Software services major Infosys has launched an artificial intelligence platform'Mana' that will help clients drive automation and innovation. The company said in its statement that Infosys Mana, brings machine learning together with the deep knowledge of an organization, to drive automation and innovation – enabling businesses to continuously reinvent their system landscapes. Mana, with the Infosys Aikido service offerings, dramatically lowers the cost of maintenance for both physical and digital assets; captures the knowledge and know-how of people, and fragmented and complex systems; simplifies the continuous renovation of core business processes; and enables businesses to bring new and delightful user experiences leveraging state of the art technology. "Purposeful AI is about leveraging technology to amplify people. We can automate the repetitive, mechanizable tasks; we can capture the knowledge and know-how across people and long-lived systems and bring this knowledge back inside the systems to drive more value; and in doing these things we can free people to put all of our creativity, passion, and imagination into thinking about the bigger opportunities ahead of us. The word mana, from the Polynesian word for a pervasive spiritual force, and similarly used in many languages and cultures around the world, is an excellent inspiration for our endeavor to bring this purposeful AI to the enterprise," said Vishal Sikka, CEO & Managing Director, Infosys.

Training a software program to play an ancient Chinese board game helped Google's DeepMind move artificial intelligence forward.Video provided by Newsy Newslook SAN FRANCISCO -- Google CEO Sundar Pichai says the next big evolution for technology is artificial intelligence. "Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the'device' to fade away," Pichai wrote in the technology giant's annual founders' letter to shareholders. His vision: Over time, computers, whatever shape they take, a mobile device in your hand or a mini computer on your wrist, "will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day." Google is far from alone. Artificial intelligence in which Google was a pioneer, is an increasingly crowded field.

And that's probably the reason he's into the Google service that automatically generates replies to incoming messages. Smart Reply, as my editor will tell you, is pretty smart (It is!--Ed.). Having analyzed millions of messages from across Google's Gmail service, it can guess how you might respond to a particular missive. That may sound impersonal, but it's useful. It lets you instantly reply to someone when you don't have time to open a laptop or even tap out a message on your smartphone.

Effective data governance consists of protocols, practices, and the people necessary for implementation to ensure trustworthy, consistent data. Its yields include regulatory compliance, improved data quality, and data's increased valuation as a monetary asset that organizations can bank on. Nonetheless, these aspects of governance would be impossible without what is arguably its most important component: the common terminologies and definitions that are sustainable throughout an entire organization, and which comprise the foundation for the aforementioned policy and governance outcomes. When intrinsically related to the technologies used to implement governance protocols, terminology systems (containing vocabularies and taxonomies) can unify terms and definitions at a granular level. The result is a greatly increased ability to tackle the most pervasive challenges associated with big data governance including recurring issues with unstructured and semi-structured data, integration efforts (such as mergers and acquisitions), and regulatory compliance.

Machine learning is generating a lot of chatter lately, making myriad marketers scramble to figure out to use it. Despite all the excitement surrounding machine learning, however, marketers still struggle with how to view it, what to expect from it, and how best to use this new technology. The volumes and rates of data captured by those systems have increased substantially each year. Marketers are seeking to augment and blend that data with other sources, such as in-store visitor data. The dizzying increase of data volume and growing number of data collection sources leave us marketers trying to figure out how to drive the right message at the right place, at the right time.

Tempting as it is to lay as much blame as possible at the feet of Philip Green – a man whose 63rd birthday cake involved an edible version of himself, topless, in bed with his chihuahua, silk sheets recreated in sugar paste, gold candles fringing the mattress like a flaming cage – the decline of British Home Stores was not entirely his fault. Like Austin Reed, the high-street tailor that went into administration the day after BHS, this was a business that collapsed in large part because it failed to be flexible in a changing marketplace. Both came to rely on the patronage of people who, either through a lack of access or an abundance of ethics, opted to shop physically rather than digitally. But as discussions on Twitter over what you'll miss about BHS (mostly: somewhere to go to the loo) also indicate, unless your shop serves a need that cannot be met online, it will now struggle to survive. Even Argos, whose current raison d'être is to trump Amazon by letting you get your mitts on a cheap toaster the same day, has seen a 36% year-on-year drop in profits. This its chief executive credits to "a continuation of the challenges we saw towards the back of last year with high street footfall and the move online".

Personal assistants and software bots have enjoyed significant buzz in recent months. New assistants are launched every week, and the Slack App Store already lists more than 40 bots. Working with Opus Research, we have published an update of the Intelligent Assistance Landscape that looks into the implications of this trend. This report features 110 companies (increased from the 70 participants in the initial report from October, 2105). A high-resolution version of this landscape is available here.

With reports that we may have reached'peak' phone and Apple sales falling for the first time, Google's boss has taken these claims a step further. CEO Sundar Pichai has predicted that the concept of the'device' will fade away and the computer will soon be replaced by intelligent assistants. He made the comments in the firm's annual Founder's Letter in which he discussed the firm's Cloud Platform and its plans for AI. CEO Sundar Pichai has predicted that the concept of the'device' will fade away and the computer will be replaced by intelligent assistants. He made the comments in the firm's annual Founder's Letter in which he discussed the company's Cloud Platform and its plans for AI Every year, the founders of Google's parent company Alphabet - Larry Page and Sergey Brin - write a Founders' Letter to stockholders updating them with recent highlights.

When Cheetah Mobile CEO Sheng Fu went to the US for the first time five years ago, he asked himself, "Why is that Chinese companies work so hard but the most important inventions and new technologies come out of America?" He concluded that the difference between China and the US is that Americans think bigger and dream bigger. The global service robotics market is set to boom, and the second half of 2015 should usher the first wave of these new helpers. Here are seven devices leading the charge. This week in Beijing, Fu announced his company is going to launch itself into AI and deep learning, create a dual headquarters in Beijing and Silicon Valley, and release robots for consumers on a global scale. No one is going to accuse Fu of not thinking big enough.

Artificial intelligence is becoming a reality and people are starting to wonder what the world will be like when'the robots' are advanced enough to undertake tasks that previously could only be done by humans. It is an uncomfortable thought to consider whether we will even be relevant in the future. Experts still disagree over the extent of the threat to the job market, but agree that change is coming. Computer scientist and futurist Jerry Kaplan insists the idea of AI creating a "jobs Armageddon" is ludicrous, whilst AI evangelist Ben Goertzel states "job losses are a feature not a bug of AI". During the British Agricultural Revolution farming jobs were lost to machinery, yet the approaching Industrial Revolution opened up many more roles.