Artificial intelligence and the potential dangers of allowing this technology to grow too big too quickly have been long debated. For decades popular sci-fi media brought to the light the potential risks of AI, but only in the past several years has the technology evolved in a way that the discussion has migrated to the real world. As a response to this rapid evolution of AI, the European Union has published a new framework to regulate the use of AI across the 27 member states. The regulations cover a wide range of applications, from software in self-driving cars to algorithms used to vet job candidates, and arrive at a time when countries around the world are struggling with the ethical ramifications of artificial intelligence. Similar to the EU's data privacy law, GDPR, the regulation gives the bloc the ability to fine companies that infringe its rules up to 6 percent of their global revenues, though such punishments are extremely rare.

AI and healthcare professionals are warning of concerns over a machine learning algorithm made for diagnosing COVID-19. The idea behind these technologies was to help health professionals tell the difference between coronavirus and other similarly-presenting ailments like pneumonia. But concerned professionals say changes need to be made before the COVID diagnosis machine learning is used in a clinical environment. Of those 62 papers included in the analysis, roughly half made no attempt to perform external validation of training data, did not assess model sensitivity or robustness, and did not report the demographics of people represented in training data. "Frankenstein" datasets, the kind made with duplicate images obtained from other datasets, were also found to be a common problem, and only one in five COVID-19 diagnosis or prognosis models shared their code so others can reproduce results claimed in literature.

Persado's 2021 State of AI and Creativity Survey highlights the growing importance of technology to generate and deliver more predictive, personalized creative that can be directly attributed to business outcomes NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#AI–Persado, the leading AI content generation and decisioning platform that unlocks the value of the right words at every customer interaction, today announced the results of a first-of-its kind survey: 2021 State of AI and Creativity. More than 400 chief marketing officers and senior marketing leaders were asked to provide input on their company's readiness, and on best practices for applying AI to an area of business that receives significant time, energy, and investment: the creative process. The survey found a growing trend among senior marketing leaders to leverage AI and machine learning in new ways to deliver more effective messages to prospects and customers. Key findings of the survey from U.S. respondents include: "Marketers have been leveraging technology to gain insights and improve performance across their portfolios for many years – applying AI to targeting and segmentation, marketing mix optimization, promotions and discounts, and dynamic pricing," says Amy Heidersbach, Chief Marketing Officer of Persado. "But how to optimize creative at scale has largely remained a blind spot for data-driven, digital-first companies. Now, it's clear that marketing leaders are turning their attention toward creative to unlock new sources of value – replacing human-only guesswork with human-plus-machine certainty."

The COVID-19 pandemic forced companies around the world to work remotely and change nearly everything about their work habits, and technology companies everywhere stepped up and met that challenge by accelerating what were already emerging technologies. Things like unified communications and collaboration, videoconferencing and cloud computing have skyrocketed since the start of the year, but another technology is becoming a part of our working lives at a rapid pace: artificial intelligence. "What happened in five years is now happening in five months," says Igor Jablokov, founder and CEO of augmented AI company Pryon and an early pioneer of automated cloud platforms for voice recognition that helped invent the technology that led to Amazon's virtual assistant Alexa. In an interview with My TechDecisions, Jablokov told us how artificial intelligence is being used in the enterprise market, how it will expand, and what the industry needs to do to continue fine tuning the technology. According to Jablokov, artificial intelligence isn't limited to the enterprise office environment.

IBM and Verizon have announced a joint venture in which the companies will work together on 5G and edge computing technology to help enable the future of industry 4.0. The partnership will combine the high speed and low latency of Verizon's 5G and Multi-access Edge Compute capabilities, IoT devices and sensors with IBM's expertise in artificial intelligence, hybrid multiload, edge computing, asset management and connected operations. In a press release, the companies said the partnership will help industrial enterprises find ways to use edge computing to accelerate access to near real-time, actionable insights into operations to improve efficiencies. The first solutions planned from the collaboration are to mobile asset tracking and management solutions to hep enterprises improve operations, optimize production quality and enhance worker safety. For those first solutions, the companies plan to leverage Verizon's 5G Ultra Wideband network, Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC), ThingSpace IoT Platform and Critical Asset Sensor solution, which will be jointly offered with IBM's Maximo Monitor with IBM Watson and advanced analytics.

Imagine an automated meeting room, whether it be a conference room, lecture hall, or council chambers. The displays turn on automatically, the lights dim or brighten to the right level, previously configured for the type of meeting you are having. Cameras focus on whoever is speaking, switching seamlessly from presenter to audience member, when required. Inconspicuous microphones pick up high-quality sound. Recording or conferencing begins automatically, on schedule, or by voice command.

Artificial intelligence vision silicon company Ambarella is partnering with Amazon Web Services to allow AWS customers to use the tech giant's services to train machine learning models and run them on devices equipped with Ambarella's CVflow AI vision chip. According to Ambarella, developers previously had to manually optimize machine learning models for devices based on the company's AI vision system on chip (SOC), a step that could add delays and errors to the app development process. In an announcement, the companies said they collaborated to simplify the process by integrating the Ambarella toolchain with the Amazon SageMaker Neo cloud service. Now, developers can bring trained models to Amazon SageMaker Neo and automatically optimize the model for Ambarella's CVflow-powered SoCs, the companies said. Using MXNet, TensorFlow, PyTorch or XGBoost, customers can train the model using Amazon SageMaker in the cloud or their local machine.

Smart technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning are grabbing headlines every day, and those familiar buzzwords are now inescapable. Algorithms are being enhanced and scientists are coming up with new ways to train and teach these models. According to VentureBeat, machine learning is also shaping business and society. The publication spoke to five leading artificial intelligence experts for their input on what we'd see happen in machine learning in the new year. PyTorch creator Soumith Chintala, University of California professor Celeste Kidd, Google AI chief Jeff Dean, Nvidia director of machine learning research Anima Anandkumar, and IBM Research director Dario Gil said great strides were made in several fields in 2019, like natural language-based models and reinforcement learning, but the five AI experts were essentially unanimous in predicting an even more exciting 2020.

With the help of computational pathology firm Paige, healthcare technology giant Royal Phillips is bringing clinical artificial intelligence to pathology laboratories to help improve a pathologist's workflow and treatment planning for patients. According to a joint news release Thursday, this strategic collaboration will first start with Paige Prostate to help pathologists quantify and characterize cancer in tissue samples and make precise and efficient diagnoses. The release noted the need for more advanced cancer diagnosis technology as the number of cancer cases rises. Glass slide-based laboratory workflows are being converted to digital using solutions like ones offered by Phillips. Once digital images are created, the CE-marked Paige Prostate software is applied automatically to detect and localize prostate cancer, providing pathologists with valuable information they can use to evaluate prostate biopsies.

Technology, artificial intelligence and automation are supposed to solve our biggest problems, not create new ones or exacerbate existing issues. Unbeknownst to many, big tech is actually putting a huge burden on the environment. In a study assessing the energy consumption required to train several common large AI models, Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst said artificial intelligence emissions can be over 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide, which is about 5 times as much the lifetime emissions of an average car. According to research firm IDC, spending on AI systems is exploding, with the figure expected to hit nearly $98 billion in 2023, more than 3.5 times the $37.5 billion being spent this year. The U.S. is expected to deliver more than half of that spending through the forecast, which will be led by the retail and banking industries, according to IDC.