New Delhi: Delhi-based artificial intelligence start-up Octo.ai has raised 200,000 from early stage investor Outbox Ventures, Rahul Khanna, managing partner of venture debt fund Trifecta Capital and Jaspreet Bindra, head of e-commerce at Mahindra & Mahindra, the company said on Tuesday. The company will use the fund for enhancing technology. Ltd) is an open-source analytics platform built for machine learning. It helps companies retain their data and apply machine learning to power real-time insights, recommendations and personalised feeds on their platform. It allows them to install Octo, and send personalised push messages to each user to drive more active users and engagement.

According to media reports, the acquisition reportedly happened earlier but was not publicly announced yet. An Apple spokesperson has now responded, saying: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." Founded in 2013 by Anil Sethi and Karthik Hariharan, Gliimpse provides a secure platform where consumers can manage and share their medical records and info. According to Sethi's LinkedIn page, Gliimpse -- like many startups -- was born of a personal need. In recent months, Apple has acquired HealthKit, CareKit and ResearchKit startups that allow patients, doctors and researchers to access important health and wellness data via a range of mobile devices.

Machine learning and AI have gradually moved from theoretical discussion to a real-life, everyday business application. But this increasingly ubiquitous technology goes by many names, and businesses must be careful to select performance over hype. Artificial intelligence has leapt from the pages of popular sci-fi novels and screenplays and into our everyday lives. Consider, for instance, the software I'm using to transcribe this paragraph as I dictate it out loud -- it's a simple enough task for a human, but one that requires some extraordinary computation for this technology. A natural language processor must categorize complex audio data as either useful or irrelevant, analyze it with probabilistic reasoning, and synthesize the result: in this case, the words you're currently reading.

The field of artificial intelligence has spawned a vast range of subset fields and terms: machine learning, neural networks, deep learning and cognitive computing, to name but a few. However here we will turn our attention to the specific term'artificial general intelligence', thanks to the Portland-based AI company Kimera Systems' (momentous) claim to have launched the world's first ever example, called Nigel. The AGI Society defines artificial general intelligence as "an emerging field aiming at the building of "thinking machines"; that is general-purpose systems with intelligence comparable to that of the human mind (and perhaps ultimately well beyond human general intelligence)". AGI would, in theory, be able to perform any intellectual feat a human can. You can now perhaps see why a claim to have launched the world's first ever AGI might be a tad ambitious, to say the least.

Baidu Inc needs to do more to diversity its business as the Chinese search engine firm falls behind domestic peers Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and Tencent Holdings Ltd in revenue and profit, analysts said on Monday. Such efforts are of urgent importance to help Baidu safeguard its position as one of China's big three internet giants, they added. In the second quarter ended June, Baidu saw 34 percent plunge in net income, which declined to 363 million and was less than one-fourth of that of Tencent, one of the most profitable tech firms in China. Also, as the Beijing-based firm wrestled with tougher government regulations on online advertising in the second quarter, e-commerce heavyweight Alibaba delivered its most robust quarterly growth since its 2014 IPO, marked by a 59 percent year-on-year rise in revenue. Vinsan Wang, an analyst at Tiger Brokerage Group, which provides internet brokerage business for US and Hong Kong stocks, said the revenue and profit gap between Baidu and its two archrivals Alibaba and Tencent is widening, but Baidu is still one of the top players in China's rapidly changing internet landscape.

By 2020, we will all have an Invisible Friend. Whether we call it Siri, Alexa, OK Google, or a chatbot, we are entering a world where an intelligence assistant recognizes our "intent." This could spawn a massive consumer behavior shift, as AI-influenced bots would mean far fewer Google searches by humans. This invisible friend would learn from its mistakes, maintain context, and continue to expand into new areas of expertise through judicious use of Knowledge Management (see below landscape). Although 2020 is our destination, now is a time of heightened activity among the companies that provide the elements of Intelligent Assistance.

Feels like a home away from home. Microsoft acquires AI-powered scheduling service Genee, to be shut down and merged with Office ... 'Software is eating the world': How robots, drones and artificial intelligence will change everything

UNITED NATIONS The United Nations is ready to deliver aid into Syria's Aleppo, but needs commitments from all parties in the war - not just Russia - to abide by a 48-hour humanitarian truce, the U.N. aid chief, angered by lack of assistance to civilians, said on Monday.

Marco, what can we do about AI? Marco, are we doing enough on AI?" The questions all come from senior executives, desperate to harness the potential that AI promises. Yet Bressan is bemused by how the technology is talked about at board level and in the media. "Currently it denotes a vision of the future; an aspect of the sci-fi imagination; something that you still can't do. But the truth is senior financial executives have been doing AI-related work, research and deployment of products for years." At the most rudimentary level, AI involves teaching machines to learn and to interact in order to undertake cognitive tasks that were usually performed by humans. The type of AI featured in sci-fi films in which machines possess a human-like intelligence, sometimes referred to as general artificial intelligence, remains a distant and elusive prospect. The most optimistic experts, such as Google's director of engineering, Ray Kurzweil, predict that AI will be able to outsmart humans by 2029. Conservative predictions expect this to take at least 100 years, if at all. Of more immediate relevance to those working in financial services is the deployment of narrow artificial intelligence. These applications undertake specific tasks using problem solving, deduction, reasoning and natural language processing. Such programmes are being applied across financial services, from the development of customer service programmes that use natural language processing to manage and field customer queries, through to programmes that can conduct financial research and make sophisticated models of financial markets to identify trading opportunities. The potential for narrow applications has led to a boom in AI investment. Technology companies are undoubtedly leading the way. In 2015 the giants of AI – Microsoft, Google and Facebook – spent 8.5 billion on AI research, acquisitions and talent. In comparison, financial institutions have made a cautious foray into the field. A handful are making investments by hiring high-level data scientists or acquiring AI companies. The hedge fund Bridgewater Associates hired the former chief engineer behind IBM's Watson supercomputer. BlackRock has also been busy hiring some high-profile names and has announced a joint venture with Google to explore how to use AI to improve investment decision-making. Goldman Sachs has invested in a number of promising AI start-ups, including the financial research platform Kensho. Yet most financial institutions have been slow to adopt AI, even though it is likely to usher in a new type of bank, with data and technology as its heart. Failure to adapt may lead to extinction for some. As Neil Dwane, global strategist at Allianz Global Investors, explains: "Technological competence is absolutely essential for at least staying in the game.

A NEW technique using artificial intelligence (AI), to read satellite images could aid efforts to eradicate global poverty by indicating where help is needed most, a team of US researchers says. The method would assist governments and charities that are trying to fight poverty but that lack precise and reliable information on where poor people are living and what they need, the researchers based at Stanford University in California say. Eradicating extreme poverty, measured as people living on less than 1.25 a day, by 2030 is among the sustainable development goals adopted by UN member states in 2015. A team of computer scientists and satellite experts created a self-updating world map to locate poverty, says Marshall Burke, assistant professor in Stanford's department of earth system science. It uses a computer algorithm that recognises signs of poverty through a process called machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, he says.