliver the industry's most powerful AI-based modern business applications." The new Oracle Adaptive Intelligent Apps deliver immediate impact within Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud, Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud, Oracle Supply Chain Management Cloud, and the Oracle Customer Experience Cloud by providing smart and timely insights to end users.

Microsoft announced today that its conversational speech recognition system has reached a 5.1% error rate, its lowest so far. This surpasses the 5.9% error rate reached last year by a group of researchers from Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research and puts its accuracy on par with professional human transcribers who have advantages like the ability to listen to text several times. Both studies transcribed recordings from the Switchboard corpus, a collection of about 2,400 telephone conversations that have been used by researchers to test speech recognition systems since the early 1990s. The new study was performed by a group of researchers at Microsoft AI and Research with the goal of achieving the same level of accuracy as a group of human transcribers who were able to listen to what they were transcribing several times, access its conversational context and work with other transcribers. Overall, researchers from the latest study reduced the error rate by about 12 percent compared to last year's findings by improving the neural net-based acoustic and language models of Microsoft's speech recognition system.

A Seattle-area startup, backed by the venture capital arms of Boeing Co and JetBlue Airways Corp announced plans on Thursday to bring a small hybrid-electric commuter aircraft to market by 2022. The small airliner is the first of several planes planned by Zunum Aero, which said it would seat up to 12 passengers and be powered by two electric motors, dramatically reducing the travel time and cost of trips under 1,000 miles (1,600 km). Zunum's plans and timetable underscore a rush to develop small electric aircraft based on rapidly evolving battery technology and artificial intelligence systems that avoid obstacles on a road or in the sky. The small airliner is the first of several planes planned by Zunum Aero, which said it would seat up to 12 passengers and be powered by two electric motors. Zunum Aero is working to develop'hybrid to electric;' craft that'sip fuel only when they have to.'

Nuance Nina named Best Intelligent Assistant Innovation during September 27 AIconics Awards ceremony at The AI Summit, the world's largest conference to showcase AI solutions that are transforming organizations. The AIconics Awards are the only independently-judged awards that celebrate AI for businesses and Nuance Nina was selected as part of a competitive analysis of more than 300 entries. Nuance Nina and customers win Intelligent Assistant Awards during September 18 ceremony at the Opus Research IA Conference. Nuance was honored alongside customers FedEx and IP Australia, with partner Datacom, for delivering notable customer experiences through natural language understanding, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. The Opus Research Intelligent Assistant Awards recognize leading brands who are utilizing virtual assistants to redefine digital commerce and customer care.

WASHINGTON – Federal investigators have opened their first probe of a midair collision between a civilian drone and a traditional aircraft. An Army UH-60 helicopter was flying east of Staten Island on Sept. 21 when it collided with a small, consumer Phantom 4 drone, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a press release Thursday. The Federal Aviation Administration, which is assisting the investigation, has logged more than 1,000 reports of drone safety incidents, including cases of the devices flying close to jetliners. DJI is assisting the NTSB investigation, the company said in an emailed statement.

"There are too many risks and technical barriers to overcome in trying to stitch together an ABM strategy using disparate technologies that don't use a common data model to follow and measure a business audience throughout the entire funnel and lifecycle," said Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase. "What's been missing from ABM technology is an integrated platform that makes it easier to implement, execute and grow your ABM efforts seamlessly. I'm confident the new AI-based platform introduced today with fully integrated targeting, engagement and sales conversion solutions will set us apart for many years to come." The Demandbase ABM Platform makes it easy to build target accounts from CRM data, by uploading a pre-existing account list, or by leveraging buyer intent signals generated by the only AI-powered ABM platform that learns from 50 billion B2B interactions every month. Marketers can further segment and manage these audiences by a number of firmographic variables such as industry, size, location and others.

The battle for smart-speaker supremacy in Japan has begun, with major firms announcing the launches Thursday of new products armed with high-tech voice-controlled features. With the aim of taking the lead in the AI powered smart-speaker market, which many observers believe will become the next major trend, Line Corp. and Google both debuted their new products for the Japanese market the same day. "The smartphone era began 10 years ago, but we are about to enter a new era where everything will be connected to the internet and optimized by AI," said Jun Masuda, chief strategy and marketing officer at Line, during a news conference Thursday at the firm's headquarters in Tokyo. Line said its Clova Wave speaker is now available online for ¥14,000. Masuda said the critical aspect of the coming era will be gadgets equipped with AI voice agents allowing voice control. Tech firms have been gearing up to develop AI smart-speaker platforms, which are expected to create a new secondary market similar to how smartphones created a huge market for apps.

Technology companies like IBM have arguably overhyped the capabilities of their artificial intelligence technologies over the past few years. But some executives believe the field is turning a corner, and businesses are starting to deliver practical applications of A.I. "There's some reality setting in," says Boston software executive Tom Wilde. "Some proof points need to show up. That said, the dollars being spent on [A.I. products] are pennies of what they're going to be" in the future. Wilde will try to deliver on the promise of A.I. in the business world as CEO of Indico, a small Boston-based machine learning and data analytics startup.

Existing approaches to security and management are no longer sufficient, which is why the headlines are now full of security breaches and performance outages,