A top US general responsible for shaping the military of the future has revealed that robots could make up a quarter of the army within the next few decades. General Robert Cone said last year that the hi-tech machines will fight alongside soldiers on the battlefield by 2030 or 2040, in a bid to make the army'a smaller, more lethal, deployable and agile force'. He said modern health and safety concerns designed to keeping soldiers safe - adding armour and protection to vehicles and personnel - has caused the army to lose some of its lethal edge, but hinted that robots could revitalize its killing force. The US Army has a long-running mission to create autonomous robots - machines capable of making decisions, in real time, on the front line to changing circumstances. More than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq has allowed the public to see the huge resources already dedicated to unmanned systems; from the high-flying Global Hawk to the lethal Predator drones to hand-launched Raven.

Evergage, the real-time personalization platform company, revealed new enhancements to its machine learning personalization solution, Evergage Recommend. Since its introduction, Evergage Recommend has provided digital marketers with flexibility in building, deploying, testing, and optimizing 1:1 product or content recommendations across websites, mobile apps, emails, and onsite search. But now, marketers have the power to create and deploy machine learning algorithms that incorporate recommendations seamlessly into every aspect of each visitor's overall experience. Take, for example, an online department store that sells thousands of products from different brands and across scores of categories. With Evergage's deep behavioral tracking capabilities and the new enhancements to Evergage Recommend, the department store is able to understand affinities and offer personalized navigation for each and every shopper – customizing the homepage and navigation menu to prioritize the specific categories (or brands, styles, etc.) that are of greatest interest to each visitor. So, a mom with a young son might see images, offers, and menu items for women's shoes, dresses and boys' clothing on the home page, while a single male customer might see men's shirts, jackets, and shoes.

Libratus, an artificial intelligence developed by Carnegie Mellon University, made history by defeating four of the world's best professional poker players in a marathon 20-day poker competition, called "Brains Vs. Once the last of 120,000 hands of Heads-up, No-Limit Texas Hold'em were played on Jan. 30, Libratus led the pros by a collective $1,766,250 in chips. The developers of Libratus -- Tuomas Sandholm, professor of computer science, and Noam Brown, a Ph.D. student in computer science -- said the sizable victory is statistically significant and not simply a matter of luck. "The best AI's ability to do strategic reasoning with imperfect information has now surpassed that of the best humans," Sandholm said. This new milestone in artificial intelligence has implications for any realm in which information is incomplete and opponents sow misinformation, said Frank Pfenning, head of the Computer Science Department in CMU's School of Computer Science. Business negotiation, military strategy, cybersecurity and medical treatment planning could all benefit from automated decision-making using a Libratus-like AI. "The computer can't win at poker if it can't bluff," Pfenning said. "Developing an AI that can do that successfully is a tremendous step forward scientifically and has numerous applications.

During the 2016 Microsoft Build conference, CEO Satya Nadella said that the future of the company was "conversation as platform." In other words, less Windows and Office, and more Cortana and Tay--conversational interfaces that can understand the natural language of human users. If Nadella thought he was expressing some unique vision of the future, though, he was fooling himself. The idea of conversational UI has quickly colonized nearly every corner of Silicon Valley over the past year. Now seems like a good time to ask: What is a conversational interface?

Libratus, an AI developed by Carnegie Mellon University, has defeated four of the world's best professional poker players in a marathon 120,000 hands of Heads-up, No-Limit Texas Hold'em poker played over 20 days, CMU announced today (Jan. Libratus led the pros by a collective $1,766,250 in chips.* The tournament was held at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh from 11–30 January in a competition called "Brains Vs. The developers of Libratus -- Tuomas Sandholm, professor of computer science, and Noam Brown, a Ph.D. student in computer science -- said the sizable victory is statistically significant and not simply a matter of luck. "The best AI's ability to do strategic reasoning with imperfect information has now surpassed that of the best humans," Sandholm said. "This is the last frontier, at least in the foreseeable horizon, in game-solving in AI." This new AI milestone has implications for any realm in which information is incomplete and opponents sow misinformation, said Frank Pfenning, head of the Computer Science Department in CMU's School of Computer Science. Business negotiation, military strategy, cybersecurity, and medical treatment planning could all benefit from automated decision-making using a Libratus-like AI. "The computer can't win at poker if it can't bluff," Pfenning explained. "Developing an AI that can do that successfully is a tremendous step forward scientifically and has numerous applications.

