Salesforce's recent acquisitions of AI startups including MetaMind will enable it to keep pace with the functions that consumer-focused companies … From Dick Tracy's watch to Wonder Woman's Bracelets to Bat Girls total recall and technopathy, fiction has a intriguing dialog with invention. Enable natural interaction with your app using a conversational interface powered by the Watson Developer Cloud APIs. KPMG LLP and IBM today announced plans to apply IBM's Watson cognitive computing technology to KPMG's professional services offerings. It can answer guests' questions about the hotel and tourist destinations. The hotel has recently welcomed a new concierge named "Connie," you see, and it's actually a Nao robot powered by IBM's AI.

Accenture have announced the global rollout of an intelligent automation platform, Accenture myWizard, that enables smarter, more innovative and more efficient application services consisting of systems integration and application development and management. The platform combines Accenture's industry and technology assets and business knowledge across 40 industries with intelligent automation, including artificial intelligence at its core. Accenture myWizard supports productivity improvement for clients by employing a team of virtual agents, powered by artificial intelligence, to analyze data, identify patterns and guide human workers to make better informed decisions. This guides human workers to make better informed decisions that can drive highly impactful business performance which can include significant improvement in application quality, cost reduction and speed to market. The new platform brings together numerous proprietary Accenture industry assets, including intelligent and analytics tools and methods, as well as tools from across Accenture's alliance partner ecosystem.

A recent study by researchers at Oxford University and consultants Deloitte may have given finance professionals pause for thought. It found that, based on the nature of their work and the expected advance of machine intelligence, it is 95% likely that charted accountants will be replaced by some form of automation over the next 20 years. That is a startling figure, but it should come as no surprise that the work of the finance department is ripe for automation. Since 2004 the median number of full-time employees working in the function at big companies has declined by 40% to about 71 people for every US 1bn of revenue, down from 119 people, according to Hackett Group, a consulting firm. This is due, in part at least, to the increased use of automation within the finance department, the researchers say.

This is the first of a three-post series on machine learning. Is machine learning just a fancy word for the same old computer programming we have employed for decades? Or, is machine learning a mystical computer that can learn anything? More importantly, why does it matter to your business? The most effective way to define machine learning is to compare it with traditional computer programming.

It is mostly corporate bullshit, but I do think it is noteworthy that Accenture is starting to take AI/ML seriously. Accenture is perhaps the world's largest consulting firm.

But what if you are not one of these? I received the following job ad in my mailbox (see below in italics), from a third-party recruiter, and it's probably for a data science position at Nike near Portland, Oregon (my guess). Basically, it's a 6-month gig to build an A/B platform. I discuss here a few aspects that make this job ad unlikely to attract talent, as well as remedies. This skills mix is not found in typical employees.

First up was KPMG, which announced that it is signing up to IBM's "Jeopardy!"-winning Given the time, cost and (dare I say it) inane world of audit, this could be an interesting move. IBM is, of course, pushing Watson incessantly as its huge opportunity for growth -- it acquired The Weather Company partially as a vertical big data opportunity, but also for its huge data sets to continue improving Watson's performance. Healthcare, too, has seen IBM push its Watson luxe. But now financial services are the game, and KPMG advises that its consultants will use Watson to analyze massive volumes of financial data in order to detect anomalies.

New Delhi: Accenture Operations, the 7-billion business segment of technology firm Accenture Plc, which deals with process outsourcing, infrastructure consulting and outsourcing, security and cloud services, is betting on automation platforms backed by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for its next phase of growth, said Manish Sharma, senior managing director, Accenture Operations in an interview earlier this week. "Analytics and automation are critical and are high-focus areas for us. We are using automation technologies at scale for our client base," he said. "We are investing a lot of money and time into the AI piece. In automation, there is simple automation like Mini-Bots and then there is high-end automation solutions like Virtual Assistance and artificial or cognitive solutions," he explained.

Software's immersion within businesses, process and objects has expanded the scope of what could be automated. When you add in rapid advances in artificial intelligence, you start seeing a lot more interest in technologies that are increasing how well machine sense, learn and act. Investors are taking notice – investments in artificial intelligence start-ups by venture capitalists have increased roughly 20x in the last four years. What's your Intelligent Automation play?

Deloitte today announced an alliance with Kira Systems to bring the power of machine learning to the workplace, an innovation that could help free workers from the tedium of reviewing contracts and other documents. The alliance will combine Deloitte's business insights in cognitive technologies with Kira Systems' advances in machine-learning in creating models that quickly "read" thousands of complex documents, extracting and structuring textual information for better analysis. This capability holds broad applications for the marketplace, said Craig Muraskin, Deloitte LLP, managing director of Deloitte's US Innovation group, as the extensive review of documents goes into many pressing business activities, including investigations, mergers, contract management, and leasing arrangements. "Wading through miles of corporate jargon hunting for key words and patterns can consume considerable time and resources," said Muraskin. "By teaming with Kira Systems we can help organizations reduce their review time while redeploying talent to higher value activities--let's save our eyes for more strategic matters." Noah Waisberg, CEO of Kira Systems, said recent innovations by his company, such as Kira Quick Study, are graduating machine learning to new levels of accomplishment.