Like a more crooked version of the Voight-Kampff test from Blade Runner, a new machine learning paper from a pair of Chinese researchers has delved into the controversial task of letting a computer decide on your innocence. Can a computer know if you're a criminal just from your face? In their paper'Automated Inference on Criminality using Face Images', published on the arXiv pre-print server, Xiaolin Wu and Xi Zhang from China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University investigate whether a computer can detect if a human could be a convicted criminal just by analysing his or her facial features. The two say their tests were successful, and that they even found a new law governing "the normality for faces of non-criminals." They described the idea of algorithms that can match and exceed a human's performance in face recognition to infer criminality "irresistible".

A strange thing is happening along the way to the Internet of Things, namely far too many devices to work with and manage. It has become clear that we'll need much higher efficiency user experiences that can allow us to more easily and scalably work with the thousands of devices that will soon be in each of our lives. Enter the conversational interface revolution, combining bots we can literally talk with, gesture to, and even direct with our thoughts, with embedded artificial intelligence, which can process our conversational commands and orchestrate the outcomes we request across our personal and professional realm of connected devices. Dion Hinchcliffe, Chief Strategy Officer at 7Summits, discussed how far from being part of the near future, "conversational things" is arriving now and explored with real-world examples.

A decade ago straight through processing was a buzz word and speed to market was critical. The progress financial institutions have made in moving almost all aspects of their transaction foot print digital has left little to leverage on the transaction side. In today's day and time while most organizations are busy revamping their Policy administration systems which were long ready to be replaced a decade ago, what will set companies apart will be the organizations that start considering Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence(AI) for their core systems. If you look at the fundamentals of any kind of insurance, at the core, insurance offerings are about risk pooling and the ability of the insurer to price products in a manner such that over time the premium revenues outstrip the claims experience. In every type of insurance product the claims experience influencing the pricing and risk aggregation decision making done by the insurer.

Intel Corporation INTC is gearing up to become a major provider of solutions for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) market, which is anticipated to be worth $5.05 billion by 2020 as per MarketsAndMarkets.com. The company recently announced a plethora of products, technologies and investments, which will augment its presence in the AI market. Additionally, Intel expects the next generation Xeon Phi processors to deliver up to four times better performance than the previous generation for deep learning. Code-named Knights Mill, the co-processor will be available in 2017. Acquisitions to Expand Footprint Apart from Nervana, the Movidius acquisition also expands Intel's AI product portfolio.

The difficulty in dealing with insider threats is that it hinges on detecting anomalous user behavior instead of finding and patching vulnerabilities in software. But unfortunately, drawing the line between safe and malicious behavior is not an exact science, and traditional approaches such as setting static rules and alerts either churn out too many false positives and impede organisational workflows, or leave too many holes to be exploited by hackers.

The Internet media is trending now with numerous mentions of "big data", "machine learning" and "artificial intelligence" all together destined to revolutionize pharmaceutical and biotech industries and the way drugs are discovered. These new technologies are believed to make drug discovery cheaper, faster, and more productive. First, let's review briefly some of the basic concepts in the heart of new technologies. The term "big data" by itself is more of a marketing nature. It describes an abstract concept of having large volumes of data obtained from various channels in multiple formats, which needs to be arranged in such a way, that it can be possible to quickly access, search, update, and analyze it to output useful information.

Last tuesday, at the annual meeting of the French Economic Association, I was having lunch with Alfred, and while we were chatting about modeling issues (econometric models against machine learning prediction), he asked me what boosting was. Since I could not be very specific, we've been looking at wikipedia webpage. One should admit that it is not very informative. But at least, there is the idea that'weak learners' can be used to provide a good predictor. Now, to be honest, I guess I understand the concept. But I still can't reproduce what I got with standard'boosting' packages.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich speaks at the company's AI day. We all know processors are the brains of a computer. But the booming field of artificial intelligence takes the metaphor to a whole new level -- and Intel wants to make sure it's propelling the change, not being left behind. Despite Intel's financial might and technological prowess, the company stumbled with the last big overhaul of the computing industry, the arrival of smartphones, tablets and mobile devices. The company's high-profile "Intel Inside" publicity campaign failed to extend beyond its PC stronghold.

Last week I mentioned to one of my U.S.-based colleagues that I would be out of office for three days at the Irish National Digital Week (NDW16), taking the opportunity because the event was being held in Skibbereen, just a few kilometres down the road from my home office. He asked, "Surely an event of that type would be held in Dublin?" And I replied, "Well there's a story here that needs to be told; one that will have profound implications for business in Ireland and probably internationally". Skibbereen is a small market town in the South West of Ireland. The population is approximately 2000, although there's perhaps several times that number in the immediate hinterland.