Manulife's Lab of Forward Thinking (LOFT) is undergoing efforts to accelerate its adoption of new technologies. In April, the Canadian insurer's U.S. unit John Hancock took a deep dive into blockchain--collaborating with startups ConsenSys and BlockApps. More recently, Manulife began exploring artificial intelligence and deep learning in its innovation labs through partnerships with Nervana Systems and indico data solutions. Once complete, the platform will serve as a means for research analysts to analyze and decipher natural language from public sources to make smarter investment decisions, the company said. Jesse Bean, LOFT's chief experience officer and VP, head of innovation, global solutions delivery spoke with INN about how the insurer is exploring deep learning and how the technology fits into Manulife's innovation strategy.

Data analytics is becoming a cornerstone of the financial industry, with startups and established financial service firms looking to give investors clearer guidance with information collected and captured from multiple sources. Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular are providing greater insights and better customer experiences. AI-powered data analytics not only captures vast amounts of data in real-time, but also helps users understand how different data points relate to each other, providing insights that might otherwise be lost. Faced with a breakdown in brand loyalty as younger customers prioritize user experience, financial services are now racing to leverage data-driven cognitive technologies. Cambridge, MA-based Kensho, which recently received 58 million in funding from Goldman Sachs, San Francisco-based Alphasense, backed by Tribeca Venture Partners, and Toronto-based Bigterminal are some of the fintech players leveraging AI.

Artificial intelligence (or AI) has permeated most facets of our lives. Algorithms suggest our social media mates. But could the arrival of the robots be applied to education? Jozef Misik, managing director of Knowble, a language tech start-up whose products are built on AI, believes so: "Most educational technology products will have an AI or deep learning component in future," he says. Already, AI is able to address common learning challenges.

The commercial Internet has now been around for twenty some years and the overall experience hasn't changed much from the days of "You've Got Mail." The Internet started out as a research tool between government, universities and corporations. With the advent of hyperlinks, the Internet has been transformed into a commercial vehicle for the sale of good and services. The Internet of today as a research tool is pathetic and has taken on a bias of consumerism. Take this example: "show me all printers that use HP 950 Ink cartridges."

Mitsubishi Electric, Zenrin and nine other automakers will start collecting high resolution 3D maps for self-driving cars to use, in preparation for autonomous car deployment in the country. The project is backed by the Cabinet Office's Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (quite a mouthful), which commissioned Dynamic Map Planning, a joint venture of the 11 companies, to build the 3D maps. Japan's government hopes that self-driving cars will be on the road before the start of the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2020, according to Nikkei. Highly detailed 3D maps provide a ton of data for self-driving cars, which can be analyzed by machine learning systems and fed into an entire fleet of vehicles. Once an entire city is mapped, the self-driving car could, in theory, know every single traffic light, walkway, and intersection while driving less than a mile.

Blockchain technology brings security structures and incentives in line with the way we share information in the 21st century. Lloyd's of London knows a thing or two about business losses--for three centuries, the world's oldest insurance market has been paying out damages triggered by wars, natural disasters, and countless acts of human error and fraud. So, it's worth paying attention when Lloyds estimates that cybercrime caused businesses to lose 400 billion between stolen funds and disruption to their operations in 2015. If that number seems weighty--and it ought to--try this one for size: 2.1 trillion. That's Juniper Research's total cybercrime loss forecast for the even more digitally interconnected world projected for 2019. To put that figure in perspective, at current economic growth rates, it would represent more than 2% of total world GDP.

Shop Direct, the company that runs the Littlewoods.com The move has paid off. The company turned a profit of 150.4m, a 43 per cent increase year-on-year, and said that the focus on digital, and especially mobile, was core to this growth. Traffic to Shop Direct sites grew by 12 per cent to 1.2 million visits a day, while traffic from smartphones grew 42 per cent to a daily average of 638,000. This led to a 46 per cent increase year on year in orders made via smartphones, while the company's app has now been downloaded almost a million times across iOS and Android.

Companies have invested over 4 billion to create bots and analyze the resulting data, which is now being generated by millions of users around the globe. Far from being a specialized subset, bot data contains all of the hallmarks of user behavior data that's been collected since the dawn of the internet, but it's more than just conversions, demographics, and engagement. Read on to learn how much more value bot data can provide, beyond answering wtf is that? Bots provide data streams that are inherently social and optimized for feeding machine learning algorithms and still include the same invaluable information inherent to any digital user process. For example, bots on a platform like Facebook Messenger can capture user demographics, traffic rates, sales conversions, or any activity or API request.

Machine Learning is one of the most exciting fields in the world. Every week we discover something new, something amazing, something revolutionary. It's incredible, but it can also be overwhelming. That's why we created This Week in Machine Learning! Each week we publish a curated list of Machine Learning stories as a resource to help you keep pace with all these exciting developments.

Over the past 30 years, tools once reserved for presidents, spies, generals and media moguls have been made available cheaply to billions. Streaming live video to a global audience used to cost millions. Now, it's free and you could be doing it in five seconds if you wanted to. Every great leader, from presidents to CEOs, is surrounded by trusted advisors who guide and inform at every step. Successful leaders often succeed in part because they have better advice or better information.