ServiceNow is bringing enhanced machine-learning capabilities to its Now Platform for business process automation to help customers prevent outages, automatically route service requests, and predict and benchmark IT performance. The AI capabilities will be offered through the upcoming Intelligent Automation Engine, announced at the company's Knowledge conference in Orlando Tuesday. The move strengthens ServiceNow's base in IT management while making further inroads into other areas of the enterprise. The machine-learning capabilities will be brought into ServiceNow's cloud services for security, customer service, and HR. The Intelligent Automation Engine's algorithms are based on technology the company acquired through its purchase of DxContinuum in January.

A contest aimed at automating the detection of lung cancer shows how machine learning may be poised to overhaul medical imaging. The challenge offered $1 million in prizes for the algorithms that most accurately identified signs of lung cancer in low-dose computed tomography images. The winning algorithms won't necessarily be adopted by clinicians, but they could inspire algorithmic innovations that find their way into medical imaging. Low-dose CT scans have shown great potential in recent years for detecting lung cancer earlier. They use less radiation and do not require a contrast dye to be injected into the body.

The girls were dancing on a neon tank, wearing sequined bikinis lit up by red and green laser light. A strobing fixed-wing aircraft passed overhead like the acid-trip kissing cousin of a Mitsubishi A6M Zero, with more sequined women dangling from it, trapeze-style. Flashing robots had preceded them -- wheeling through the room, pumping their fists at the crowd -- while the audience, seated on tiers of glittery red plastic swivel chairs, waved glow sticks. As the music throbbed, twin walls of video screens threw up bizarre images. The Technicolor dream machine the women were using as a stage displayed, at the end of its barrel, a rainbow-colored star -- just where, on an ordinary tank, the death comes out. But this was no ordinary tank. It was a fixture of the one-hour show that takes place three times a night at Robot Restaurant, a kind of eye-melting Japanese dinner theater, a cabaret show of such migraine-inducing decadence that Las Vegas falls silent before it. On this hot Tokyo night in July 2013, two Americans, Roger Ver and Nicolas Cary, sat in the crowd. As far as Cary could tell, they were the only gaijin in the place. He was drinking a beer, while Ver, as usual, was abstaining. Their unappetizing bento boxes sat untouched: you don't go to Robot Restaurant for the food. In the midst of the cartoonish spectacle -- earlier, a woman wielding an oversized mace had ridden in on a stegosaurus to battle two heavily armored robots -- they had business to discuss.

Today Hank explores artificial intelligence, including weak AI and strong AI, and the various ways that thinkers have tried to define strong AI including the Turing Test, and John Searle's response to the Turing Test, the Chinese Room. Hank also tries to figure out one of the more personally daunting questions yet: is his brother John a robot? Get your own Crash Course Philosophy mug from DFTBA: http://store.dftba.com/products/crash... The Latest from PBS Digital Studios: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... -- All other images and video either public domain or via VideoBlocks, or Wikimedia Commons, licensed under Creative Commons BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... -- Produced in collaboration with PBS Digital Studios: http://youtube.com/pbsdigitalstudios Crash Course Philosophy is sponsored by Squarespace.

Autonomous bridge-inspecting robot could save lives by using smart sensors and machine learning algorithms to detect dangerous defects. Researchers at the University of Nevada have developed an autonomous robot, designed to inspect bridges and detect any structural damage before it can cause potential injury. The four-wheeled robot bridge inspector, called Seekur, uses a variety of tools to carry out its important task. These include ground-penetrating radar for looking beneath the surface of a bridge for underlying instabilities, sensors designed to search for possible corrosion of steel or cement, and a camera which analyzes cracks in the bridge's surface. A machine learning algorithm then analyzes all of this information and uses it to generate a color-coded map, which is passed on to (human) engineers to make them aware of weak spots.

There is much debate among scholars and practitioners about what data science is, and what it isn't. Does it deal only with big data? Is data science really that new? How is it different from statistics and analytics? One way to consider data science is as an evolutionary step in interdisciplinary fields like business analysis that incorporate computer science, modeling, statistics, analytics, and mathematics.

Doctors have gotten very good at determining which of their patients are at high risk for a heart attack. But new research suggests that artificial intelligence may be even better -- and that widespread use of AI could save many of the lives now lost to heart disease, the leading killer in the U.S. In preliminary tests, AI computer programs developed at the University of Nottingham in England were significantly more accurate at predicting which patients were at high risk. The programs, which employed an algorithm based on data from the medical records of more than 300,000 patients, accurately predicted 7.6 percent more heart attacks than doctors using the standard method, which involves careful consideration of patients' age, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other potential risk factors. The algorithm also prevented the accidental tagging of patients as "high-risk." That means these patients could safely forgo the medications often prescribed by doctors -- and thus avoid the severe muscle problems and other serious side effects these cholesterol-lowering drugs sometimes cause.

Deep Learning has been getting more and more traction. It focuses on one section of Machine Learning: Artificial Neural Networks. This article explains why Deep Learning is a game-changer in analytics, when to use Deep Learning, and how visual analytics allows business analysts to leverage the analytic models built by a (citizen) data scientist. Deep Learning is the modern buzzword for Artificial Neural Networks, one of many concepts in Machine Learning that is used to build analytics models. A neural network works similarly to a human brain.

On 12th January, MEPs voted for a set of regulations to be drafted to govern the use and creation of robots and artificial intelligence, hot off the back of the UK government setting up a commission to look at the issues surrounding artificial intelligence. Across continents, the law is unclear and differing and is likely to evolve in this area. In late 2016, in the UK, the Commons' Science and Technology Committee published a report on robotics and artificial intelligence. The report recommended that a standing Commission on Artificial Intelligence be established to examine the social, ethical and legal implications of recent and potential developments in AI. As of 12th January, MEPs from the parliament's legal affairs committee passed Mady Delvaux's report into robotics and AI.

A contest aimed at automating the detection of lung cancer shows how machine learning may be poised to overhaul medical imaging. The challenge offered $1 million in prizes for the algorithms that most accurately identified signs of lung cancer in low-dose computed tomography images. The winning algorithms won't necessarily be adopted by clinicians, but they could inspire algorithmic innovations that find their way into medical imaging. Low-dose CT scans have shown great potential in recent years for detecting lung cancer earlier. They use less radiation and do not require a contrast dye to be injected into the body.