Although artificial intelligence (AI) has experienced a number of "springs" and "winters" in its roughly 60-year history, it is safe to expect the current AI spring to be both lasting and fertile. Applications that seemed like science fiction a decade ago are becoming science fact at a pace that has surprised even many experts. The stage for the current AI revival was set in 2011 with the televised triumph of the IBM Watson computer system over former Jeopardy! This watershed moment has been followed rapid-fire by a sequence of striking breakthroughs, many involving the machine learning technique known as deep learning. Computer algorithms now beat humans at games of skill, master video games with no prior instruction, 3D-print original paintings in the style of Rembrandt, grade student papers, cook meals, vacuum floors, and drive cars.1 All of this has created considerable uncertainty about our future relationship with machines, the prospect of technological unemployment, and even the very fate of humanity. Regarding the latter topic, Elon Musk has described AI "our biggest existential threat." Stephen Hawking warned that "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." In his widely discussed book Superintelligence, the philosopher Nick Bostrom discusses the possibility of a kind of technological "singularity" at which point the general cognitive abilities of computers exceed those of humans.2 Discussions of these issues are often muddied by the tacit assumption that, because computers outperform humans at various circumscribed tasks, they will soon be able to "outthink" us more generally. Continual rapid growth in computing power and AI breakthroughs notwithstanding, this premise is far from obvious.

In news more suited to the likes of Amazon, JP Morgan is set to look at customers' spending histories in order to sell them future products or services. Artificial Intelligence in finance is a topic that raises a lot of interest. Although AI is predicted to change whole sectors in finance (from asset management to compliance), I've always thought that the first applications of AI in banks would be much less spectacular – but much more useful – and that would be the tried and tested recommendation engine a la Amazon. CBR and FT reported yesterday that JP Morgan is launching a smart system to assist their sales people and suggest trades to clients – in other words, a recommendation engine for the trading floor. This is a very welcome news – banks are finally using a technology that has been around for more than a decade and brings a real value to their clients.

When it comes to voice recognition software, SoundHound is definitely not as big a name as Google or Amazon -- yet. SoundHound has raised $75 million in support of its efforts to create artificial intelligence systems capable of recognizing complex human voices and commands, Bloomberg reports. Samsung and Nvidia, two companies that have previously partnered with SoundHound, were among the investors. SoundHound already has Houndify, a proprietary AI technology capable of interpreting complex speech and other audio. The latest $75 million investment will go toward expanding this system into new territories and devices.

TechCrunch reports on a new $27 million fund designed to promote research into artificial intelligence in the public interest. The Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund aims to support a "cross-section of AI ethics and governance projects and activities" in the U.S. and around the world. Meanwhile a supplementary paper from the World Economic Forum -- which just released its Global Risks Report 2017 -- raises concerns about weaponized AI, cyberattacks through internet-of-things devices, and the use of biotechnology. Researchers from Oxford University have released a report detailing how the General Data Protection Regulation could heavily impact the rollout of AI and machine learning. Separately, the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee has urged the European Commission to create rules around the ethical use and liability of robotics.

The rise of the chatbots continues as Cleo, a virtual money assistant described by its creators as the "Siri of personal finance," has launched on Facebook Messenger for users in the UK, reports Paybefore (Banking Technology's sister publication). The platform connects securely to bank and credit card accounts, enabling users to track spending, set budgets and receive reminders and alerts via text or voice commands. Along with Facebook Messenger, Cleo also is available as a standalone app or through integration with Amazon's Alexa and Google Home. The Facebook Messenger integration is a major step forward for Cleo, which was founded in 2016 and thus far has received $700,000 in funding from angel investors, including Skype founder Niklas Zennström. Currently, Cleo is only available in the UK, but the company is planning expansion into additional markets soon.