Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma, the man Fortune Magazine just named one of the world's great leaders, predicts that technology will make many CEOs irrelevant in the not-too-distant future. "In 30 years, a robot will likely be on the cover of Time Magazine as the best CEO," Ma said in a speech over the weekend at an entrepreneurship conference in central China. And he warned of dark times ahead for people who are unprepared for the upheaval technology is set to bring. Related: Chinese giant outbids U.S. rival for firm that handles Mexico money transfers "In the next three decades, the world will experience far more pain than happiness," the billionaire said, adding that education systems must raise children to be more creative and curious or they will be ill-prepared for the future. Robots are quicker and more rational than humans, Ma said, and they don't get bogged down in emotions -- like getting angry at competitors.

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 17, 2017) - NVIDIA ( NASDAQ: NVDA) today announced that its deep learning platform is now available as part of Baidu Cloud's deep learning service, giving enterprise customers instant access to the world's most adopted AI tools. The new Baidu Cloud offers the latest GPU computing technology, including Pascal architecture-based NVIDIA Tesla P40 GPUs and NVIDIA deep learning software. It provides both training and inference acceleration for open-source deep learning frameworks, such as TensorFlow and PaddlePaddle. "Baidu and NVIDIA are long-time partners in advancing the state of the art in AI," said Ian Buck, general manager of Accelerated Computing at NVIDIA. "Baidu understands that enterprises need GPU computing to process the massive volumes of data needed for deep learning. Through Baidu Cloud, companies can quickly convert data into insights that lead to breakthrough products and services."

The offer will be available in France for Orange employees from mid-May and for the general public from 6 July 2017. Customers can subscribe directly from the mobile application, online or in one of Orange's 140 certified stores. Innovative and specifically designed for mobile uses, the offer will provide customers from launch with a bank account, a debit card, overdraft protection and an interest-bearing savings account. Additional services, such as credit and insurance, will gradually be included in the offer. Right from the outset, the service will integrate a number of cutting-edge, digital and banking innovations including contactless mobile payments, sending money by SMS, instant bank balances, temporary freezing of the debit card and 24/7 access to a bank advisory service.

Accenture Labs and Akshaya Patra Use Disruptive Technologies to Enhance Efficiency in Mid-Day Meal Program for School Children "Million Meals" project applied artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and blockchain to drive efficiency and timeliness of lunch program in government schools across India BENGALURU, India; Apr. 20, 2017 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) and Akshaya Patra, the world's largest NGO-run Mid-Day Meal Program, collaborated on an innovative project that used disruptive technologies to exponentially increase the number of meals served to children in schools in India that are run and aided by the government. The "Million Meals" project revolutionized Akshaya Patra's supply chain and operations, resulting in improved food quality and expanded service reach. Rooted in a vision to eliminate child hunger, the "Million Meals" project demonstrated how disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain can help address significant challenges in mass meal production and delivery. Accenture Labs, the research and development arm of Accenture, executed the project over a period of six months in Akshaya Patra's Bengaluru kitchen. An analysis of the project indicated a potential to improve efficiency by 20 percent, which could boost the number of meals served by millions.

SYS-CON Events announced today that Ocean9will exhibit at SYS-CON's 20th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY. Ocean9 provides cloud services for Backup, Disaster Recovery (DRaaS) and instant Innovation, and redefines enterprise infrastructure with its cloud native subscription offerings for mission critical SAP workloads. Available on AWS and Azure, Ocean9 solutions de-risk and accelerate digital transformation initiatives with instant provisioning, full elasticity, strict security, right sized systems and high availability of up to 99.99%. Ocean9 is also first to market with heavy state container technology: Our customers can therefore deploy the heavy state SAP HANA in-memory database in a production grade container environment with the ability to seamlessly fall back to a virtualized environment within minutes. Learn more about how Ocean9 redefines cloud enterprise infrastructure at www.ocean9.io.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA and QUEBEC, QC--(Marketwired - April 18, 2017) - Coveo, a recognized leader in AI-powered search and predictive analytics, and recently positioned as the highest for execution and furthest for innovation leader in the leaders quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Insight Engines, has just announced the general availability of Coveo for Salesforce Free Edition. Coveo for Salesforce Free Edition now allows every brand using Salesforce to leverage Coveo's Machine Learning features and transform their self-service experiences to deliver more relevant content, at scale, whether for customers, partners or employees. Companies unintentionally make it difficult for people to find relevant content, let alone receiving relevant insights and personalized recommendations. It is even harder for community administrators and managers to gain valuable insights, and learn from usage and behavioral data, such as what customers are searching for, what drives better outcomes or what content gaps exist in their self-service pages. "Search and relevance are at the very core of user engagement, personalization and self-service success," said Laurent Simoneau, President and CTO of Coveo.

About Paysa Paysa offers personalized career and hiring recommendations plus real-world salary insights for maximizing opportunity, earning potential and value at all stages of an individual's career. Using proprietary artificial intelligence technology and machine learning algorithms, Paysa analyzes millions of data points including jobs, resumes and compensation information, providing professionals with actionable tools, insights, and research. They can then see and understand their individual worth in the market today, and how to increase their value. Paysa also empowers enterprises with the knowledge they need to be competitive in today's fierce tech hiring market. Employers can learn which skills, real-world company experience and educational background offers the greatest predictor of a candidate's or employee's future success at their organization.

By Spencer Soper Amazon.com is embracing artificial intelligence to deliver goods more quickly, enhance its voice-activated Alexa assistant and create new tools sold to others through its cloud-computing division, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos said in his annual shareholder letter. Changes ushered in by artificial intelligence and machine learning will help the companies that embrace them and put up barriers for those who don't, the world's second- richest man wrote in a 1,700-word letter released Wednesday. Bezos repeated familiar themes, such as the need to operate a business like it's always "Day 1" to keep a startup mentality and the ability to act quickly on limited information to stay ahead, what he calls "high-velocity decision making." His emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning was the most concrete indication of areas in which the e-commerce giant will continue to invest. Machine learning is the science of getting computers to act without being programmed, and is used in autonomous cars, speech-recognition and internet search engines.

ServiceChannel, the leading SaaS service automation platform for facilities managers and contractors, today introduced advanced machine learning capabilities to its flagship solution, enabling faster, more automated data-driven decision making capabilities for facilities managers. This Smart News Release features multimedia. "Machine learning is truly changing everything today, and the facilities management industry is no exception. With machine learning, our vision for transforming how facilities management professionals work is boundless," said Hugues Meyrath, chief product officer at ServiceChannel. "Decision Engine is revolutionizing decision making in facilities management by applying data and analytics to a previously arduous and manual process. This is the industry's first step toward adopting the incredible technologies commonplace in more traditional markets, enabling the automation of repetitive tasks and driving unprecedented efficiency."

A cute, robotic language tutor called Musio, has made it from crowdfunding campaign to full-fledged product with a debut in stores this week in Japan. Priced at JPY 98,000 (about US $900), Musio is now sold online through SoftBank's marketplace and Amazon Japan, and through a handful of brick-and-mortars stores. Musio's parent company, AI venture AKA Study, is the latest startup from Raymond Jung, a co-founder of the massively successful test-prep venture, Hackers Education Group, in South Korea. AKA employs about 50 full-time today, with most in Seoul, and a small office in Santa Monica, Calif. Technically, the company is headquartered in the U.S., but it's not making any consumer electronics for the American market yet.