American multinational information technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has recently launched its Heaven OnDemand service, joining many other tech giants and startups that are already working on offering machine-learning analytics as a cloud service to software developers. Delivered exclusively on Microsoft Azure Cloud, HPE's Haven OnDemand, makes its customers' life easier by simplifying the process of virtually turning data into an asset they can use whenever they want. Furthermore, the data access is made even faster so that any information needed in order to create deep and meaningful insights can be reached at any time without having to go through much trouble. "Our algorithm can handle any type of digital media, which could be email, Slack messages, Skype messages, whatever, but we started with social because it's free and publicly available," Tope Alibi, co-founder of San Francisco-based startup Social Capital said for eWEEK. "Haven OnDemand has been a great tool for us. With it, we identify the'big five' personality traits that psychologists identify with each patient: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism," he added.

During a conversation I had with Peter Norvig, we discussed about the kind of projects that we do at Machinalis and how strange does it feels to say that "we are a Machine Learning company": In many projects, the amount of effort spent on R&D on Machine Learning is usually a small fraction of the total effort, or it's not even there because we plan it for a future phase after building the application first. "Machine Learning development is like the raisins in a raisin bread: 1. You need the bread first 2. It's just a few tiny raisins but without it you would just have plain bread." Typically, two things can happen: A large company, at a higher level, decides to move away from standard tools, given that "our business and our data are different/peculiar", incorporating Machine Learning or Data Science into their processes. In these situations they call us just to get some raisins.

Tasked by their CEOs to use technology to better align the business with shifting customer preferences, CIOs across every industry are leveraging the now-standard social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies to modernize, stabilize and accelerate digital transformations. But those tools will get some company from augmented and virtual reality, the Internet of Things, blockchain software and advanced analytics over the next 18 to 24 months. These emerging technologies are fueling new products and services, changing the way businesses operate and interact with customers, Bill Briggs, CTO of Deloitte Consulting, told CIO.com. "Every company is a technology company at its core," says Briggs, who wrote the report, whose theme is "Innovating in a Digital Era." "Technology is the most strategic asset. Briggs says the real value of IoT, in which sensors attached to everyday machines send data to other machines, is that it enables companies to reimagine business processes by automating previously manual.

I was watching the movie Her for the second time and I was fascinated again about the scene in which the main character played by Joaquin Phoenix got his new operating system with artificial intelligence (AI) and started working with that. I couldn't stop thinking about the ways I could use such an AI system in my life and how it actually could make me a better doctor. Don't get me wrong, I think empathy and great communication with patients can make a doctor better primarily, but as the amount of medical information out there is exponentially growing; as the time for dealing with patients and information is getting less, it is becoming humanly impossible to keep up with that. If I could devote the time it takes now to deal with technology (inputting information, looking for papers, etc.) to patients, that would be a huge step towards becoming better. Here are 10 things how AI could make me a better doctor and consequently live a better life.

Christoffer O. Hernæs is vice president of Strategy, Innovation and Analysis at Sparebank 1 Group, Norway's second-largest financial institution. Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest subjects these days, and recent advances in technology make AI even closer to reality than most of us can imagine. The subject really got traction when Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and more than 1,000 AI and robotics researchers signed an open letter issuing a warning regarding the use of AI in weapons development last year. The following month, BAE Systems unveiled Taranis, the most advanced autonomous UAV ever created; there are currently 40 countries working on the deployment of AI in weapons development. Those in the defense industry are not the only ones engaging in an arms race to create advanced AI. Tech giants Facebook, Google, Microsoft and IBM are all engaging in various AI-initiatives, as well as competing on developing digital personal assistants like Facebook's M, Cortana from Microsoft and Apple' Siri.

Sometimes, the field of artificial intelligence looks pretty ridiculous, like when Microsoft's teen chatbot was tricked by online trolls to say racist and sexist things. Consider how it's affecting our working world. Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of computer graphics hardware company Nvidia, can see this clearly. For a long time, gamers have loved Nvidia for the company's graphics processors (GPUs) that have the ability to gorgeously render insanely violent games. Here's the twist: Nvidia's GPUs also happen to be excellent for deep learning, an AI technique that allows algorithms to recognize patterns and become more adept at finding them over time.

Microsoft is "deeply sorry" for the racist and sexist Twitter messages generated by the so-called chatbot it launched last week, a company official wrote on Friday, after the artificial intelligence program went on an embarrassing tirade. The bot, known as Tay, was designed to become "smarter" as more users interacted with it. Instead, it quickly learned to parrot a slew of anti-Semitic and other hateful invective that human Twitter users started feeding the program, forcing Microsoft Corp to shut it down on Thursday. Following the setback, Microsoft said in a blog post it would revive Tay only if its engineers could find a way to prevent Web users from influencing the chatbot in ways that undermine the company's principles and values. "We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay," wrote Peter Lee, Microsoft's vice president of research.

Dell Inc. is selling its Dell Services information technology unit to NTT Data Inc. for just over 3 billion as part of its ongoing reorganization plan. Dell had purchased the business for 3.9 billion in 2009 when it was Perot Systems, founded by billionaire and onetime presidential candidate Ross Perot. The sale comes as privately-held Dell prepares to buy data storage provider EMC for 67 billion and tries to reinvent itself as more than just a personal computer company. That deal was announced in October and was initially targeted to close in the second or third quarter of Dell's fiscal year ending Feb. 3, 2017. Japan-based NTT Data focuses on information technology in the medical field, including medical records and billing.

Last May, we wrote about a new machine from healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson that could sedate patients for routine medical procedures. The device handled one of the most routine and yet risky hospital procedures: Putting someone to sleep so they don't feel discomfort or pain, yet not so asleep that they don't wake up. At the time, the Sedasys machine was being used in just four hospitals, including the one we visited in Toledo. We watched as the Sedasys device provided basic anesthesiology services to a series of patients undergoing routine endoscopies and colonoscopies. No longer did you need a trained anesthesiologist.

A viral video released in February showed Boston Dynamics' new bipedal robot, Atlas, performing human-like tasks: opening doors, tromping about in the snow, lifting and stacking boxes. Tech geeks cheered and Silicon Valley investors salivated at the potential end to human manual labor. Shortly thereafter, White House economists released a forecast that calculated more precisely whom Atlas and other forms of automation are going to put out of work. Most occupations that pay less than 20 an hour are likely to be, in the words of the report, "automated into obsolescence." In other words, the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution has found its first victims: blue-collar workers and the poor.