Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.11 % is concentrating its artificial-intelligence efforts under one roof as veteran executive Qi Lu stepped down to focus on recovering from a bicycle accident. Mr. Lu, a highly regarded executive in charge of the Office products and Bing search-engine businesses, was injured months ago. His recovery has been slow, a person familiar with the matter said. Mr. Lu expects to return to Microsoft in an advisory role to Chief Executive Satya Nadella and co-founder Bill Gates, the company said. Microsoft changed two of the top jobs at the company as Mr. Lu exits.

Silicon Valley company is creating AI software for self-driving cars. Amazon's Alexa can now handle commands for the Hyundai G90 luxury car (Photo: Genesis) Some of the top names in tech have formed a consortium aimed at fostering the promise of artificial intelligence while keeping its less savory side-effects in check. Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Google and Facebook announced Thursday the formation of the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. Noticeably absent as founding members are companies such as Apple and Tesla. "We look forward to working arm-in-arm on best practices and on such important topics as ethics, privacy, transparency, bias, inclusiveness, and safety," Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research, said in a statement.

During practices, American football coaches typically stay on the sidelines, grim-faced, as they order their players through drills. But during an afternoon this past May, in the cavernous training facility for the Pittsburgh Steelers, head coach Mike Tomlin couldn't resist getting in on the action. As a human-size robot sped over the artificial turf, the grinning coach ran onto the field and tackled it. The MVP, or Mobile Virtual Player, was designed to take precisely this kind of hit--the sort of jarring blow that, inflicted repeatedly, can injure the brains of human players. American football has been rocked by controversy over the last decade, as it has become clear that the repeated collisions inherent to the sport are giving players concussions and sometimes causing debilitating and permanent brain trauma. In response, the U.S. National Football League (NFL) has altered rules and contributed millions to medical research. Meanwhile, the same head-injury concerns have found even greater resonance in college and youth football.

Splunk has traditionally been a tool to ingest, index and enable searching across vast bodies of data from multiple disparate sources. Rick Fitz, Vice Presidents of IT Markets, explains the driving forces behind the introduction of machine learning, announced this week at the 7th annual Splunk conference, .conf Data doesn't live in a vacuum. Fitz states, "the goal of the data is how do I make better business decisions?" Consequently, Splunk has announced both a machine learning toolkit, and also the packaging of specific pre-built algorithms in a very consumable way within its IT Service Intelligence product.

Artificial Intelligence is the latest technological development which seems to be promising as well. With this in mind, five of the world's biggest technological companies have collaborated to shed light on this concept. The entities collaborating are Facebook, Google along with its DeepMind subsidiary, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM. This group will develop a non-profit organization which will concentrate solely on AI research groups and academics. This collaboration is known as The Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society.

A new partnership of some of the biggest names in the technology world will seek to explore the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI). Amazon, Google, DeepMind (owned by Google), Facebook, IBM and Microsoft have formed a non-profit organisation that will seek to unite AI experts and knowledge called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society. The group says that it will support research and recommend best practices in areas including "ethics, fairness, and inclusivity; transparency and interoperability; privacy; collaboration between people and AI systems; and of the trustworthiness, reliability, and robustness of the technology." This will include creating an open platform for engagement, where researchers and stakeholders can discuss AI-related issues. It will also aim to engage experts across multiple disciplines in academia, including psychology, philosophy, economics, finance, sociology, public policy, and law, aiming to produce informational materials on the topic. It will also support third-party studies and engage AI users and developers, as well as industries that may be impacted by AI.

The Terminator isn't arriving anytime soon, but concern is growing that artificial intelligence is already so pervasive in society--and getting more so all the time--that there needs to be more focus on how it's being used and potentially misused (even if by accident). Aside from futuristic killer robots, there are already real dangers ranging from faulty autonomous cars to algorithms used in hiring or recruiting that have an inadvertent bias against women or ethnic groups. The giants of artificial intelligence, especially as it affects consumers and businesses, have just joined together to form a nonprofit called the Partnership on AI, with founding members Amazon, DeepMind/Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft. It's the latest effort to keep a collective eye on how AI is developed and used. OpenAI, founded in December 2015, has a similar goal of conducing research and conferences to promote responsible use of AI.

Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft have announced they are forming a non-for-profit organisation to educate the public about artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, as well as alleviate anxieties around its application. The collective, which includes Google's AI subsidiary DeepMind, also plans to develop best practices on the challenges and opportunities within the field of AI. The organisation, called Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society (Partnership on AI), will address legal and ethical challenges that AI presents, encourage public discourse, and identify opportunities to use AI to bring improvements to society. The organisation does not intend to be a regulatory body, with a statement saying it does "not intend to lobby government or other policymaking bodies." Members of the Partnership on AI will conduct research, recommend best practices, and publish research under an open license in areas such as ethics, fairness, and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability, and robustness of the technology.

Automation, artificial intelligence, and machine learning were key themes at the Structure Security conference in San Francisco, Calif. For business tech leaders, the bottom line is that security and automation are blending together. The trick for tech buyers will be to sort through what platforms are legit versus mere marketing and buzzwords. Automation, automation, automation - Jay Leek, chief information security officer at private equity firm Blackstone, said his company started an effort to automate investigations and rote security task and other items in a bid to alleviate a security talent crunch and boost productivity. The upshot: Leek's security analysts do more high-value work, and initial investigations now take 40 seconds.