The incredible potential for driving efficiency and change with Big data and advanced analytics - as well as all the associated technologies such as machine learning, the Internet of Things, and predictive modelling - is so great, it should be available to everyone. Not just those who have spent years in college studying the fundamental mathematical and statistical systems under the hood of today's analytics toolsets.

Intuit recently announced QuickBooks Capital, a new small business lending product that provides users of QuickBooks access to small business loans up to about $35,000. This new service's lending process is done algorithmically and from within QuickBooks itself. Thanks to big data and machine learning techniques, most borrowers will know whether or not they are approved for a loan in just a a few minutes. Lack of credit is consistently one of the top challenges for small businesses. And for new businesses (those that have been in business less than 5 years), the challenges are even greater.

A new, multiyear competition to build the world's coolest artificial intelligence could win you $5 million. The prize for the challenge comes from IBM, TED and the XPRIZE Foundation, who want to stimulate research on AI "to tackle some of the world's grand challenges."

Taipei, Nov. 2 (CNA) Artificial intelligence (AI) is not destructive, asserted Rob High, International Business Machine (IBM) Watson Chief Technology Officer, at an annual IBM forum held in Taipei Thursday. His remark came in the wake of a United Kingdom's Daily Mail report that Facebook shut down a chat bot experiment after two AI robots developed their own language to communicate. Answering questions at the forum, High said that even though some people may believe that chat bots are learning new languages, he thinks they are simply trying to optimize the language. Humans shouldn't think that AIs will develop consciousness or naturally produce ethics, but they should bear the responsibility to make sure that AIs are being used ethically, said High. Watson is a computer system developed by IBM that is capable of answering questions posed by humans verbally. In 2011, it competed on the popular game show Jeopardy and won first place, beating human contestants.

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At this year's Genius of Things (GoT) event in Boston, IBM announced that we are working with Golden State Foods to embrace two big opportunities for growth and change in the food services industry. Golden State Foods are using Watson IoT to assist fleet management and safety for their 2,000 trucks, and creating connected restaurants in over 125,000 locations. To say that Golden State Foods operate on a large scale is something of an understatement. They are one of the largest diversified suppliers to the food service industry, servicing around 125,000 restaurants in over 60 countries from their 50 locations, and producing 400,000 hamburger patties per hour. Many of the restaurants they supply are quick serve and rely on speedy, safe and quality food production and delivery to meet their customers' expectations.

The IBM Watson Data Platform already provides data scientists with the ability to crunch numbers and share large data sets across different public and private clouds. Now the company has its sights set on artificial intelligence (AI), reports Enterprise Cloud News (Banking Technology's sister publication). Big Blue has announcing expanded capabilities and tools for the Watson Data Platform that include data visibility and security for data scientists and developers who are creating AI-based applications. These new tools and services will be integrated within the Watson Data Platform and made available through the IBM Cloud. The company plans to make sure those building private clouds, or using its public Bluemix cloud, can have access. Watson, cognitive computing, cloud computing, as well as AI and machine learning are all part of IBM's plan for the company to grow and move away from selling legacy hardware and software packages.

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AI taken to another level as IBM Watson analysis data in the sky. IBM is taking to the skies with its latest Watson deployment, with Korean Air using the AI tech to help crews on the ground with aircraft maintenance. Using machine learning, Korean Air wants to increase the safety of their planes by taking advantage of the data collection, analytical ability and AI capabilities of IBM's Watson. IBM's Watson will do this by collating data from technical guidelines, inventory and in-flight incident history to analyse a current or potential future problem. In doing so, it will help to identify the cause of these problems and quickly offer an effective solution.

IBM Watson has partnered with two of Sweden's leading law firms, MAQS and Lindahl, as well as legal knowledge management consultancy, VQ, to build an AI-driven contract review and advice system. The new AI tool, which is called True Agreement, is at present focused on Swedish shareholder agreements and has been trained to identify the type of document, find key clauses and then provide advice on aspects of those clauses as they are surfaced by IBM Watson's natural language processing capability. The new venture was revealed at the VQ forum event in Stockholm, yesterday and is the first joint venture legal AI project of its kind in Scandinavia. Also, MAQS revealed that it is now working with UK legal AI company, Luminance, becoming one of several law firms in the region now making use of the due diligence-focused AI company's platform. MAQS Knowledge Manager, Hans Hedkvist told Artificial Lawyer: 'The idea came about jointly between myself, the head of IT at Lindahl and Helena Hallgarn of VQ.' 'We saw that AI was coming and we wanted to do something in Swedish.