The U.S. Department of Defense has warned that China's artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives have seen heavy integration with the People's Liberation Army (PLA), raising concerns of a possible AI arms race. "The size, scope and sophistication of Chinese military modernization programs is breathtaking," James Anderson, who served as the deputy undersecretary of defense during the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital. "The report makes clear that Beijing remains hellbent on developing a world-class military force, despite its recent economic slowdown." The annual Pentagon report on the Military and Security Developments involving the People's Republic of China argues in the preface that China remains "the" pacing challenge for the Department of Defense as Beijing seeks "national rejuvenation" by 2049 – the centenary anniversary for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chief among the various avenues the party has pursued to achieve this goal stands the "multi-domain precision warfare" concept, which seeks to incorporate advances in big data and AI to "rapidly identify key vulnerabilities in the U.S. operational system and then combine joint forces across domains to launch precision strikes," according to the report. The concept would help China develop "additional subordinate operational concepts" with an eye toward refining China's capabilities to fight and win "future wars."

As even the most inattentive observer of contemporary international politics will attest, technological competition – mostly, but not always, between the U.S. and its allies on one hand, and China and Russia on the other – has once again risen to the fore. Analysts, so far, have approached this issue from various angles: what it means in terms of military balances, the possibility of international cooperation, what a technological edge implies for domestic policies, and so on. The outgoing Trump administration has made technological contestation with China a cornerstone of its strategic policy, emphasizing the need for the United States to maintain its edge when it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information science, and aerospace and other critical technologies, among others. Other Indo-Pacific powers, such as Australia, India, and Japan, have also joined the fray in pushing both new and emerging tech at home as well as promoting collaboration around it between "like-minded countries." In June this year, a Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence of 14 states along with the European Union was launched, to facilitate collective AI research as well as implementation.

Current rapid growth in artificial intelligence (AI) is fuelled predominantly by the rediscovery of deep learning. When it first surfaced 15 years ago, the concept was met with unfavourable conditions and largely abandoned in the aftermath. Nowadays, deep learning is back, circumstances are right and the field flourishes. The described third boom in artificial AI and subsequent tightening technological and economic competition sent ripples through various aspects of the social realm, including policymaking. Many countries began working on national AI strategies, including current leaders – China and U.S. – and Japan also followed suit.

AI is more pervasive in our daily lives than one may think. Spotify and Netflix use AI to recommend songs, films or television shows which it considers relevant to our interests based on our past activity or choices. Amazon uses it to recommend products based on past purchases or web browsing activity. Our increased reliance on online services and smart phones means that humans are interacting with AI at an ever-increasing rate. The technology has the potential to greatly increase efficiency, to save lives and to increase the general standard of living.

Customer care powered by artificial intelligence gives insurers the opportunity to save 30% of their service costs. How can insurers meet increased customer expectations at a lower cost? AI-powered care delivers on a future vision of customer service with an opportunity for savings of 30% by, for example, driving customers to digital experiences. In this post, I will explore how to apply AI using an intelligent customer engagement (ICE) framework. In this blog series, I'm exploring the myriad ways in which AI adds value to financial services in general and the insurance value chain in particular. In my previous post, I defined the term AIQ and revealed and discussed three key ingredients to building a strong AIQ: technology, data and people.

When 62-year-old computer scientist P Anandan started last September as CEO at the Wadhwani Institute of Artificial Intelligence (WIAI), he might have been apprehensive. He was signing up to work on AI in India after three decades at major global corporations and academia in the US and at home, including top teaching and research roles at Yale University, Adobe and Microsoft. Misconceptions abound about big data, machine learning, automation and other AI-related technologies in the context of job losses for humans. And unlike other major economies, India hadn't yet spelled out its vision for a future with AI. But when Anandan set out to work, he found support all around. In February, the Prime Minister inaugurated the institute.

The kindergarten students who entered the school gate for the first time in 2017 will be graduating by 2030. These students and the young people to finish school over the next two decades will be the workers of 2040. Developments in AI are one of a number of interrelated --megatrends-- changing the nature of the labour markets across the world. The profound changes ahead demand an education approach that will provide young people with enduring capabilities and skills to harness the opportunities of technological change. There is significant uncertainty about the full impact of artificial intelligence and automation on employment but the effects are already starting to be felt.

Fueled by the exponential proliferation of big data, advances in AI have grown with unprecedented speed over the past decade. Programming AI is no longer an arduous process of building it line by line. Rather, AI is able to learn by itself, from itself. And the market has taken notice. In 2016, the enterprise market demand for AI-related products reached more than $8 billion.

Artificial Intelligence is among the hottest topics in the financial markets today, seeming to promise untold benefits to the major banks that are embracing it, and destruction to traditional asset managers and other victims who get left behind. The truth may be a little different. Indeed, Opimas does foresee myriad benefits coming to financial players in the future from the robots and machines that think and learn and analyse mountains of unorganized data, enabling firms to anticipate and better serve customers' needs. We estimate a 28% improvement in financial institutions' cost-to-income ratio by 2025 as they automate routine processes currently performed by employees. In 2017, we expect financial firms to spend more than US$1.5 billion on AI-related technologies and, by 2021, US$2.8 billion, representing an increase of 75%.

As we head into 2017, artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology trend that is generating increasing buzz among business leaders of both start-ups and well-established companies. From virtual assistants to image recognition to self-driving cars, we're only just beginning to scratch the surface of how AI-related technology will impact our daily lives and transform how businesses operate. IBM's Chief Innovation Officer Bernie Meyerson optimistically predicts 2017 will be "the year of the solution as opposed to the year of the experiment." The worlds of artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) are poised to collide. This year's CES conference in Las Vegas was packed with all kinds of smart devices touting new AI capabilities.