R. Lee Coulter, one of the organizers of the 2016 World BPO/ITO Forum, is senior vice president of St. Louis-based Ascension Health, the nation's largest nonprofit health system, and CEO of its shared services subsidiary, the Ascension Ministry Service Center. His focus on shared services, business process outsourcing, or BPO, and technology spans a 30-year career in leadership positions at companies, including General Electric, AON and Kraft Foods. Here, he talks to SearchCIO senior executive editor Linda Tucci about the current state of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in outsourcing and what's on the horizon. This interview has been condensed and edited. Lee Coulter: AI is not being applied to outsourcing today, in so far as we're talking about the shared services and outsourcing industry.

The 47th annual World Series of Poker starts Tuesday at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino. Among the 69 events is the tournament's Main Event, which begins July 9. It runs through July 18, when a final table of no-limit Texas Hold'Em players emerges. The final nine competitors will return to play at the Main Event championship Oct. 30 to Nov. 1. Pennsylvania poker pro Joe McKeehen won the gold bracelet last year, and a 7.68 million top prize. Organizers said the 2015 tournament had record-breaking attendance, including 103,512 entries and over 210 million in prize money.

Last week ago I posted an article called, What Do Predictive Analytics Consultants Do? Part 1, describing the general types of activities that we engage in. In the present article, I want to talk about the skills and tools that one should have to perform Predictive Analytics. Although this is not strictly a "What we do" article, knowing the skills we possess and the tools we use will provide some insight into what we do, without talking about some algorithm that you may have never heard of. I am always at a loss in describing the skills of analytics, for there are many. I just completed a new book about analytics (available for FREE--see notes) that has a different approach than Predictive Analytics using R (also available for FREE), though I am using material from three chapters.

This post teaches you how to implement your own spam filter in under 100 lines of Python code. While doing this hands-on exercise, you'll work with natural language data, learn how to detect the words spammers use automatically, and learn how to use a Naive Bayes classifier for binary classification. The task is to distinguish between two types of emails, "spam" and "non-spam" often called "ham". The machine learning classifier will detect that an email is spam if it is characterised by certain features. The textual content of the email – words like "Viagra" or "lottery" or phrases like "You've won a 100,000,000 dollars!

Artificial Intelligence refers to the study and integration of intelligent systems which are capable of accomplishing the tasks which employ human intelligence such as visual perception, speech recognition, and decision-making. The integrated systems work on a particular set of algorithms predefined by the analysts and scientists. These algorithms act as a knowledge database to the machines. The usage of artificial intelligence is gaining momentum as the accuracy of the task performed by the system of the machine is several times higher than human beings. The major advantage of artificial intelligence is that machines or systems do not require periodic breaks, and are capable of performing the same activity repetitively.

It is taught, mostly in graduate school control theory courses which are typically found in ece departments. Typically called "linear systems" as a starter course, there is not really a standard textbook as it can be taught as pure math or as a more applied subject. For nonlinear systems, which deals more with theoretical things such as existence of solutions, the textbook by khalil is pretty standard. I'm pretty sure there are some decent YouTube lecture series on state space control. They should discuss controllability/observability, some basic feedback schemes, etc. Oddly, a lot of control theory is more concerned with examining systems than with actually developing controllers... Most modern work in control theory is state space as opposed to classical frequency response methods as it handles multiple input multiple output systems much better.

But a new super-dexterous robot hand can "learn" how to perfect new abilities over time -- without any help from its three human overlords at the University of Washington. The trio of researchers presented their handiwork, called the Adroit manipulation system, on Tuesday at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm. The Adroit system gets the world one step closer to the Jetsons' housekeeper robot Rosie: hardware that performs better than human bodies, yet is controlled by a software "brain" that learns like a human mind. The researchers say their creation has potentially huge implications for the robotics field, and for any industry that requires a variety of complex tasks -- from space exploration to healthcare to automated butlers. Manipulating robot hands to perform fine-motor tasks like catching a stick, rotating a tube or rolling a block "is one of the biggest problems in robotics," lead researcher Vikash Kumar told CNNMoney.

"Think about just how interconnected the world is now," said Matt Gould, the co-founder of Arria NLG, a prominent enterprise in the development and deployment of Natural Language Generation (NLG) technologies worldwide. "Think about it from just a personal context. How much data are you generating personally every day?" Modern, connected humans interact constantly online with computers, mobile phones, and many other devices. They pay bills, watch movies, purchase products, interact with medical professionals, use fitness apps, listen to music, and work online. "That whole drifting miasma of invisible data is spilling off you constantly and consistently, and it's happening for at least half the world's population now," said Gould during a recent DATAVERSITY phone interview.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

High winds are one of the most common causes of flight delays and cancellations at airports, but new technology is now to put an end to the problem. Air traffic controllers at three of Britain's busiest airports are to adopt a new system that can automatically adjust the landing rate of aircraft depending on the wind conditions. Traditional landing procedures mean aircraft must be separated by a set distance when on approach to a runway. A new system that separates landing aircraft (pictured) by time rather than distance is to be introduced to Gatwick and Manchester Airports after a successful trial over the past year at Heathrow. Time-based separation replaces the old system of keeping large aircraft five nautical miles apart when they come into land.