Survivors of sex abuse by members of the Catholic clergy have expressed hope after meeting Pope Leo at the Vatican for the first time. Gemma Hickey, board president of Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA Global), told the BBC it spoke volumes he had met them so soon in his papacy. The group is pushing for a global zero-tolerance policy, already adopted in the US, of permanently removing a priest who admits or is proven to have sexually abused a child. The Pope acknowledged there was resistance in some parts of the world to this, Hickey said. The new Pope, who assumed the role in May, has inherited the issue, which has haunted the Catholic Church for decades and the Vatican has struggled to root out.

A Dublin company offering online media courses plans to raise €2.5 million this year to roll out a new artificial intelligence (AI) invigilation platform for remote exams. GoCreate has developed the'Claire' platform in conjunction with the University of West London, an existing partner with whom it runs accredited media courses online. The move has opened up new opportunities for GoCreate, which now plans to raise funding to market the AI platform to colleges and universities in Ireland, Britain and other markets. "We really want to get the word out there, because this is a new area for us, but it came about in response to an immediate problem faced by one of our partners," Susan Hickey, co-founder at GoCreate, said. The company already offers two online degree courses in creative media and sound production online at Gocreateacademy.com, and three diplomas in audio storytelling, pop vocals and vlogging.

As artificial intelligence is becoming core to traditional financial services organizations no surprise: banks, investment management or leading financial advisory enterprises are in the accelerated path of researching solutions, to transform their entire businesses and innovate fast enough to provide smart, user-centric digital services that allow them to retain customers, build intelligent digital engagement and provide new revenue streams. 'Artificial intelligence and the future of Financial Services' organized by The Economist and'AI and Data Science in Trading' organized by AIDST Digital Week, to interact with executives, decision makers and thought leaders from across the finance industry. Some of my random thoughts based on the events output you will find outlined below. The need for external and more timely data has never been greater in the investment workflow. Last week I had an opportunity to participate in an AI & Data Science in Trading virtual event that brought together experts in the use of AI and advanced data analytic techniques within asset management, primarily for finding alpha, managing risk and optimizing portfolios.

They're vast or complex or both, and we can't analyze them without help. Specifically, help from self-improving machine learning algorithms. These algorithms can glean "insights into how the world works that a person wouldn't be able to see, because they're [too] abstract or [too] fine-grained," says Meghan Hickey, a Boston-based machine learning engineer at Pryon. That can mean picking up on patterns humans can't see -- like learning to spot cancer symptoms invisible to the human eye -- or performing human analysis at nonhuman speeds. The company makes a data analytics platform called Unify that clients often use to integrate overlapping datasets. For example, if two merging banks share some clients, they want to make sure those clients aren't double-entered in their respective databases.

Far from the typical startup and tech venues, historic St. James Cathedral Centre in Toronto proved a wonderful setting for TD Bank's AI Innovation Day. Why? Ironically, because it promoted a different way of thinking. I know what you're thinking, and no, the event was not hosted in the nave of the church, but in the historic mansion-cum-conference centre building behind it. Hearing the term "AI" might conjure up mental images of robots taking over humanity or perhaps that questionable Jude Law movie, but the Summit brought a different tune to the conversation: the power of humans and machines working together for the greater benefit of the human. As a few speakers even suggested, artificial intelligence actually makes business more human.