Jean Brillat-Savarin was a 19th-century French lawyer famed for his writings on gastronomy. In his most famous work, he said: "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es." Or "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." This idea--that you are what you eat--has become increasingly popular. Since Brillat-Savarin's time it has been used as the title of various cookbooks and health guides; for some it is a way of life.

As healthcare systems strive to realize IOM's vision for continuous improvement in care delivery, many are recognizing that they have outgrown their data management and reporting capacity. Those that have turned to new machine-learning approaches have found they can expand capacity and capabilities while reducing administrative burden on clinicians. Here's an example of how one health system used machine-learning tools to improve care delivery for intestinal surgery: Until recently, the health system's surgical services team used traditional methods of hospital data analysis to inform their creation of order sets, protocols, and provider and patient education materials spanning the pre-op, intraoperative and post-op phases of care. Then they applied a "machine intelligence" platform that pairs machine learning algorithms with topological data analysis (TDA)--a mathematical process that uses shape as an organizing principal for understanding complex data. By giving visible form to their data, the health system was able to replicate and validate years of analytical insights in a matter of days.

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but I keep telling everyone I know about the remarkable innovations I saw at IBM World of Watson 2016 conference, held from Oct. 24 to 27 at beautiful Mandalay Bay, where I was among the 17,000 attendees. As I was "welcomed to the World of Watson," I learned that Watson (yes, the computer that was on Jeopardy) is IBM's researchers' vision "to design an intelligent system that brings man and machine together to create a better world." If that sounds like a utopian fantasy, prepare to be amazed at how real that vision has become: Watson is changing how doctors cure disease, how companies analyze their social media footprints, and how financial services firms adapt to ever-changing regulations. I could write an entire book on all that Watson has to offer, but my focus here is on Watson's ability to help financial services firms meet compliance demands more efficiently and with less cost – a much needed innovation as firms spend $99 billion on addressing compliance, thus limiting their ability to invest in growth, according to Marc Andrews, VP of Industry Analytics Solutions for IBM. If you're scratching your head at why regulatory compliance costs are so high, picture this: Linda, a trader at a high-profile brokerage firm, receives a bad performance review from her supervisor.

From there, it won't be long before we begin to wonder how we ever lived without artificially intelligent financial advisors implementing our own personal monetary policy. U.S. financial literacy levels are unacceptably low, and the widespread availability of artificially intelligent money-management tools won't change that. By enabling us to make simple, direct decisions while taking care of the rest, artificially intelligent financial advisors will decrease the prevalence of consumer mistakes and prompt improvement in our overall financial health.I'm actually a perfect example of this point. And while this figures to make things physically easier, the process still won't be simple.

This month Stanford launched a 100-year study of AI (AI100) with a report: Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030. The 16 member study panel issuing the report sees increasingly useful applications of AI, with potentially profound positive impacts on our society and economy over the next decade. The study identifies eight domains where AI is already having or is projected to have the greatest impact: transportation, healthcare, education, low-resource communities, public safety and security, employment and workplace, home/service robots and entertainment. Check out this Pearson video (and our review of their report): Over the next few months, we'll be exploring developments in these eight categories and the implications for employment and education. This series, #AskAboutAI, will encourage parents, teachers, mentors and advisors to engage young people in a dialog about the emerging automation economy and the ethical and economic implications of artificial intelligence (AI).

You know the moment when you go in for a yearly physical and the doctor asks, "So, how have you been?" I can't recall what I ate yesterday, let alone remember a pattern of headaches or the overall quality of my sleep. The problem is that I am human. I forget and can be lax when it comes to taking care of myself. Most health issues sneak up on us, and we're not inherently wired to remember patterns.

Scientists say machine learning is up to 93 percent accurate in identifying a suicidal person based on their responses to interview questions. The algorithm was described in a study published in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior. Researchers were able to use the tool to classify patients as being suicidal, mentally ill but not suicidal, or neither. "These computational approaches provide novel opportunities to apply technological innovations in suicide care and prevention, and it surely is needed," study author John Pestian said in a press release. "When you look around healthcare facilities, you see tremendous support from technology, but not so much for those who care for mental illness. Only now are our algorithms capable of supporting those caregivers."

When it comes to maintaining the mental health and wellness of American citizens, the 2016 presidential election cycle has been less than ideal. In a recent article in Politico, therapists and their clients described how the last several months of political turmoil have thrown them for a loop. One psychologist even commissioned a poll of 1,000 voter-age respondents to probe the emotional impact of the election. The results: Nearly 30 percent of respondents reported emotional distress due to Hillary Clinton's campaign, while over 40 percent reported emotional distress due to Donald Trump's campaign. Perhaps most tellingly, a whopping 90 percent of those who reported emotional distress felt that the toll of this election was worse than any other election in the past, offering perspective into the general American psyche right about now.

New research published in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior shows how machine learning can help identify suicidal behavior using a person's spoken or written words. The technology was able to pinpoint which participants in the study were suicidal, mentally ill but not suicidal, or neither in the vast majority of cases. John Pestian and a team of researchers studied 379 patients from emergency departments and inpatient and outpatient centers at three locations between Oct. 2013 and March 2015. The patients, who were classified as suicidal, mentally ill but not suicidal, or neither (serving as the control group), answered standardized behavioral rating tests and took part in a semi-structured interview in which they were asked five open-ended questions such as "Do you have hope?" and "Are you angry?" to stimulate conversation. The researchers then pulled verbal and non-verbal language (e.g., laughs, sighs, etc.) from the gathered data and used machine learning algorithms to analyze it.

With Alexa and Google Assistant are gunning for control over the general voice-driven experience with technology, that might open doors for some more targeted verticals that are centered around voice. It's not an unheard of strategy -- building services and tools around specific experiences rather than trying to do it all at once has been an effective approach for many startups in Silicon Valley. Those services can even try to slot into larger platforms like an Alexa or a Google Assistant. And in the case of Hello, the makers of a sleep-tracking orb called Sense, that's what they're hoping to do with by launching new version of the device that enables voice control. "As a company we're trying to get rid of intrusive tech from your life -- how do you have more tech like Sense that blends in and disappears," Proud said.