Digital expertise will become increasingly critical in the insurance sector as digitization and machine learning leads to more highly'automatable' insurance according to management consultants McKinsey & Company. Meanwhile a separate piece of research by Accenture found that insurance companies are accelerating the shift to a radically different distribution model, where they say digital will play an increasingly important role in most interactions, and were agents' efforts are being refocused to add more value. And analysis by research outfit Ovum suggests strong investment in digital channels also. According to Ovum, " When it comes to investment, digital channels remains the top area for insurers. However, the significant majority of insurers will be increasing budgets across a broad range of functional areas with no single activity completely dominating spend.

Some time ago I started a journey into one of the most exciting fields in Computer Science -- Machine Learning. This is my subjective guide for anyone who would like to explore this topic, but don't know how to start. Your first steps should lead to Stanford Machine Learning class at Coursera by Andrew Ng. This course is simply brilliant! Along a way, you will be given everything you need to know, including algebra review.

We at Venture Scanner are tracking 957 Artificial Intelligence companies across 13 categories, with a combined funding amount of 4.8 Billion. The 15 visuals below summarize the current state of Artificial Intelligence. Deep Learning/Machine Learning (General): Companies that build computer algorithms that operate based on their learnings from existing data. Examples include predictive data models and software platforms that analyze behavioral data. Deep Learning/Machine Learning (Applications): Companies that utilize computer algorithms that operate based on existing data in vertically specific use cases.

"Really, the only game left after chess is Go," was how Demis Hassabis set the scene ahead of AlphaGo's match with world champion Lee Sedol earlier this month. Either Hassabis's copy of the latest Street Fighter didn't get delivered on time, or he was trying to be a little poetic to mark the occasion. Either way, you'd be forgiven for thinking there really were no games left to conquer after the media reaction to AlphaGo winning the first three games in a best-of-five against its human opponent. It's been a curious month to be an AI researcher. Watching the contest, which AlphaGo eventually won 4-1, I've learned a lot about Go and one of the most interesting things is how the spaces left empty on the board can often be as important and meaningful as the spaces where stones are played.

Humans have been taking a beating from computers lately. The 4-1 defeat of Go grandmaster Lee Se-Dol by Google's AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI) is only the latest in a string of pursuits in which technology has triumphed over humanity. Self-driving cars are already less accident-prone than human drivers, the TV quiz show Jeopardy! is a lost cause, and in chess humans have fallen so woefully behind computers that a recent international tournament was won by a mobile phone. There is a real sense that this month's human vs AI Go match marks a turning point. Go has long been held up as requiring levels of human intuition and pattern recognition that should be beyond the powers of number-crunching computers.

Editor's note: This is the third in a series of articles about the effects of software and automation on the economy. You can read the other stories here and here. The way Hod Lipson describes his Creative Machines Lab captures his ambitions: "We are interested in robots that create and are creative." Lipson, an engineering professor at Cornell University (this July he's moving his lab to Columbia University), is one of the world's leading experts on artificial intelligence and robotics. His research projects provide a peek into the intriguing possibilities of machines and automation, from robots that "evolve" to ones that assemble themselves out of basic building blocks. A few years ago, Lipson demonstrated an algorithm that explained experimental data by formulating new scientific laws, which were consistent with ones known to be true. He had automated scientific discovery. Lipson's vision of the future is one in which machines and software possess abilities that were unthinkable until recently.

Go is the most complex strategy game. There are more possibilities in a game of Go than there are atoms in the universe. Thus, it offers huge challenges for artificial intelligence (AI). Recent successes though give valuable decision making tips for humans. As of this writing, AlphaGo, Google's AI system has beaten a top-50 Go professional.

Jeff J Mitchell / Getty ImagesThe robots are coming. But it's not just low-paying positions that will get replaced. AI also could cause high earning (like top 5% of American salaries) jobs to disappear. That's the theme of New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper's new feature, The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street. The piece is framed around Daniel Nadler, the founder of Kensho, an analytics company that's transforming finance.

There is no question that machine learning is at the top of the hype curve. And, of course, the backlash is already in full force: I've heard that old joke "Machine learning is like teenage sex; everyone is talking about it, no one is actually doing it" about 20 times in the past week alone. But from where I sit, running a company that enables a huge number of real-world machine-learning projects, it's clear that machine learning is already forcing massive changes in the way companies operate. And it's not just being done by companies that we normally think of as having huge R&D budgets like Google and Microsoft. In reality, I would bet that nearly every Fortune 500 company is already running more efficiently -- and making more money -- because of machine learning.

When Willie Kate Friar wakes in the middle of the night, the octogenarian doesn't have to turn on the lights or crane her neck to find out the time. She simply asks her digital assistant, who responds in a life-like voice. "I've found Alexa is like a companion," Friar said of Amazon Echo's new voice-controlled assistant, a black cylinder called Alexa. A Panama-based retiree who writes and lectures on cruise boats, Friar is recuperating from a recent fall and asks Alexa to play music during her physical therapy sessions. "The music lifts my spirits," she said.