The "ubiquitous" part of AI may sound visionary or scary, depending on which way you look at it. But it is in any case the end game for Viv, according to Viv's (and previously, Siri's) founder, Dag Kittlaus. That's why Viv has chosen to partner with Samsung, the #1 vendor in mobile devices sold, also present in the market with a number of other devices ranging from TVs to refrigerators. Intelligence as a utility is Viv's motto, and they aim to make AI as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi or search. But besides being present on as many devices as possible, Viv also intends to build a developer ecosystem and utilize as many data sources as possible, and this is where it gets interesting from the data point of view. One of the things that allegedly makes Viv better than Siri is the ability to utilize more data sources.

In the beginning, the whole coding scene consisted of one woman. In the 1800s, the story goes, an aristocrat named Ada Lovelace was studying maths with inventor Charles Babbage, who had built a machine that could perform calculations – what we'd call a computer. Lovelace came up with a series of commands for the machine: the first computer program. Now, in celebration of this, the second Tuesday of every October is Ada Lovelace Day. It's not surprising that this has spiralled to become the most symbolic day for women working in science, maths and engineering, with Lovelace a figurehead for ongoing attempts to close a worrying gender gap in those fields.

Three early transportation trends could soon transform the way global city dwellers get around, analysts say. The switch to electric cars, use of car sharing services and the arrival of driverless vehicles are all expected to grow substantially by 2030 -- potentially making it cleaner and easier to navigate cities around the world, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) said Tuesday in a new report. "Vehicles and the way they are used will change more in the next two decades than they have in the last 100 years," said Colin McKerracher, BNEF's head of advanced transport in London. He said the declining costs of electric-car batteries and the rapid advance of connected technologies are key reasons for the transit transformation. BNEF and consulting firm McKinsey & Company looked at how these three developments could play out in 50 cities around the world. What they found is that the projections vary based on each city's demographics and existing transportation policies.

Charlie Rose has had a storied career in journalism. After interviewing the who's-who of international celebrities, Rose pivoted last night from world leaders and entertainment stars to'Sophia' a smart AI in a humanoid robot shell. The interview detailed just how far we've come, and how far we've yet to come in the field of robotics. Created by David Hansen, of Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong, Sophia is a robot modeled after its creator's wife, with a few shades of Audrey Hepburn. The lifelike creation features realistic skin and facial movement and at times, even showed subtle hints at humanity.

What do Siri and machine translation have in common? They both produce strange, sometimes ridiculous language that leave us shaking our heads with confusion. Here at IVANNOVATION we frequently use Siri as well as Google's dictation function to get our work done. Siri instantly adds items to our to do lists, adds events to our calendars, and tells us answers to important questions like, "Siri, how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" (Ask Siri yourself.) Likewise, Google dictation helps us avoid the ruthless onslaught of carpal tunnel syndrome by typing up our articles and emails for us.

In his 2003 book, Being No One, Thomas Metzinger contends there is no such thing as a "self." Rather, the self is a kind of transparent information-processing system. "You don't see it," he writes. "But you see with it." Metzinger has given a good amount of thought to the nature of our subjective experience--and how best to study it.

IBM just made another major step toward getting its Watson supercomputer into hospitals around the world. Siemens and IBM Watson Health are teaming up in something they're calling a five-year "global strategic alliance" to bring Watson to population health -- a concept that's aimed at improving the health of people in an entire community, not just those in the hospital needing immediate care. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the partnership. Siemens is a German industrial company which, in addition to a healthcare branch (dubbed Siemens Healthineers), also works in energy and transportation. The partnership basically just gives Watson a chance to reach out to a lot more people who provide healthcare, as according to Siemens, the company is involved in more than 70% of "critical clinical decisions" thanks to Siemens instruments.

As artificial intelligence software has grown in prominence in recent months, one fear has flowed beneath the surface of many discussions: What will the technology's effect be on jobs? In some cases, AI applications are being designed to automate specific jobs, like that of customer service agents. More broadly, some commentators have suggested the technology could become general enough to perform most tasks currently being performed by workers, whether blue collar or white collar. But Matt Gould, founder and chief strategy officer at Arria NLG, a software company that uses a flavor of AI to produce business reports in natural language, says we have nothing to fear from the coming artificially intelligent future. In this interview, he explains why workers stand to gain far more than they may lose as more and more enterprises adopt AI applications.

In Singapore, the Fullerton Health Group has increased its quality of care and reduced costs with the help of machine learning and a partnership with Microsoft. Real-time medical data helps Fullerton's health care providers give the best course of action for patients. And operational analytics and machine learning power a program that helps patients and providers manage chronic diseases. Watch the video to learn more and go to the Microsoft Enterprise blog.

Before we discuss it in the context of marketing automation, let us define ALAMO – it is the All-important Leading-edge Analytics-based MIPS mOdel. The acronym MIPS refers to the four-step process in marketing automation: Measurement – Inference – Prediction – Steering. In a previous article "The K.I.S.S. Principle in Marketing Analytics – Keep It Simple and Smart", we listed some of the major benefits of marketing automation to businesses who use it. It has its ups and its downs (which are all good): the ups include increased revenues, leads, conversions, sales, and accuracy of multi-channel attributions; and downs include reduced marketing overhead. Those are outcomes that any CMO would love.