It was early January 2016, and I had just joined Google X, Alphabet's secret innovation lab. My job: help figure out what to do with the employees and technology left over from nine robot companies that Google had acquired. Andy "the father of Android" Rubin, who had previously been in charge, had suddenly left under mysterious circumstances. Larry Page and Sergey Brin kept trying to offer guidance and direction during occasional flybys in their "spare time." Astro Teller, the head of Google X, had agreed a few months earlier to bring all the robot people into the lab, affectionately referred to as the moonshot factory.

BMC sponsored this article for The New Stack. When we think about tech's ultimate disruptors, Apple leads the pack. Apple was a PC vendor competing with the likes of Commodore in the early 1980s before co-founder Steve Jobs seeded the idea of a portable music player -- and anticipated the explosive demand for the iPhone. The company's leadership envisioned what the end user would want years in advance, as well as how to pre-empt problems by solving ahead of time those that would likely occur along the way. Most technology- and data-driven companies realize that just focusing on meeting today's user demands is not a sustainable business model.

In its effort to ensure there is no hiding place in the United States for war criminals, genocidaires and other human rights abusers, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has sought to harness the power of innovation, employing automated facial recognition technology and clever software algorithms to identify perpetrators who might be in, or be traveling to, America, officials told AFCEA's 2021 Federal Identity Forum and Expo Tuesday. War Crimes Hunter (WCH) is a series of customized reusable software tools built by the ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Innovation Lab in Crystal City, Virginia. It's used by HSI investigators in the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Unit to try and identify suspected war criminals or other human rights violators. WCH automates the repetitive administrative work, while leaving key decisions to human analysts, explained Amy Nunes, a section chief in the unit. "We automate what we can automate as much as possible, still keeping an [human] analyst in the loop, because we didn't want to risk getting a bunch of [false positives or junk data] that we didn't need," she said.

Several U.S. banks have started deploying camera software that can analyze customer preferences, monitor workers and spot people sleeping near ATMs, even as they remain wary about possible backlash over increased surveillance, more than a dozen banking and technology sources told Reuters. Previously unreported trials at City National Bank of Florida and JPMorgan Chase & Co. as well as earlier rollouts at banks such as Wells Fargo & Co. offer a rare view into the potential U.S. financial institutions see in facial recognition and related artificial intelligence systems. JPMorgan began assessing the potential of computer vision in 2019 by using internally developed software to analyze archived footage from Chase branches in New York and Ohio, where one of its two Innovation Labs is located, said two people including former employee Neil Bhandar, who oversaw some of the effort at the time. Testing facial recognition to identify clients as they walk into a Chase bank, if they consented to it, has been another possibility considered to enhance their experience, a current employee involved in innovation projects said. Analyzing race was not part of the eventually tabled plans, and the Harlem branch had been selected because it housed the other Chase Innovation Lab for evaluating new technology, the people said and the bank confirmed.

Some 80% of the world's top financial firms are spending billions on artificial intelligence to improve their services and compete with each other. New research from NVIDIA uncovers what those firms are doing and how they're deploying these resources. Competition for consumers and their financial data continues to intensify across incumbent banks, fintech, big tech, and big-box retail. This is compounded by highly innovative digital experiences being deployed across industries, which continue to shift consumer expectations. Kevin Levitt, head of NVIDIA Financial Services says that financial services companies must enhance the level of personalisation, data security, customer service, pricing, and more in the creation and delivery of financial products or expect to lose market share to those who do.

In the news this week: A bevy of partnerships to bring artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to medical applications, and more. Keeping pace with news and developments in the real-time analytics market can be a daunting task. We want to help by providing a summary of some of the items our staff came across each week. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in healthcare and medical diagnosis is perhaps one of the most promising applications of the technology for the public good. Frequently, the main inhibitor to the use of AI in these fields is the lack of internal familiarity with the technology.

A new study finds that an interactive voice application using artificial intelligence is an effective way to monitor the well-being of people being treated for serious mental illness. Researchers from UCLA followed 47 people for up to 14 months using an application called MyCoachConnect. The data were collected from 2013 and 2015. All of the patients were being treated by physicians for serious mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. For the study, published in PLOS One, participants called a toll-free number one or two times a week and answered three open-ended questions when prompted by a computer-generated voice.

Version 1 is delighted to announce that we are now a proud member of CeADAR, Ireland's National Centre for Applied Analytics & AI. CeADAR is a market-focused technology centre that drives the accelerated development and deployment of data analytics and AI technology and innovation. "We see this as a key strategic membership, across Version 1 and in particular for our Innovation Labs, where we are focusing on developing solutions for our customers using Disruptive Technology using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Becoming a CeADAR member makes perfect sense for us, helping us to execute on our vision, and showing how technology can make a real difference to our customers' businesses. We look forward to working with Edward and the team at CeADAR, bringing the depth of their experience and knowledge to our customers."

Research at the Dell EMC and Intel HPC and AI Innovation Lab is demonstrating how organizations can build better, faster neural networks to drive recommendation engines. If you go to Netflix to look for the next movie you want to watch, a recommendation engine will give you suggestions tailored to your interests and past viewing experiences. When you visit a website, you're likely to see ads based on your browsing history and past purchases. If you shop on Amazon, you will get all kinds of recommendations based on your purchasing history and the purchasing history of other customers with similar interests. As Amazon explains, "We examine the items you've purchased, items you've told us you own, items you've rated, and items you've told us you like. Based on those interests, we make recommendations."

To send a link to this page you must be logged in. Peter Scott from the Next Wave Institute - an ex-NASA scientist and leading expert in Artificial Intelligence (AI), cut the virtual ribbon at the Innovation Lab at Wharfside House in Prentice Road at a launch event. The new hub aims to take Stowmarket a step closer to its ambition of developing a high-tech Centre of Excellence by offering a co-working space with advice and guidance to start-up businesses. The aim is to support innovation, entrepreneurship, business growth and the development of an AI Centre of Excellence. Backed by Mid Suffolk District Council, Tech East and the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), it is hoped the hub will eventually form the focal point for developing a cluster of technology and manufacturing companies.