More than three-quarters of businesses with active natural language processing (NLP) projects plan to increase spending on in the next 12 to 18 months, according to new data from expert.ai, a leading company in artificial intelligence (AI) for language understanding. The finding is one of many data points culled from a recent survey and detailed in expert.ai's The report shows a burgeoning appetite for NLP-driven efficiencies that reduce costs, drive growth and offer a competitive advantage. NLP enables businesses to automatically interpret unstructured data, bridging the language gap between humans and technology. As a result, there has been an increase in use cases across business operations, ranging from marketing to finance and customer care to sales.

Microsoft is in advanced talks for a new round of funding in OpenAI, according to a person familiar with the matter, as the software giant seeks to further incorporate artificial intelligence into its products. No deal has been reached between the two sides and the funding amount could vary as negotiations evolve, the person said. The companies have held talks in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019. The new cash could help bankroll the tremendous computing power OpenAI needs to run its various artificial intelligence products on Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing service.

As one of the hottest technologies of recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has started penetrating both the US public and the private sectors--though to differing degrees. While the private sector seems bullish on AI, the public sector's approach appears tempered with more caution--a Deloitte survey of select early adopters of AI shows high concern around the potential risks of AI among public sector organizations (see the sidebar "About the survey"). They give a peek into how public sector organizations are approaching AI; and how the approaches, in many cases, differ from those of their private sector counterparts. AI is not completely new to the public sector. The first AI contract was awarded in 1985 by the US Social Security Administration,1 but the technology still wasn't advanced enough to become common in the following decades.

Artificial intelligence is technology in which machines are given the ability to perform tasks that normally require humanlike thinking. Types of AI include machine learning and neural networks. It has a broad range of possible uses in transportation, health care, entertainment, education, agriculture, manufacturing, cybersecurity, and national defense. Current uses are "narrow AI," where the system does one specific task, such as recognizing images. In contrast, a "general AI" system would work more broadly and uses more of the human abilities to learn and to apply that knowledge to new areas.

The White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2021 includes sizable increases in federal funding for AI and quantum computing projects. All told, the overall increase in federal R&D funding is 6% compared to fiscal year 2020, reaching $142.2 billion. Although much of the funding is aimed at R&D and infrastructure investments like $25 million to begin research for a quantum internet, the tenor of the briefing included defense tones. In espousing the need to invest in quantum information science (QIS), an official on the call said the U.S. needs to stay ahead of China and Europe, which are investing in their own quantum computing projects. U.S. CTO Michael Kratsios was clear about American values as they pertain to AI. "I think with regards to some of our adversaries and others around the world [that] utilize this technology, it's imperative that the U.S. continues to lead in technologies like AI," he said.

Early adopters are ramping up investment in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in 2018 reveals an AI study conducted by Constellation Research. Sixty percent of C-level executives surveyed say their organizations plan to increase investment in AI by over 50% compared to last year (Figure 1). AI budgets, however, remain relatively modest with 92% of respondents expecting to spend less than $5 million on AI in 2018. Modest AI budgets signal cautious adoption and deployment of foundational AI technologies for now. However, because AI often delivers successes exponentially, Constellation expects AI budgets to continue to rise by more than 50 percent annually for the next four to five years as AI R&D yields bigger successes at an increasing pace.

Global consulting agency Bluewolf, an IBM Company, has released its sixth-annual The State of Salesforce report that uncovers insights and emerging trends from Sales, Service, Marketing and IT professionals who use Salesforce, the world's #1 CRM platform. Based on insights from more than 1,800 Salesforce customers worldwide, the report found that companies are encouraged by the results of early artificial intelligence (AI) investments: 77 percent of companies already using AI expect to increase their investment over the next 12 months, and 38 percent of Salesforce customers expect to invest in AI within the next year. Bluewolf's report explores how some of the best companies are committed to ongoing innovation with Salesforce. Bluewolf defines the "best" as companies that are embracing the increasing necessity for smarter, faster decision-making and are embedding AI capabilities into Salesforce across their entire organization. Continued AI investment drives impactful customer experiences The C-Suite is placing big bets on AI, with 63 percent of C-level executives surveyed counting on AI to improve the customer experience.