Intel said Tuesday that it is expanding what it calls its AI Acceleration program into midrange software vendors, launching an AI developer NUC to speed the process. It's all a bid to lasso software developers and bring them under the Core Ultra banner. For consumers, the program is an ongoing acknowledgement that Intel continues to work to integrate the NPU inside its Core Ultra processor with software vendors, in order to extract actual value from the logic, and not just capitalize on the latest buzzword, AI. There's a more subtle message, too: if Intel is able to convince software developers to use its OpenVINO toolkit to help them code AI applications, it will help ensure that Intel's Core Ultra chips are the preferred or "better" AI chips. That might not actually be the case, of course. But the push to sign up software developers seems similar to the way in which graphics vendors work with game developers to convince them to add GPU-specific features to their games and thus deliver improved performance.

The ADA, which applies to employers with 15 or more employees, prohibits discrimination based on disability and requires reasonable accommodations to allow qualified individuals with disabilities to be evaluated for or perform a job. The EEOC's guidance on AI explains how, in the absence of safeguards, an employer's use of certain software tools to select new employees, monitor performance, determine pay or promotions, or administer or score tests may violate these ADA provisions. This Compliance Overview provides the EEOC's guidance for employers. Employers now have a wide variety of computer-based tools available to assist them in hiring workers, monitoring worker performance, determining pay or promotions, and establishing the terms and conditions of employment. Employers may utilize these tools to save time and effort, increase objectivity or decrease bias. When this occurs, employers may risk violating federal equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws that protect individuals with disabilities.

Wall Street titans warn a recession is imminent but its not that simple. Here are the warning signs you need to understand.

More and more, when you apply for a job, ask for a raise, or wait for your work schedule, AI is choosing your fate. Alarmingly, many job applicants never realize that they are being evaluated by a computer, and they have almost no recourse when the software is biased, makes a mistake, or fails to accommodate a disability. While New York City has taken the important step of trying to address the threat of AI bias, the problem is that the rules pending before the City Council are bad, really bad, and we should listen to the activists speaking out before it's too late. Some advocates are calling for amendments to this legislation, such as expanding definitions of discrimination beyond race and gender, increasing transparency, and covering the use of AI tools in hiring, not just their sale. But many more problems plague the current bill, which is why a ban on the technology is presently preferable to a bill that sounds better than it actually is.

Think for a moment about how organizations are evolving. They all want to be lean, fast and specialized. They're trying to become more adaptable, intelligent and resilient. Wherever you look, it's a pretty consistent pattern. Now, think about the main trends in enterprise software.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing enterprise and consumer technology as we know it, but few industries have made strides as significant as healthcare and life sciences. With its growing applications in the field, NLP is empowering hospitals, health systems, and businesses alike to accelerate research and care. From accelerating clinical trial recruitment and vaccine development, to detecting potentially life-threatening adverse drug events and forecasting hospital gridlock/staffing demands, AI is making an impact beyond the headlines. Even in its infancy, the global AI in healthcare market size and investments in AI technologies, like Natural Language Processing (NLP), have experienced significant growth, even in the wake of pandemic-driven budget cuts. This trajectory is exciting to watch and expected to continue over the next several years, as we've only scratched the surface of AI's potential.

Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations, Q4 2020, report lists OpsRamp as a "Strong Performer" among 11 software vendors analyzed by the firm. OpsRamp, an AI-based IT operations management software company, was named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave: Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations, Q4 2020, report, published today. OpsRamp received its highest scores in the criteria of platform, dependency and topology, infrastructure and cloud monitoring, and alerting and reporting, as well as in the strategy category. "Given the advanced automation capabilities, customers are using the platform at enterprise scale for many advanced lifecycle management scenarios," the report stated. "With planned enhancements to core capabilities, OpsRamp will continue to entrench itself as a key tool for operations teams while maintaining a single source of truth for data analytics."

There was plenty of product and technology news from across the application portfolio to coincide with yesterday's Oracle Live virtual event. Oracle has not only been moving its core applications to the cloud these past few years. The enterprise software vendor has also been transitioning its business operations to support the kind of continuous engagement with customers that is characteristic of the SaaS and cloud model. One big example of that shift has been the recent move to combine support, service and product development for applications into a single organization reporting to Steve Miranda, EVP of Oracle Applications Product Development. The aim is to have a single customer success manager responsible for each customer, while still drawing on expert resources across the product set that's applicable for that customer.

The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model forever changed how companies and consumers access computer programs. Rather than install and own one version of a company's product, users were able to download and license software, while relinquishing update and maintenance responsibilities to the software vendor. Another simple yet equally crucial aspect of the SaaS model is the immediacy it allows users to access and run new applications. Why send away for program CDs, or call a vendor to send an install expert, when software can be accessed online, so companies can get to work right away? Businesses are beginning to ask themselves similar questions about accessing AI.

Google Cloud has launched a new center of excellence to provide "evangelism capabilities" and dedicated resources to help independent software vendors (ISVs) accelerate their cloud transformations. The Google Cloud ISV/SaaS Center of Excellence will provide training, hands-on design workshops and field enablement -- applying Google Cloud's experience delivering applications and products at massive scale -- to help ISVs move their software from on premises to the cloud and leverage the No. 3 cloud computing provider's and broader Google's capabilities. "We're providing evangelism capabilities so that we can help the ISVs understand how we can support them…and solution architects so that we can work hand in hand with them to be able to define the solution architecture of how they would move their application to the cloud," Siddhartha Agarwal, Google Cloud's managing director of SaaS partnerships, told CRN. The center will work with ISVs whether they're transforming their applications with open, cloud-agnostic architectures, transforming their users' experience through artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) and voice or delivering intelligent insights from their applications by providing analytics to business users. "Many ISVs are working with customers to migrate business critical applications from on premises to the cloud, either'lifting-and-shifting' as quickly and easily as possible, or, more often, taking the opportunity to upgrade and adopt modern, cloud-native architectures based on containers, microservices, serverless and open source software," said Agarwal.