John Charles Thomas was born in Akron, Ohio and attended Ellet High School. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University majoring in psychology and minoring in mathematics and drama. He received a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Michigan. His dissertation compared human performance in a problem solving task to that of an early AI system called "The General Problem Solver." After graduate school, Dr. Thomas managed a research project on the psychology of aging at Harvard Medical School.

Using a system built in house, Ocado is in the process of eliminating manual review and sorting of the more than 2,000 daily customer service emails it receives. British web grocer Ocado Group Plc. receives about 2,000 customer service emails a day on average. That number can easily double or triple during the holiday season or when other issues come up such as bad weather that may delay a customer's order, says Dan Nelson, head of data for Ocado, No. 23 in the Internet Retailer 2016 Europe 500. Nelson says the problem until recently is that retailer, which sells solely online and was launched in 2000, used to task its customer service staff with going through and sorting each email that came in. "A lot of customer service reps' time was spent filtering emails," Nelson says.

I, for one, can't wait to fill my plate up with some stuffing. Also, whether you're ready for it or not, the holiday shopping season is almost upon us. In honor of Black Friday this week, let's take a look at why shoppers choose the stores they do. The world of retail is fast-paced and constantly changing, and it can be a real struggle for companies to feel that they're succeeding in this environment. While the key to attracting and retaining customers can change from retailer to retailer, there are some fundamental drivers of customer satisfaction – and dissatisfaction – that hold true for most companies.

Nintendo is offering a number of major Black Friday bargains this holiday season that have consumers preparing to brave chaotic scenes at their local retailer. This summer, Nintendo announced the re-release of its 1985 classic, the NES, with 30 pre-installed games for only $60. Following its Nov. 11 release date, it was an immediate hit. Now shoppers are wondering where they will be able to find the system ahead of the holidays. Major retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy and Amazon are likely to restock ahead of Black Friday and shoppers should expect to face long lines and large crowds to find Nintendo's hottest deal of the year.

Artificial Intelligence is the buzzword of the year with immense anticipation and excitement attached to it, but also often a fear of the unknown. So much so, that tech behemoths Facebook, IBM, Google's parent company Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft recently announced a partnership to discuss AI best practices. While there are the science fiction-driven angles of AI, like robots, self-driving cars, Internet of Things, and augmented reality, there are also more practical applications that affect business owners every day, especially those working in the virtual customer service world of online retail. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 85% of interaction between customers and retailers will be through artificial intelligence customer service programs. Brands are rushing to build out their customer service approaches leveraging AI to create accurate product catalogs, fine-tuned search capabilities, and truly personalized online experiences.

With wit, vision, and scholarship, Domingos describes how these scientists are creating programs that allow a computer to teach itself.

This post was featured in Information Age and can be read here. Artificial Intelligence, intelligence as exhibited by machines, is not something that is new to this world. Nearly twenty years ago IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov. The win was symbolically significant and a sign that Artificial Intelligence was catching up with human intelligence. Fast forward twenty years and the application of AI technologies is something we encounter on a regular basis.

Populism is sweeping the nation, but it's likely just getting started. Donald Trump's win is a wake-up call that voters are angry with a system that's made middle-class jobs tougher to come by, and increased inequality. As pronounced as the trend already is, it's only just the beginning, experts say. Looming technological advances will wipe out more jobs, broadening the base of disenfranchised, unemployable and frustrated citizens. Meanwhile, elites with the skills to flourish in the digital economy will get richer.

Artificial intelligence can be an important tool for collecting as well as interpreting business related data. Currently around 45 companies specialize in AI for functions such as recommendations, search, multichannel marketing, merchandising, and conversational commerce. Nothing works better for accumulating and making sense of all the data than machine learning, or AI. When automating aspects of a retail business, AI is able to provide an intelligent as well as a speedy solution, including self-adapting algorithms which can show a company's patterns of behavior which would otherwise be hidden from humans reading the data on their own. From there you have a starting point for predicting patterns of behavior and interaction which drive the most customer interaction, or purchasing.

Artificial intelligence, intelligence as exhibited by machines, is not something that is new to this world. Nearly twenty years ago IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov. The win was symbolically significant and a sign that artificial intelligence was catching up with human intelligence. Fast forward 20 years and the application of AI technologies is something we encounter on a regular basis. For example, manufacturing and the use of robots in assembly and packaging has revolutionised how our favourite products are made.