The proliferation of robots completing manual tasks traditionally done by humans suggests we have entered the machine automation age. And while nothing captures the imagination like self-directing machines shuttling merchandise around warehouses, most automation today comes courtesy of software bots that perform clerical tasks such as data entry. Here's the good news: Far from a frontal assault on cubicle inhabitants, these software agents may eventually net more jobs than they consume, as they pave the way for companies to create new knowledge domain and customer-facing positons for employees, analysts say. The approach, known as robotic process automation (RPA), automates tasks that office workers would normally conduct with the assistance of a computer, says Deloitte LLP Managing Director David Schatsky, who recently published research on the topic. RPA's potential will grow as it is combined with cognitive technologies to make bots more intelligent, ideally increasing their value to businesses.

Software giant SAP, British AI startup BenevolentAI and the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne have become Europe's first users of our new NVIDIA DGX-1 AI supercomputer. This "plug and play" system -- loaded with powerful GPUs and special software for deep learning -- has been designed to help data scientists innovate and get to market faster with AI applications. Enterprise software giant SAP is now using DGX-1 AI supercomputers at its German and Israeli offices, where its teams are building machine learning solutions for SAP's 320,000 customers. In the U.K., BenevolentAI will use DGX-1 as part of its effort to accelerate drug discovery by using deep natural language processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence to formulate new, usable knowledge from complex scientific information. "For the current application of our AI technology in the bioscience space, it will mean that new drug discoveries can be made faster and more efficiently than ever before," said BenevolentAI co-founder and Director Ken Mulvany.

REDMOND, Washington -- Sept. 29, 2016 -- Microsoft Corp. announced on Thursday it has formed the Microsoft AI and Research Group, bringing together Microsoft's world-class research organization with more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers focused on the company's AI product efforts. The new group will be led by computer vision luminary Harry Shum, a 20-year Microsoft veteran whose career has spanned leadership roles across Microsoft Research and Bing engineering. Microsoft is dedicated to democratizing AI for every person and organization, making it more accessible and valuable to everyone and ultimately enabling new ways to solve some of society's toughest challenges. Today's announcement builds on the company's deep focus on AI and will accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to customers across agents, apps, services and infrastructure. In addition to Shum's existing leadership team, several of the company's engineering leaders and teams will join the newly formed group including Information Platform, Cortana and Bing, and Ambient Computing and Robotics teams led by David Ku, Derrick Connell and Vijay Mital, respectively.

David Siegel, a quantitative hedge fund pioneer, issued a warning to investors: Artificial intelligence lacks common sense. Siegel, who has used AI to build his Two Sigma Investments into a 37 billion hedge fund firm, said algorithms are limited by the scant amount of training data available to instruct them on how to differentiate objects in images. "Artificial intelligence today doesn't have anything that resembles common sense, and common sense is a key feature of intelligence," Siegel, 55, said at the Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit on Wednesday. Hedge funds are embracing a form of AI called machine learning years after Two Sigma deployed the technology and as stock and bond pickers struggle to outperform markets. Highbridge Capital Management, Bridgewater Associates and Point72 Asset Management are among firms trying to profit from machine-learning algorithms, which automatically find patterns in large batches of financial data to inform investment calls.

Sean Captain 09.29.16 7:30 AM 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 ... IBM recently released new details about the efficiency of its TrueNorth processors, which sport a fundamentally novel design that cribs from the structure of the brain. Rather than line up billions of digital transistors all in a line, TrueNorth chips have a million computer'neurons' that work in parallel across 256 million inter-neuron connections ('synapses'). In recent months, cancer and artificial intelligence (AI) have long been associated together. Continuously proving its undeniable influence to humanity, it's not quite surprising to learn how machine learning could be of help in the field of precision medicine, particularly in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Microsoft wants to help enterprises make sense of their big data with the help of the software giant's cloud, artificial intelligence and machine learning product portfolio, CEO Satya Nadella said during his keynote presentation at Microsoft Ignite 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Today a new nonprofit organization called the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society announced its establishment. Participants include Amazon, Google (and Google's DeepMind), Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft. Those companies will put up money and research resources (that could mean talent, open source code, or data). Company representatives will sit on the organization's board alongside people from academia, the nonprofit world, and policy and ethics experts, according to a statement. Plans call for discussions, studies, reports, best practices, and public outreach in general.

NEW YORK: In a major boost to artificial intelligence (AI) research, five top-notch tech companies -- Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft -- have joined hands to announce a historic partnership on AI and machine learning. It means that these companies will discuss advancements and conduct research in AI and how to develop best products and services powered by machine learning, Tech Crunch reported on Thursday. Initial financial help will come from these companies and as other stakeholders join the group, the finances are expected to increase. "We want to involve people impacted by AI as well," Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder and head of applied AI at DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet (parent company of Google), was quoted as saying. According to the report, the organisational structure has been designed to allow non-corporate groups to have equal leadership side-by-side with large tech companies.

Several of the tech sector's biggest names have come together to form an Artificial Intelligence organisation that will explore the ethics and applications of technology that could transform the entire industry. Amazon, Facebook, Google (DeepMind), IBM and Microsoft are founding members of the'Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society', or'Partnership on AI' for short, and will invite academics, non-profit organisations, specialists in policy and ethics to join the board. Partnership on AI itself is a non-profit organisation and will conduct and publish research on an open licence in areas such as ethics, transparency, privacy, interoperability, reliability and interaction between humans and AI systems. The ultimate stated aim of the alliance is to increase public awareness of AI, maximise the benefits to society, and address various challenges. It says it is not a lobbying organisation and all members will contribute financial and research resources.

If you are at Sibos and would like to meet with Microsoft, please stop by booth #G19 or reach out to us at sibosms@microsoft.com. At Sibos, Microsoft is showcasing how it is empowering financial institutions to drive digital transformation with solutions to reimagine the client experience for a digital world, empower employees with modern productivity suites and digital workstyles, optimize operations through improved insight into risk and operational models, and transform products with open and connected systems and highly-automated digital processes. Through a combination of Microsoft and partner solutions, financial institutions can turn data into insight, transform ideas into action, and turn change into opportunity. Karen Cone, Microsoft General Manager of Worldwide Financial Services, gives a round-up of the latest news and views from the third day at Sibos. Hear from Microsoft General Manager of Worldwide Financial Services, Karen Cone, as she shares a round-up of today's discussion and conference sessions at Sibos.

In a major boost to artificial intelligence (AI) research, five top-notch tech companies -- Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft -- have joined hands to announce a historic partnership on AI and machine learning. It means that these companies will discuss advancements and conduct research in AI and how to develop best products and services powered by machine learning, Tech Crunch reported on Thursday. Initial financial help will come from these companies and as other stakeholders join the group, the finances are expected to increase. "We want to involve people impacted by AI as well," Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder and head of applied AI at DeepMind, a subsidiary of Alphabet (parent company of Google), was quoted as saying. According to the report, the organisational structure has been designed to allow non-corporate groups to have equal leadership side-by-side with large tech companies.