This story was delivered to BI Intelligence Apps and Platforms Briefing subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. Huawei's R&D arm, Noah's Ark Laboratory, announced on Tuesday a partnership with the University of California, Berkley's artificial intelligence (AI) lab focused on researching AI in all its forms. Initially, the Chinese smartphone company will fund UC Berkley 1 million as it covers areas like deep learning, reinforcement learning, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision. Huawei is likely investigating AI in order to ensure its not left behind by rival smartphone companies like Samsung, Apple, and Google, all of which have begun implementing AI into their devices. As hardware shipments begin to decelerate, hardware companies are looking at AI as the next growth platform.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence Apps and Platforms Briefing subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. Baidu unveiled on Monday a medical chatbot that aims to simplify the process of collecting and sharing information between patient and doctor, VentureBeat reports. Dubbed "Melody," the bot -- which is housed within the Baidu Doctor app -- collects and aggregates medical information from users that it then passes on to doctors who use the information to make diagnoses. Melody, which is only available in China, provides a proof-of-concept that could be replicated in Western markets and lay the framework for the wider implementation of chatbots within the mobile health (mHealth) industry.

Advances in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are going to completely change how we live and work but the UK government is totally unprepared, MPs have warned. The Science and Technology Committee released a report on Wednesday warning that the UK government "does not yet have a strategy" for equipping citizens with the skills they need to flourish in a world where AI is more prevalent. It also has no strategy for dealing with the social and ethical dilemmas that AI advances present, according to the report. Acting chair of the Science and Technology Committee, Dr Tania Mathias MP, said in a statement: "Artificial intelligence has some way to go before we see systems and robots as portrayed in the creative arts such as Star Wars. At present, 'AI machines' have narrow and specific roles, such as in voice-recognition or playing the board game'Go'. "But science fiction is slowly becoming science fact, and robotics and AI look destined to play an increasing role in our lives over the coming decades.

With Omni-channel becoming the new norm, new prospects, activities and service requests could be generated from any source. Accordingly, insurers need to ensure that they are continuously engaged with the ever-connected and digitally-aware customers from the millennial generation to improve the overall experience and loyalty. Products Structuring AI will play a vital role in launching innovative insurance products that are structured to change dynamically and contextually for individual customers. With the help of AI, policies will be monitored on an ongoing basis for behavioral or other pattern changes, so that the coverage, price, and terms and conditions of the contract can be auto-altered. Actuarial and Product Pricing AI will play a core role in building new and dynamic risk models for products.

This system, created by a team at St. Andrews University in Scotland, uses radar technology and Google's Project Soli to identify a wide variety of items. In the future, when you come across a strange thing or material, all you'll need to do is give it a scan before promptly receiving an answer.

We talk to a lot of analysts at Lab41. A recurring theme of these conversations is what they frequently refer to as "result provenance." Translation -- "Are these results any good? I don't have a whole lot of time to research them any further, so will these results hold up under scrutiny?" The old adage about lies, damn lies, and statistics has been around for just about forever.

Measurement of true customer satisfaction has always been the Holy Grail of customer experience. Sure, there are several methods currently in use, including net promoter scores (NPS), customer effort scores, and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT). Typically these approaches are fed by customer surveys--quite often the results are too little and too late. But what would happen if we disrupted customer satisfaction measurement using the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI)? The first step to this new disruptive approach is to have customers opt in and provide the data streams that could be fed into an IoT Complex Event Processor (CEP engine), which is a collection of technology components that can process millions of events from mobile devices, connected products, website clicks, social media posts, and pretty much any type of message that can be generated by computers.

As you may have noticed, we've been researching artificial intelligence (AI) and its economic and educational implications. From healthcare to transportation, we believe it is incredibly important for young people and adults to be learning about AI, and we are writing more about it to equip teachers and parents with information to help young people ask good questions about the implications of AI on their lives and livelihoods. To get the scoop, I sat Tom Vander Ark down for a podcast interview on AI. You'll also hear from Gerald Huff, a senior Silicon Valley software engineer, who shares his thoughts on AI and what it means for students and the transportation industry. Listen to the podcast, read excerpts from the interview below and be sure follow the campaign at #AskAboutAI.

Recently Tom (@neuralmarket) and I had the chance to work together with Amanda Shiga (@AmandaShiga) from Nonlinear Digital to build web analytics process using RapidMiner. Amanda has an on-going pilot project to apply data mining techniques to clickstream and user behavior data collected from her client's website. The website has a number of value-weighted micro-conversions, such as newsletter signup, or downloading a whitepaper, or event registration. For online retailers, seeing the visitors convert to paying customers is the ultimate goal. The focus of web analytics nowadays has shifted from getting visitors to a website to turning the web visitors into high value customers.

In this post-Tinder world, your profile picture is everything. The world swipes right (acceptance!) or swipes left (rejection!) based solely on what your photo looks like. Not what you look like. What your photo looks like. So, when hunting for dates and other forms of conjugation, you better get that photo right.