Over the last few years, there has been a worldwide resurgence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to the point where it dominates almost all business, investment, and ethical narratives. There have formed two extreme views of AI: In one it is believed that AI will augment humans, and in the other it is believed that AI will diminish them, to the point of even threatening humanity's existence. The truth will lie somewhere in between. Many of the arguments on both sides are informed by the results stemming from a technique called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) that has given AI anthropomorphic qualities often associated with human motivations. The techniques used to train AI algorithms, broadly called Machine Learning, essentially mimic Operant Conditioning, which includes positive and negative reinforcement methods to increase the rate of a particular desired outcome or decrease the rate of an undesired outcome.

The history of robots taking over human jobs is long and littered with doomsday predictions. Just last May, mega-manufacturer Foxconn reportedly replaced 60,000 workers with automated technology. Amazon's warehouses thrive on machines that can move packages. And as Martin Ford, author of the New York Times bestseller Rise of the Robots tells it, this tech will only replace more jobs in the coming decade -- even in traditional white-collar office roles. Ford keynoted Orange Silicon Valley's "A.I. and the Future of Corporate Finance" event, which welcomed a panel of experts to OSV's Spear Street space to discuss the role that artificial intelligence has to place in bookkeeping and auditing operations.

The development centre of the global telecommunications operator Orange, Orange Silicon Valley (OSV), starts cooperation with Finnish artificial intelligence (AI) startup Valossa. Orange, which is one of the world's leading telecommunications operators, will be using Valossa's Val.ai platform for identifying objects and people in real-time across more than 25 simultaneous HD video streams. Val.ai platform is based on years of research at the computer vision and AI labs of the University of Oulu in Finland. The platform is capable of analysing movies and streaming videos in real-time and identifying thousands of concepts, like places, objects and unique topics, from any video stream. "We are excited to collaborate with Valossa and OSV to bring High Performance Server and Storage platforms, which normally are only available in Supercomputing Data Centers, to the Media and Entertainment industry," says Andy Lee, Echo Streams' Director of Product Marketing.