Shirley Pepke – The complexity of cancer has famously eluded conquering by modern medicine. Every tumor has many aberrations that drive its growth. As a result, treatments that target single vulnerabilities are typically of short-lived efficacy. After being diagnosed with advanced stage ovarian cancer in 2013, I wagered that what was needed was an algorithm capable of digesting and analyzing the complexity to provide a detailed view into the multitude of factors at work in a given tumor. To pursue this goal, I began a collaboration with Greg Ver Steeg, who specializes in analyzing big data, to bring state-of-the-art machine learning to bear on the recently released large-scale data from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA).

Many discussions around artificial intelligence (AI) have focused on the new developments in machine learning, such as assisting with cancer recognition and even detecting earthquakes. However, the use of AI in the creation of a virtual assistant is starting to gain some traction. A recent article from VentureBeat stated that 2017 is the year that "virtual assistants really arrived." In this post, we wanted to look at the rise of virtual assistants and how they could change the way we work. It is hard to imagine an office desk these days without a computer.

Tune in April 7 and find out how to provide stellar customer care with social media in our free webinar. Artificial intelligence has quickly become part of our daily routine -- it powers everything from simple features like automatic image tagging on Facebook and purchase prediction on Amazon to more complex systems like smart cars and connected homes. We can even thank AI for HBO's hit TV series, Westworld, a sci-fi thriller about an amusement park populated with AI-powered robots called "hosts," that dominated the cultural zeitgeist this past fall. While the AI technology we interact with today gives us a hint at what's to come, it's actually Westworld that spells out the future most clearly. Before I get ahead of myself let me clarify: I don't foresee an apocalyptic robot takeover happening any time soon (or ever for that matter).

When the robots rise up, they won't take your life. They'll take your job, particularly those in fields primed for automation, like manufacturing, trucking, and customer service. Technologists, economists, and policymakers believe this future is all but inevitable, and say it's time to begin thinking seriously about how to ensure artificial intelligence advances humanity--and improves the economy, without leaving the middle class behind. Two economists who recently left Washington say the answer lies in ensuring the government provides enough of a safety net to help middle class Americans navigate the coming transition. Jason Furman and Gene Sperling--former chief economic advisors to President Obama--prefer to think of it as a bridge, not a net, that will help people reach the future.

A new report has proposed AI and Machine learning as a potential cure to the "Ransomware pandemic" making its way through the healthcare sector. The Institute of Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) recently released a report called "How to Crush the Health Sector's Ransomware Pandemic". James Scott, senior fellow at ICIT and the author of the paper offers a plain solution to the worrying rash of cyber-attack on hospitals and healthcare providers that have held patient safety to ransom. He notes the proliferation of not only dynamic and adaptive malware, but the sheer number of adversaries that can find their way around defences no matter how resilient or well-resourced. But against this gloomy landscape, says Scott in a defiantly optimistic tone, what if healthcare organisations could use machine learning to overcome these threats?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all around us. Countless applications are deploying techniques such as Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to improve the performance of their travel solutions. Will AI augment human intelligence or replace it? How will AI improve the travel experience for all everyone? A panel discussion hosted by Philip Wolf, former CEO and Founder of Phocuswright, concludes the session with a focus on the long term impact of AI on the travel industry.

With the rise of automated personal assistants -- Alexa, Cortana, and countless others -- developers are faced with a big question: just how'human' should these robotic people be? The more human we make them, the more important it seems to give them names, personality and -- more worryingly -- gender. But robotic assistants don't have gender. Strip them of the names and voices added by their human creators, there's nothing there that requires a chat bot to be'he' or'she', other than our own assumptions. Yet still many chat bots have names, and a disproportionate number of them are sold to us as'female.'

While companies like Google and Tesla have been feverishly working to develop autonomous cars, occasional crashes make clear that drivers must remain vigilant. Roboticists from MIT's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and Toyota are working to develop autonomous cars that will someday both serve as "chauffeurs" that take full control, and as "guardian angels" that let humans keep control while still being able to step in to prevent an accident. Learn about the future of driving in a chat with CSAIL director Daniela Rus, MIT and Toyota autonomy expert John Leonard, and Duke University professor Missy Cummings, moderated by New York Times senior tech reporter John Markoff.

On Dec. 6, 2016, thousands of translators filed into office buildings across mainland China to pore over brochures, letters, and technical manuals, all in foreign languages, painstakingly rendering their texts in Chinese characters. This marathon carried on for 15 hours a day for an entire month. Clients that supplied the material received professional-grade Chinese versions of the originals at a bargain price. But Baidu Inc., the Beijing-based company that organized the mass translation, got something potentially more valuable: millions of English-Mandarin word pairs with which to train its online translation engine. China is infamous for its knockoffs, whether luxury handbags or web startups.

The global unified communication (UC) as a service market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 25% between 2017 and 2021, according to market research firm Technavio. The increasing leveraging of enterprise and consumer technology such as solutions to communicate effectively with customers will fuel the demand for unified communication, the report said. In contact centers, the emergence of artificial intelligence and robotics technology will help contact centers automate the contact center process. The rise of machine learning technology, cognitive computing, and behavioral analytics will fuel the demand for UC in this market segment, Technavio said. In enterprise collaboration, vendors are offering solutions that enhance the collaboration among employees, suppliers, and clients and are simple to deploy, less expensive, and more powerful.