The technology behind Alexa, the voice inside Amazon's Echo speaker, could become Amazon's fourth business pillar, alongside retail marketplace, Amazon Prime, and Amazon Web Services. Amazon has more than 1,000 people working on artificial intelligence and third-party apps that people have built using the company's SDK, Bezos, the founder and CEO of the company, said at Recode's Code Conference Tuesday. During an interview with Walt Mossberg, he said the company licenses the technology to others so they can embed it in an app or device. There's also a program that allows companies to build apps that teaches Alexa new skills. Bezos called artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning intelligence "gigantic" and says it's probably difficult to "overstate the impact it will have on society over the next 20 years."

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dato, creator of the popular machine learning platform GraphLab Create, announced today that it was named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Data Science. Dato was one of five global firms named in the report. The Gartner "Cool Vendors in Data Science" report identifies innovative machine learning vendors that can help analytics leaders solve hard problems, automate and scale advanced analytics. Cool Vendors in Data Science are among emerging machine learning companies that solve targeted industry problems or make the analysis scalable for big data. "Gartner's recognition of how we bring machine learning to more customers in more applications is a big validation of our approach to enabling AI for all developers," said Eduardo Rosini, Dato SVP of Business Development.

Cogitai, a new company aimed at developing and commercializing core artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, today announced a strategic investment from Sony Corporation. Cogitai is focused on addressing one of the biggest problems confronting AI: namely, that no existing AI system has an understanding of the world comparable to a human's. Even small children in the first few years of life develop an understanding of the world far richer and more sophisticated than the most elaborate AI systems on earth. To address this problem, Cogitai is committed to developing systems that learn continually from their experience. "Our continual-learning technology will allow computer systems to build knowledge and skills simply through interacting with the world around them," said Dr. Mark Ring, CEO of Cogitai.

Israeli startup Twiggle, which is developing next generation e-commerce search technologies, announced today that it secured additional funding from the Alibaba Group as the second tranche of its Series A financing. This follows the announcement in April of a 12.5 million round led by Naspers with participation from YJ Capital, State of Mind Ventures and Sir Ronald Cohen. The funding will be utilized to grow the company's R&D team in Israel and drive the company's global expansion plans. No details were disclosed about the amount Alibaba is investing but "Bloomberg" reported that it is 5-10 million. Twiggle uses advanced techniques in data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing to power the next generation of digital commerce.

IBM Watson is going to Japan via IBM's new alliance with Japanese telecommunication giant SoftBank, on Tuesday, February 10, 2015. SAN FRANCISCO -- Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank is selling 8 billion in Alibaba stock in order to pay down debt, the company said in a statement Tuesday. SoftBank, which was among the earliest investors in Chinese e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba (BABA), will sell 2 billion in stock back to Alibaba. It will offer another 5 billion in securities that in three years will convert into Alibaba shares. Another 500,000 in stock will be sold to an unnamed wealth fund and 400,000 to the Alibaba Partnership, which controls nomination of the company's directors.

TAIPEI, TAIWAN--(Marketwired - May 31, 2016) - Computex - NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) won big at the Computex Best Choice Awards, with the NVIDIA Tesla M40 GPU and NVIDIA Jetson TX1 module hauling in Gold Awards and the NVIDIA SHIELD Android TV clinching a Category Award. Garnering these three prestigious awards extends the company's winning streak -- the longest of any international Computex exhibitor -- to eight consecutive years. Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen will hand out the awards. The Best Choice Awards, established in 2002, honor innovation, functionality and market potential. The Gold Award-winning NVIDIA Tesla M40 GPU is the world's fastest deep learning training accelerator.

"Diversified application areas are expected to drive the artificial intelligence market" The artificial intelligence market is estimated to grow from USD 419.7 million in 2014 to USD 5.05 billion by 2020, at a CAGR of 53.65% from 2015 to 2020. This growth can be attributed to the factors such as diversified application areas, improved productivity, and increased customer satisfaction. "Machine learning technology to gain maximum traction during the forecast period" The machine learning technology is expected to account for the largest share of the overall AI market duing the forecast period. In addition, due to the increase in demand for AI from the media & advertising and finance sectors, the artificial intelligence market is expected to gain traction in the next five years. The machine learning technology market for the retail, healthcare, law, and oil & gas sectors is also expected to witness growth during the forecast period.

The innovations protected by the new patent tie together graphs and graphical annotations with the corresponding narrative in natural language reports that the Arria NLG software generates. For example, placing one's cursor on a graphical element can cause the corresponding report section to be highlighted for ease of reference. The patented features will be deployed to strengthen the integration of language and graphical elements in the Company's products. As with the Company's other recent patents, the covered features are desirable in any NLG system, not only Arria NLG's advanced Reiter & Dale model language generation system. The new patent is part of a broad diversification plan that Arria NLG has instituted to enhance versatility and improve ease of use, as well as to increase the analytic power and actionable conclusions of its NLG products.

"APAC expected to be the fastest-growing market" The AI market in APAC is expected to grow at the highest CAGR between 2015 and 2020. The rapid adoption of the machine learning technology in the advertising & media, finance, and retail sectors in this region and increase in the usage of natural language processing technology are contributing to the growth of the artificial intelligence market in APAC. In the process of determining and verifying the market size for several segments and subsegments gathered through secondary research, extensive primary interviews were also conducted with key people in the market. The break-up of profiles of primary participants is given below. Some of the key players in the artificial intelligence market profiled in this report are: 1. Zephyr Health (U.S.) The report will help the market leaders/new entrants in this market in the following ways: 1.

The four founders, two of whom have resigned their professorships to devote their full attention to TwentyBN, met each other during studies at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. Each of the founders has over 15 years of experience in machine learning and the relatively young deep learning discipline. Prof. Dr. Roland Memisevic, Chief Scientist, received his doctorate in Toronto, studying with Geoffrey Hinton, one of the founding fathers of deep learning. Prior to co-founding Twenty Billion Neurons, Memisevic was a member of the faculty at the renowned Machine Learning Institute of the University of Montréal led by Yoshua Bengio. The institute counts Google, Facebook, and IBM amongst its most active donors.