Serial entrepreneur Eli Fathi has definite opinions about how Ottawa was short-changed along the way when it came to investments for artificial intelligence. But rather than sitting back and waiting, the CEO of MindBridge Ai (Analytics Inc.) -- along with members of the startup community, decided to take matters into his own hands. Established in 2015, MindBridge Ai creates products that reduce financial risk for corporations by leveraging AI to detect anomalous transactions. "When we saw what was happening with Element AI (in Montreal) and the support they received from Quebec, Ontario – including Ottawa – wanted to follow suit. The Ontario government put money into Toronto and Waterloo. It may seem surprising, given the region had a strong tech history. But the fall of the telecom industry in 1999 and 2000 saw some spectacular failures, he says. "A number of fibre optic companies got up to $500 million but not one succeeded.

But samples also were sent to a lab where computers using artificial intelligence are changing the way pharmaceutical companies develop drugs. Biological insights driven by machine learning also could help pharmaceutical companies better identify and recruit patients for clinical trials of therapies most likely to work for them, perhaps boosting the chances of those medications' getting approved by regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration. AI systems trained on various data sources, including preclinical data sets, have helped make "significant performance improvements" by enabling "better selections of which compounds to…make and test" in the lab and by "flagging" whether compounds might have "toxic" effects or "unexpected favorable" ones, he says. German pharmaceutical company Merck KGaA has developed two drugs using computer-vision software, which analyzes images of cells and tissues, and other AI systems capable of drawing insights from public databases of genetic and chemical information, says Joern-Peter Halle, Merck KGaA's head of external innovation.

On a recent Friday in Boston, Randell Sanders gave a nurse two samples of his blood, plus a sample of urine and saliva. Clinicians would test some of the samples to see how he is responding to treatment for pancreatic cancer. But samples also were sent to a lab where computers using artificial intelligence are changing the way pharmaceutical companies develop drugs. The idea is that machines, which are adept at pattern recognition, can sift through vast amounts of new and existing genetic, metabolic and clinical information to unravel the complex biological networks that underpin diseases. That, in turn, can help identify medications likely to work in specific patient populations, while simultaneously steering companies away from drugs that are likely to fail.

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Artificial intelligence: Savvy hospitals are deploying AI and its technological brethren cognitive computing and machine learning in specific use cases at this point – while industry luminaries are predicting that their advancement will soon start happening more quickly than previously anticipated. "I've never in my career seen the acceleration of technology as fast as what we've witnessed in machine learning during the last two years," said Dale Sanders, executive vice president at Health Catalyst. Sanders, it's worth noting, has a U.S. Air Force background working on stacked neural networks and fuzzy logic, which used to be called deep learning, as well as serving as the CIO of both Northwestern University and national health system of the Cayman Islands. "The rate of improvement happening in machine learning," Sanders added, "is way beyond what Moore's Law is to chips." Hospitals already deploying AI As the next generation of both patients and caregivers – including clinicians, doctors, nurses, specialists, even executives and administrators – starts taking a foothold in the healthcare workforce, hospitals looking for a first-mover advantage already know that AI is on the verge of becoming a critical component across the entire organization, and not just IT. "AI and machine learning are exciting opportunities for us to accelerate," Carolinas HealthCare Chief Information and Analytics Officer Craig Richardville said.

Artificial intelligence could be the most revolutionary force affecting productivity in the United States economy, says the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. "Everyone in Silicon Valley thinks statisticians are mis-measuring the productivity provided by the internet, but it's not that," says John C. Williams, on a trip to Sydney this week. "Instead, the technologies that we now use and love mostly affect our consumption of leisure rather than affect our output in factories or offices." Positive data showing the US economy is nearing full employment and that inflation is edging higher prompted the US central bank to recently raise interest rates for the second time in three months. The US Fed also announced it will push ahead with plans to gradually shrink its $US4.5 trillion ($6 trillion) bond portfolio.

When you think of AI (artificial intelligence), the first thought you may have is in regards to games, recreation, and futuristic robots. After all, AI is the next big thing in virtual video games, taking "reality" to a whole new level. However, AI is so much more than that. There has been a lot of hype about AI in the last couple of years. Again, most of it in the form of promises of faster answers, better outcomes, and improved productivity.

Too often the answer to this question resembles the plot of a sci-fi thriller. People worry that developments in A.I. will bring about the "singularity" -- that point in history when A.I. surpasses human intelligence, leading to an unimaginable revolution in human affairs. Or they wonder whether instead of our controlling artificial intelligence, it will control us, turning us, in effect, into cyborgs. These are interesting issues to contemplate, but they are not pressing. They concern situations that may not arise for hundreds of years, if ever.

To read the original article visit my blog: www.globalfuturist.org The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and an increasingly connected society has already, according to the UK's MI5 made it "much harder for spies to hide in the shadows", but now, if Robert Cardillo has his way, so called robo-automation tools will perform 75 percent of the tasks currently done by the new front line of American intelligence spies – the analysts who collect, analyse, and interpret images beamed from drones, satellites, and other feeds around the globe. Cardillo, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, (NGA), announced his push toward "automation" and "AI" at a conference this week in San Antonio. The annual conference, hosted by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, brings together technologists, soldiers, and intelligence professionals to discuss national security threats, changes in technology, and data collection and processing. AI is on the rise, and last year former President Barack Obama's White House created a Defcon Scale for Cyberattacks, and released a white paper on its potential future impacts in the final months of the administration, and police forces around the world are increasingly using preliminary "pre-crime" technologies to predict when, where and by whom crimes will likely be committed.

"Man," here, stands for the collective human race. But, why not use the latin word for "Wise woman" or "Wise person?" There was a movement in the tech world a few years ago to use female pronouns more often. Here's another question -- why do we call a list of bad things a "blacklist?" And, why is the opposite a "whitelist?" Why does white represent good and black represent bad?