Signage is displayed on the exterior of an Anthem Inc. Blue Cross Blue Shield office building in Wallingford, Connecticut, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2016. Anthem is partnering with the artificial intelligence platform doc.ai to examine whether the technology works to "predict when people will experience allergies or allergy patterns." The announcement Wednesday that Anthem is supporting a 12-month trial by doc.ai and Harvard Medical School researchers to examine whether artificial intelligence can improve patient outcomes is the latest effort by the health insurance industry in the AI space. Financial terms of the partnership weren't disclosed. "Anthem is focused on leading our industry in the safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence and emerging technologies to create a better healthcare future for all Americans," Anthem CEO Gail Boudreaux said in a statement.

There was so much compelling news in the world of VR and AR this July I couldn't possibly cover it all with the usual depth and relish to which readers have become accustomed. This is one of those cases where by the time I returned from vacation most of the July recap below wasn't really news anymore but this news, taken as a group, is a testament to the continued entrepreneurial energy being lavished on immersive tech and illustrates how things come over the transom to me in no particular order. From upper left, "Jurassic World" at Dave & Busters, the new AR Looking Glass, "The Art of Burning Man", and the Lenovo Smart Display.Universal, Looking Glass, Lenovo, Smithsonian This story contains news and commentary about new tricks from old dogs, like Dave & Busters, and new companies we've never heard of, like Looking Glass, with extraordinary innovations in 3D object creation and review.developments in virtual assistants, AR, VR, Motion Capture, AI, LBVR. Let's talk about what they really mean. Dave & Busters launched Jurassic World VR motion platform experience at all 111 Dave & Buster's domestic locations. I spent an hour in Dave & Buster's in Times Square last Wednesday and went through the simulation twice.

Alexa, how will voice technology impact my business? Voice technology may be relatively new, but as the global popularity of Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant and Alexa shows, consumers are more than ready to move on from their keyboards. As technology improves on smartphones and speakers, the concept of physically using a device will soon become a last resort and the digital assistant will reign supreme. Voice control is the epitome of a universally intuitive and lifestyle-friendly interface. The functional practicality and simplicity of talking, not typing, will appeal to all, regardless of age, ability or generation.

Hong Kong researchers have successfully developed a 3D-printed nanoscale robot that can maneuver at a cellular level. In Jun, Science Robotics, a leading robotics technical journal, published a report about the exploits of the City University engineers. It shows that targeted, personalized medicine with tiny robots is no longer science fiction . Precision medicine, as a field, has grown tremendously with the arrival of gene-editing strategies and more-affordable DNA sequencing. WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 25: U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert A. McDonald speaks during the White House Precision Medicine Initiative Summit, in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, February 25, 2016 in Washington, DC.

As artificial intelligence is entering all spheres of our lives, a lot of concern is arising about the possible white bias and patriarchy of the impending AI world. Moreover, research shows women are much more skeptical of and averse to innovation in comparison to men who embrace and triumph it. This fear of technological innovation has to do with the fact that society often views the role of women as replaceable by AI, which is visible in the abundance of women robots and female personal assistants, such as Alexa and Cortana. If we're coming to the point when most jobs are automated and robots become everyday reality of our lives we'd better make sure those algorithms are beneficial for most people, be it an Afro-American woman or a Chinese man. As of today, 85% of the machine learning workforce is male.

One doesn't have to look too far for discussions about the things that will make tomorrow's organizations tick: artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics, Internet of Things. All of it requires data, and a lot of the right kind. AI algorithms need to be trained against datasets, and the larger, the better. The data challenge at's the gist of a recent survey of 2,300 executives conducted by MIT Technology Review and commissioned by PureStorage, which finds widespread agreement that artificial intelligence is an essential capability. However, there is also a cloud of uncertainty around AI that needs to be cleared.

As we get closer to the widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles, there's still discussions about what sensors will be required to make these vehicles safe – for the passengers and other pedestrians and vehicles. Those discussions usually revolve around cameras, radar, LiDAR (Light Distance and Ranging), and ultrasonic. There's one other sensor that isn't discussed – an audio microphone. I recently experienced a situation that caused me concern over how well an autonomous car would handle emergency vehicle awareness. I was stopped at a red light in the left-hand turn lane on a local road.

In the Age of Big Data, humans generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day. Looking at data related to land surveying for construction, the lack of automated information processing makes the activity expensive and tedious, costing clients an average range of $10,000 to $20,000 for a two-month project. David Morczinek and Adam Kernowski established Airworks, a Cambridge, M.A.-based data analytics startup that automates the processing of 20 million points of data from drone images to help decision-makers at land development and construction make sense of their aerial data. They are playing a more significant role in a variety of commercial applications such as aerial filming and package delivery. The global management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, estimates that the commercial drone industry will have an economic impact ranging from $31 to $46 billion on U.S. GDP.

What once started as early analysis of singular data sources has now evolved into far more robust ways of analyzing information and the relationships between different fields and information sources. Data discovery is another area where machine learning (ML) is beginning to make inroads. Twenty years ago, data discovery was a term used to define the early analytics needed to better understand data. For instance, Evoke Software was a company that analyzed large volumes of customer data. It both used metadata to understand field content to find trends and exceptions, and also looked at raw data and used algorithms to identify field boundaries in older or less documented data sources.

Medical-related artificial intelligence could be the way of the future. The thought of high-tech devices tracking our health and giving us medical advice, diagnosing our condition or even performing certain medical tasks is scary to some but recently a company called IEEE conducted a survey about how millennial parents feel about how these issues affect their children and the result may shock you. Technology has continued to change the medical industry and the near future is no exception. What we have in our hospitals is simply amazing compared to what we had 100 years ago and 100 years from now medicine will no doubt be unrecognizable from what we have today. Change, however, can be a little scary at times.