Workers in the UK should turn their trepidation over AI into "exhilaration" by giving it a try or they risk being left behind by those who have, the technology secretary has said. Peter Kyle called on employees and businesses to "act now" on getting to grips with the tech, with the generational gap in usage needing only two and a half hours of training to bridge. Breakthroughs such as the emergence of ChatGPT have sparked an investment boom in the technology, but also led to forecasts that a host of jobs in sectors ranging from law to financial services will be affected. However, Kyle said: "I think most people are approaching this with trepidation. Once they start [using AI], it turns to exhilaration, because it is a lot more straightforward than people realise, and it is far more rewarding than people expect."

Australia must "lean in hard" to the benefits of artificial intelligence or else risk ending up "on the end of somebody else's supply chain", according to the new industry and science minister, Tim Ayres, with the Labor government planning to further regulate the rapidly evolving technology. Ayres, a former official with the manufacturing union, acknowledged Australians remained sceptical about AI and stressed that employers and employees needed to have discussions about how automation could affect workplaces. The minister said Australia had "no alternative" but to embrace the new technology and seek to become a world leader in regulating and using AI. "It's the government's job to lean into the opportunity to outline that for businesses and for workers, but also to make sure that they are confident that we've got the capability to deal with the potential pitfalls," Ayres told Guardian Australia. "I think the Australian answer has got to be leaning in hard and focusing on strategy and regulation that is in the interest of Australians."

Director Shekhar Kapur's debut Indian film, Masoom (1983), followed a woman's journey towards accepting a child born out of her husband's extramarital affair. For the sequel to this emotional film, which had delicately handled the complexities around infidelity and social diktats, Kapur decided to experiment with AI tool ChatGPT.

Three QUT researchers are part of an international research team that have identified new ways for retailers to use Artificial Intelligence in concert with in-store cameras to better capture consumer behavior and tailor store layouts to maximize sales. In research published in Artificial Intelligence Review, the team propose an AI-powered store layout design framework for retailers to best take advantage of recent advances in AI techniques, and its sub-fields in computer vision and deep learning to monitor the physical shopping behaviors of their customers. Any shopper who has retrieved milk from the farthest corner of a shop knows well that an efficient store layout presents its merchandise to both attract customer attention to items they had not intended to buy, increase browsing time, and easily find related or viable alternative products grouped together. A well-thought-out layout has been shown to positively correlate with increased sales and customer satisfaction. It is one of the most effective in-store marketing tactics that can directly influence customer decisions to boost profitability.

In research published in Artificial Intelligence Review, the team propose an AI-powered store layout design framework for retailers to best take advantage of recent advances in AI techniques, and its sub-fields in computer vision and deep learning to monitor the physical shopping behaviours of their customers. Any shopper who has retrieved milk from the farthest corner of a shop knows well that an efficient store layout presents its merchandise to both attract customer attention to items they had not intended to buy, increase browsing time, and easily find related or viable alternative products grouped together. A well thought out layout has been shown to positively correlate with increased sales and customer satisfaction. It is one of the most effective in-store marketing tactics which can directly influence customer decisions to boost profitability. QUT researchers Dr Kien Nguyen and Professor Clinton Fookes from the School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics and Professor Brett Martin, QUT Business Schoolteamed up with researchers Dr Minh Le, from the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, and Professor Ibrahim Cil from Sakarya University, Serdivan, Turkey, to conduct a comprehensive review on existing approaches to in store layout design.

Kevin Markarian is the cofounder of Roopler, an AI-driven lead generation platform built for the real estate industry. Artificial intelligence is rapidly upending how people do business across industries, and yet skeptics still abound. But is there really a reason to fear AI? AI will change how we work and do business, and its impact is already being felt. Still, that doesn't mean it is something to fear. On the contrary, business managers and leaders who embrace AI and harness its potential now have everything to gain.

Hear from top leaders discuss topics surrounding AL/ML technology, conversational AI, IVA, NLP, Edge, and more. Critics say the age of AI is still far off, or even that the term "AI" is a fraud. The truth is, AI is already radically transforming our world behind the scenes. To be sure, no business has managed to replicate true human intelligence in a machine just yet. AI disruption is already here, even if we don't notice it In fact, many businesses are facing a key turning point in AI adoption.

The UK's wealth management sector has experienced significant growth in recent years and handles around £948bn of assets, equivalent to about 46% of the UK GDP. As such a vast industry, it's not surprising that financial institutions and wealth management firms are looking to be early adopters of the latest AI technologies. Wealth management is a data-rich industry that has traditionally relied heavily on human data rekeying processes. Many thousands of person-hours are devoted annually at these firms to repetitive, mundane data inputting tasks and simple data interrogation and cleansing. Data can be about clients or markets and using the two sources intelligently is a principle of the wealth management business model.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a constellation of technologies harmoniously enabling machines to act, learn and understand with human-like levels of reasoning. Maybe that's why everyone's definition of AI is different: It's so much more than just one thing. Machine learning and natural language processing are at the heart of AI. When paired with analytics and automation, these evolving innovations help companies improve customer service, optimize supply chains and achieve a seemingly endless number of business goals. And, fun fact, it can even help restore coral reefs.

All the sessions from Transform 2021 are available on-demand now. If your company has yet to embrace AI, you're in a race against the clock. And by my calculations, you have just three years left. How did I arrive at 2024 as the deadline for AI adoption? My prediction -- formulated with KUNGFU.AI advisor Paco Nathan -- is rooted in us noticing that many futurists' J curves show innovations typically have a 12-to-15-year window of opportunity, a period between when a technology emerges and when it reaches the point of widespread adoption.