The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has announced plans to co-host four public workshops to spur public dialogue on artificial intelligence and machine learning, and to learn more about the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, according to Ed Felten, a Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer. These four workshops will be co-hosted by academic and non-profit organizations; two will also be co-hosted by the National Economic Council, with a public report later this year. The Federal Government also is "working to leverage AI for public good and toward a more effective government." A new National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence will monitor state-of-the-art advances and technology milestones in artificial intelligence and machine learning within the Federal Government, in the private sector, and internationally; and help coordinate Federal activity in this space. The NSTC group also hopes to increase the use of AI and machine learning to improve the delivery of government services, especially in areas related to urban systems and smart cities, mental and physical health, social welfare, criminal justice, and the environment.

WIRE)--Cornerstone OnDemand (NASDAQ:CSOD), the global leader in cloud-based talent management software solutions, today announced the launch of its suite of people analytics products, all of which are available today. This includes the introduction of Cornerstone View, an interactive data visualization application that gives business leaders deeper intelligence about their people, as well as Cornerstone Planning, an intuitive workforce planning application that helps organizations easily create, manage and execute accurate hiring plans over multiple time horizons. The company also added two new dashboards to Cornerstone Insights, its predictive and prescriptive analytics solution that equips business leaders with the intelligence to better recruit, train, manage and develop their people. Cornerstone's portfolio of analytics offerings applies sophisticated data science and the most refined machine learning system for talent management to help organizations harness the power of real-time people data. The Cornerstone Analytics suite is built on top of the world's largest network of shared talent data, representing more than 16 years of workforce management activity across 25 million users globally, nearly 2,700 organizations across all industries and seven talent management dimensions –recruiting, onboarding, training and development, performance management, compensation management, succession planning and workplace collaboration.

SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - May 13, 2016) - Niara, a provider of security analytics for attack detection and incident response, today announced that it has been named a Cool Vendor in the 2016 Cool Vendors in UEBA, Fraud Detection and User Authentication1 report by Gartner, Inc. Key findings of the report show "technologies that respond to user behavior are increasingly prevalent in security markets, although clients must consider how to integrate products with existing technologies to identity threats and suspicious behaviors both within and outside the organization." Additionally, Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and other security leaders should investigate UEBA technology to accelerate risk identification and escalation. "We believe being recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor further validates that Niara's advanced user and entity behavioral analytics approach is becoming a priority for organizations looking to accelerate attack detection and response," said Sriram Ramachandran, CEO and co-founder of Niara. "Niara's analytics modules detect attacks and risky behaviors inside organizations, and empower security teams with advanced incident investigation and threat hunting capabilities." Niara's security analytics platform leverages data from any data source within the network and security infrastructure, applying unsupervised and supervised machine learning algorithms, statistical modeling and other analytics techniques to unearth security events that get past traditional solutions.

AI is not likely to take over the world, but will probably make major inroads in the enterprise IT space. This will happen as soon as business decision makers can be shown a compelling economic reason to adopt such technology. What is needed are use cases that lay out the expected ROIs for such investments. This paper examines the state of AI business rationalization, and looks at one company, IBM, that is attempting to provide support to business leaders presented with the decision to adopt AI solutions. Artificial intelligence (AI) has been very prevalent in the popular press, and seems to be comprised of equal parts speculation and hyperbole.

In a rare move, Apple has invested 1 billion in popular Chinese ride sharing service Didi Chuxing. The investment gives Apple an opportunity to learn more about its second-largest market, CEO Tim Cook said. "We are making the investment for a number of strategic reasons, including a chance to learn more about certain segments of the China market," Cook said in an interview with Reuters. "Of course, we believe it will deliver a strong return for our invested capital over time as well." The move also comes after billionaire investor Carl Icahn sold his position in Apple, largely due to the company's lagging performance in the region.

Malaysia's strategic investment fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd is making a strategic investment of 100 million into New Jersey-based Fractal Analytics, a leading global provider of analytics, to accelerate its growth. In a press release, Khazanah executive director Chinta Bhagat commented: "The availability of large amounts of real-time information and the ability to analyse it at scale, will transform how the world makes decisions. Fractal is one of the companies leading this change and with our partnership, it can dramatically accelerate its programmatic investments and acquisitions." TA Associates, a Boston-based global private equity firm and AIMIA, the world's largest loyalty firm and Gulu Mirchandani of Onida are some of Fractal's current investors. Fractal Analytics co-founder and chief executive officer Srikanth Velamakanni said, the investment will allow the company to step up development of its artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning-based software stack.

"Tom Clancy's The Division" was the biggest launch of a new video game property ever, which helped Ubisoft report a profit for its fiscal 2015-2016, the company said Thursday. Ubisoft reported a decrease in sales but a rise in profit for its fiscal 2015-16. Sales were 1.8 billion, down 4.8 percent compared to the previous year, but the 147 million profit was up from the 128 million posted the previous year. "The Division" has amassed 9.5 million registered players since its launch on March 8. Active players are spending around three hours daily on the open world third-person shooter. Bolstering Ubisoft's earnings report was the better-than-expected release "Far Cry Primal," which had the biggest February launch.

Google is expected to hit the smart home market in a big way with a new device codenamed Chirp. According to a report from Recode, the tech titan is moving in on the turf carved out by Amazon's Echo with its own voice-activated assistant for the home. The device probably won't see the light of day until later this year, though we may see some hints of what's to come by reading between the lines at Google's developers conference in San Francisco next week. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Google has been focused on the smart home for years, and in 2014 forecast broader ambitions in the space by buying smart appliance maker Nest for 3.2 billion.

Computers have slowly started to encroach on activities we previously believed only the brilliantly sophisticated human brain could handle. IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer beat Grand Master Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, and in 2011 IBM's Watson beat former human winners at the quiz game Jeopardy. But the ancient board game Go has long been one of the major goals of artificial intelligence research. It's understood to be one of the most difficult games for computers to handle due to the sheer number of possible moves a player can make at any given point. Researchers at Google DeepMind, the Alphabet-owned artificial intelligence research company, announced today that it had created an artificial intelligence system that has beat a professional Go player at the game.

WIRE)--Cylance, the American company that is revolutionizing cybersecurity through the use of artificial intelligence to proactively prevent advanced persistent threats and malware, announced that it has signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with MOTEX to integrate MOTEX LanScope, a leading endpoint systems management solution, and CylancePROTECT, Cylance's innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning based endpoint malware prevention product. Cylance has produced the world's most advanced malware detection and attack prevention technology, which is protecting hundreds of global organizations and millions of computers today. Draper Nexus Ventures, a leading US-Japan cross border investment firm, is helping Cylance accelerate its entry into the Japanese market. "It's a global phenomenon that traditional security cannot protect endpoints from advanced threats. The Japanese market is not an exception and we have identified a great opportunity there," said Hiro Rio Maeda, managing director for Draper Nexus.