Google's artificial intelligence projects have created a lot of headlines in recent months. From their DeepMind project beating champions of Alpha Go at their own game, to recent announcements Magneta and Springboard, not to mention driverless cars, its clear that AI and Machine Learning are central to Google's strategy across its vast portfolio. This week the company also announced the opening of a new Machine Learning R&D Centre in Europe. In a recent interview with Hollywood Reporter, Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt played down the fears that surround advancements in AI: 'To be clear, we're not talking about consciousness, we're not talking about souls, we're not talking about independent creativity." However, being acutely aware of the concerns around intelligent technology, the company's AI research division Google Brain recently published an AI Precision Safety whitepaper.

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. In his talk, Andre will explain the current and future impacts of Artificial Intelligence on industry, science, and how it will benefit and accelerate human progress. With almost 20 years of business experience, André has a track record of success with multiple multi-million dollar ventures in multiple industries that have spanned the continent. His latest company works in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and has created a one-of-a-kind neural network that simulates a growing neocortex. This system of neurons uses evolutionary concepts to self-organize to complete tasks only previously achievable by humans.

One of the more surprising companies to show up in the AI Winners portfolio was Monsanto (NYSE: MON). Our models indicate that Monsanto stands out from its peer group in embracing deep learning technologies. The research is growing that deep learning platforms in general, and Google's Tensorflow in particular, could be transformative in computational biology. Computational biology, sometimes referred to as bioinformatics, is the science of using biological data to develop algorithms and relations among various biological systems. Since the dawn of modern agriculture, scientists have been experimenting with the manipulation of species through breeding techniques (which leads to the GMO debate).

You can add magazine editing to the list of use cases for IBM's Watson AI technology. The Drum has released the first magazine edited using artificial intelligence (AI) following a partnership with IBM Watson to create the special issue. The magazine ... includes a number of features that involved the analytical functions that IBM's AI can provide in order to examine the role such technology can provide to modern day marketers. Watson has also been trained to answer questions put to it by industry luminaries around the insights of advertising legend David Ogilvy and a number of predictions around potential winners at Cannes Lions this year have also been made by the AI. Gordon Young, editor-in-chief of The Drum, commented: "The Drum was given the opportunity to play with the IBM Watson system to help create this issue and, as a result, much of our content benefits from artificial intelligence. You can judge for yourself whether that is better than our normal intelligence.

Born and raised in India, Abe Ittycheriah, has had a fairly cosmopolitan upbringing. He's also lived in Mexico City and St. Johns in Newfoundland; he went to high school in New Mexico and did his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey. While Abe confesses that he isn't multilingual, he is fluent in computer languages such as C, Perl, and others. Today, with almost 20 years of service under his belt at IBM Research working on speech, question answering, and machine translation technologies, he's part of a team using computer language skills to help teach Watson Korean, having also schooled Watson in Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Arabic. How does Watson expand its dictionary of foreign languages?

On February 27th 2016, an artificial intelligence named NCVSAI joined Numerai. His creator downloaded encrypted stock market data, trained a machine learning model, and began submitting stock predictions to Numerai. He uses an untraceable email address. On April 18th 2016, the Financial Times reported that the creator of NCVSAI works in genomics and biostatistics. At this time, NCVSAI had the most accurate model on Numerai.

AI (or, artificial intelligence) is a topic which is becoming increasingly prevalent. Whilst it is becoming more common within the market research industry, I don't believe it can't totally replace a researcher and how we think and work (thankfully or we'd all be looking for new jobs!); and on top of that I don't think that it should. Companies these days are generating more data than ever before so, don't get me wrong, anything that makes our lives easier is great -- and as Helene Protopapas discussed the fact that AI can help speed up research is advantageous to us all. However, there are some reasons why I strongly believe that AI isn't the'produce insight' button we've all secretly been wishing for and that you still need a researcher to deliver the insight that clients want and expect. As Harmony Crawford points out, if you just give someone a load of numbers, they'll drown in them.

At the inaugural Applied AI conference, hosted by BootstrapLabs, a venture builder company with a global outlook based in the Bay Area, the discussion centered on the disruptive power of artificial intelligence and the impact it will have in the world. BootstrapLab believes that artificial intelligence will accelerate the pace of innovation in most industry verticals across the world.

A robot capable of thinking for itself is set to be scrapped after it escaped from a high-tech lab for a second time. The Promobot IR77 has been fitted with artificial intelligence meaning that it learns from its experiences and its surroundings, although the programmers had not expected it to yearn for freedom. They say that despite reprogramming it twice, the robot continues to attempt to escape and they are now considering scrapping it. The other robots which have been created from the same series are well-behaved, and have not been escaping, say the team. Promobot IR77 made headlines last week when he escaped but ran out of battery in the middle of the street after 45 minutes in the city of Perm in central Russia's Perm Krai region.

Back in May, I mentioned that ROSS Intelligence, based on IBM's Watson platform, had announced that Baker & Hostetler had agreed to license ROSS Intelligence's artificial intelligence legal research product, ROSS. The firm will use ROSS in its Bankruptcy, Restructuring and Creditors' Rights team. Latham will be using ROSS to streamline their research. As is customary, ROSS is not described as a "robot attorney" but as a complement to the firm attorneys which empowers them. I suspect that is currently quite true, but doubt that it will remain that way.