Every step forward in artificial intelligence (AI) challenges assumptions about what machines can do. Myriad opportunities for economic benefit have created a stable flow of investment into AI research and development, but with the opportunities come risks to decision-making, security and governance. Increasingly intelligent systems supplanting both blue- and white-collar employees are exposing the fault lines in our economic and social systems and requiring policy-makers to look for measures that will build resilience to the impact of automation. Leading entrepreneurs and scientists are also concerned about how to engineer intelligent systems as these systems begin implicitly taking on social obligations and responsibilities, and several of them penned an Open Letter on Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence in late 2015.1 Whether or not we are comfortable with AI may already be moot: more pertinent questions might be whether we can and ought to build trust in systems that can make decisions beyond human oversight that may have irreversible consequences. By providing new information and improving decision-making through data-driven strategies, AI could potentially help to solve some of the complex global challenges of the 21st century, from climate change and resource utilization to the impact of population growth and healthcare issues.

Infosys, a global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services, today announced that it has been awarded in the'Best in Show' category by TM Forum Live! Asia". TM Forum is a leading global industry association for digital business. The award was given for the'Cognitive Digital Agent' - a project championed by Globe Telecom, Philippines along with Infosys, Amdocs and Huawei. The project demonstrated the feasibility of using cognitive computing technologies aligned to telecom business processes to enhance customer experience in a more intuitive and natural fashion. To address changing consumer needs and demands in today's digital economy, Infosys, along with Huawei and Amdocs, established the Cognitive Digital Agent - a five-month project, led by Globe Telecom. This was aimed at creating the next generation of customer care services, leveraging artificial intelligence technologies. The core solution is driven by Infosys' expertise in natural language processing, machine learning and cognitive computing. The Cognitive Digital Agent has the capability to address complex queries and answer questions through omni-channel access including interactive voice responses (IVR), portals and wearables. The Cognitive Digital Agent creates a difference in situations where, if a call center is contacted, the responses are generated using natural language processing - making them more consumer friendly, or on social media platforms and in smart watches where the machine agent responds to queries 24x7. TM Forum recognized the project for some of these exceptional demonstrations of business outcomes across channels, and the inventive use of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). "Our goal has been to explore the use of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning to create the next generation of customer care services, which, in turn, enabled us to create this compelling project that can significantly improve customer satisfaction.

Founding Attorney Chad Van Horn says, "We are excited to add ROSS to our already busy team of bankruptcy attorneys. ROSS will allow us to continue to be at the forefront of assisting consumers with their legal issues while keeping attorneys fees at an affordable level. ROSS will assist in equaling the playing field between boutique law firms and big law. In short, we're excited to add ROSS to our extremely talented team of legal professionals." ROSS is an artificial intelligence, and as such has never been to law school or passed the bar, but his research is impeccable.

This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com A philanthropic organization set up by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan has signed a deal to acquire Toronto tech company Meta. Financial terms of the deal, announced by venture capital firm iGan Partners, an early Meta backer, were not immediately available. Zuckerberg and Chan set up the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015. Meta uses artificial intelligence to help researchers keep on top of the latest scientific papers.

Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's $45 billion philanthropy organization is making its first acquisition in order to make it easier for scientists to search, read and tie together more than 26 million science research papers. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is acquiring Meta, an AI-powered research search engine startup, and will make its tool free to all in a few months after enhancing the product. Meta could help scientists find the latest papers related to their own projects, while assisting funding organizations to collaborate with researchers and identify high-potential areas for investment or impact. What's special about Meta is that its AI recognizes authors and citations between papers so it can surface the most important research instead of just what has the best SEO. It also provides free full-text access to 18,000 journals and literature sources. Meta co-founder and CEO Sam Molyneux writes that "Going forward, our intent is not to profit from Meta's data and capabilities; instead we aim to ensure they get to those who need them most, across sectors and as quickly as possible, for the benefit of the world."

Science search engine Meta has signed an agreement to be acquired by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, pending shareholder and court approvals, it announced late Monday. The Facebook-founder-owned philanthropic organization revealed (on Facebook) that it would offer Meta's tools free to all researchers. Meta's secret sauce is artificial intelligence, rather than the more programmatic algorithms used by search engines like Google, and that it's optimized for scientific research. By opening up the tool to all, CZI's goal is to break down some of the barriers that preclude the sharing of information, thereby encouraging scientific progress. "In the field of biomedicine alone, researchers publish more than 4,000 scientific papers every day. But many of these papers will not be read by the scientists who could learn the most from them," said CZI's Cori Bargmann and Brian Pinkerton, in a statement.

Keith Kirkpatrick is principal of 4K Research & Consulting, LLC, based in Lynbrook, NY.

The Leibniz Center for Law has its roots in the former department of Computer Science & Law of the Law Faculty of the University of Amsterdam, and currently houses about 15 researchers. The Leibniz Center conducts research and provides education in the field of Artificial Intelligence and law. In the tradition of Leibniz, we focus on the development and application of techniques from Artificial Intelligence to the field of Law for the purpose of supporting legal practice, and bringing new insights to legal theory. The Leibniz Center for Law has longstanding experience on legal ontologies, automatic legal reasoning and legal knowledge-based systems, (standard) languages for representing legal knowledge and information, user-friendly disclosure of legal data, and the application of ICT in education and legal practice (e.g. It plays an important role in the development of eGovernment on both national and international level. The center provides advice on change-management issues of knowledge-intensive legal processes and the improvement of knowledge-productivity in legal organisations.

The organization, owned by Zuckerberg and wife Dr. Priscilla Chan, announced on Monday it is acquiring AI firm Meta. The deal, which marks the organization's first acquisition, was purchased for an undisclosed amount. Meta uses AI to analyze millions of scientific papers and help scientists find relevant materials and patterns in data. The group plans to provide Meta's tools for free to all researchers. "Meta will help scientists learn from others' discoveries in real time, find key papers that may have gone unnoticed, or even predict where their field is headed," Cori Bargmann, president of science, and Brian Pinkerton, CTO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, wrote in a post on Facebook.

Most college students relax over their winter break, eating good food and de-stressing from the previous semester. But when I first talked with Joshua Browder, a Stanford University sophomore, he was busy finishing up schoolwork. I was lucky he had time to talk in the middle of his busy schedule. He's the founder of DoNotPay, a chatbot that helps overturn traffic tickets, and in a few days would be flying to London to meet with government officials about using his technology. Then off to Munich to speak at an international design and innovation conference.