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Category Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence Is Being Used To Diagnose Disease And Design New Drugs – Forbes

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Medical technology concept. Medical instruments.

The healthcare industry has always been a leader in innovation. The constant mutating of diseases and viruses makes it difficult to stay ahead of the curve, but with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, it continues to advance, creating new treatments and helping people live longer and healthier lives.

A study published this week by The Lancet Digital Health compared the performance of deep learninga form of artificial intelligence (AI)in detecting diseases from medical imaging versus that of healthcare professionals, using a sample of studies carried out between 2012 and 2019.

The study found that, in the past few years, AI has become more accurate of identifying disease diagnosis in these images and has become a more viable source of diagnostic information. According to the researchers, out of 14 studies that compared deep learning models and healthcare professionals within the same sample, the diagnostic performances were found to be equivalent.

With advances in AI, deep learning may become even more efficient in identifying diagnosis in the next few years.

AI applications in the field of healthcare arent just limited to diagnosing a disease, they also include its possible treatment.

Pharmaceutical company Bayer has recently been working with tech companies to create software to help diagnose complex and rare conditions and help develop new drugs to treat these diseases. They have been working in partnership with hospitals and researchers to determine what the machine learning needs to analyze to learn how to diagnose a patients medical condition. The information that the AI is absorbing comes from a number of factors from symptom data, disease causes, test results, medical images, doctor reports and more.

We can model how it will behave in a cell in combination with other drugs the patients might be taking. Were looking at how we can identify the right patients and sites to run our clinical trials. We would be able to run shorter studies and show where the medication is the right one for those patients earlier, Angeli Moeller, who heads artificial intelligence projects at Bayer, explained to the Associated Press.

The machine learning systems are not to replace doctors or make absolute decisions in a patients treatment. According to Moeller, they still want the patient to have control over their treatments and want to use the artificial intelligence to support decisions and make recommendations based on the findings.

Bayer is not the only company making waves in healthcare with AI. There are many other startup companies that are tackling AI treatment options for disease. According to BenchScislatest report ,there are currently 148 startups using artificial intelligence in drug discovery.

One of those startups, Atomwise, just partnered with Jiangsu Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group in a $1.5 billion dollar joint-venture operation to collaborate on designing new drugs for cancer treatments.

The partnership combines Atomwises artificial intelligence technology with Hansoh Pharmas manufacturing capabilities in order to work together to design new ways to predict how a small molecule will bind to a target protein and hopefully lead to new advancements in medical treatments. These joint-ventures are promising as it combines two essential elements for advancements in both machine learning and medical device innovation.

A Canadian biotech company, Deep Genomics, has been experimenting with machine learning and drug development for the past 5 years. Specifically they have been testing different treatments for a rare genetic disorder named Wilson Disease that currently has no treatments on the market. The disease prevents the body from removing copper that eventually builds up in the organs and can cause life-threatening organ damage and sometimes failure.

Deep Genomics artificial intelligence system discovered that the mutation changes an amino acid in ATP7B, a copper-binding protein that is absent in Wilson patients, and causes a disruption in the genome that causes that protein not to be produced. They are currently testing their drug on their first candidate in the study and hopeful this will be successful in treating the disease.

As of today, there are not any drug treatments on the market that were created by AI, but many companies are working hard to see that happen soon. The collection of patient data and testing will continue to drive advancements forward, and while these are great strides in the advancements of artificial intelligence working with medical professionals to save lives, it is far from being mainstream.

Its probably going to take two years before it really hits mainstream medical practice. Getting the technology to the patient is still the hard part, Moeller to the AP.

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Artificial Intelligence Is Being Used To Diagnose Disease And Design New Drugs - Forbes

Artificial Intelligence is driving the UK’s NextGen jobs – Study International News

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In the UK alone, up to a third of jobs will be automated or likely to change as a result of the emergence of AI impacting 10.5 million workers.

These findings come from a new report Harnessing the Power of AI: The Demand for Future Skills from global recruiter Robert Walters and market analysis experts, Vacancy Soft.

Ollie Sexton, Principal at Robert Walters comments:

As businesses become ever more reliant on AI, there is an increasing amount of pressure on the processes of data capture and integration. As a result, we have seen an unprecedented number of roles being created with data skill-set at their core.

Our job force cannot afford to not get to grips with data and digitalisation. Since 2015 the volume of data created worldwide has more than doubled increasing (on average) by 28 percent year-on-year.

Now is the perfect time to start honing UK talent for the next generation of AI-influenced jobs. If you look at the statistics in this report we can see that demand is already rife, what we are at risk of is a shortage of talent and skills.

IT professionals dedicated to data management appear to be the fastest growing area within large or global entities, with volumes increasing ten-fold in three years an increase in vacancies of 160 percent since 2015.

More generally speaking, data roles across the board have increased by 80 percent since 2015 with key areas of growth including data scientists and engineers.

What has been the most interesting to see is the emergence of data scientist as a mainstream profession with job vacancies increasing by a staggering 110 percent year-on-year. The same trend can be seen with data engineers, averaging 86 percent year-on-year job growth.

Job vacancies for data scientists are increasing by a staggering 110 percent annually. Source: Campaign Creators/Unsplash

The rise of cybercrime has resulted in professional services particularly within banking and financial services hiring aggressively for information security professionals since 2016, however since then, volumes have held steady.

Within professional services, vacancies for data analysts (+19.5 percent), data manager (+64.2 percent), data scientist (+28.8 percent), and data engineer (+62 percent) have all increased year-on-year.

Tom Chambers, Manager Advanced Analytics and Engineering at Robert Walters comments:

The uptake of AI across multiple industries is bringing about rapid change, but with that opportunity.

Particularly, we are seeing retail, professional services and technology industries strive to develop digital products and services that are digitally engaging, secure and instantaneous for the customer leading to huge waves of recruitment of professionals who are skilled in implementing, monitoring and gaining the desired output from facial recognition, check-out free retail and computer vision, among other automation technologies.

Similarly, experimental AI is making huge breakthroughs in the healthcare industry, with the power to replace the need for human, expert diagnoses.

What we are seeing from those businesses that are prepared to invest heavily in AI and data analytics, is they are already outperforming their competitors and so demand for talent in this area shows no signs of wavering.

To download a copy of the report click here.

Can Artificial Intelligence make learning fun?

Artificial Intelligence, if used wisely, holds great potential for students, teachers

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Artificial Intelligence is driving the UK's NextGen jobs - Study International News

Artificial Intelligence Is Creating New Art From The Work Of A Deceased Manga Great – Kotaku

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One of Japans greatest, if not the greatest, manga creators is having his work tapped into with the power of AI. Osamu Tezuka died in 1989, but next year, artificial intelligence will create new art based on Tezukas work.

Tezuka is known for influential works like Astro Boy, Princess Knight, and Kimba the White Lion.

Toshibas latest data project is called Kioxia and using its high-speed, large-capacity memory, artificial intelligence will create new Tezuka art based on immense digitalized volumes of work the artist produced during his lifetime.

The project is supported by Tezuka Productions.

Clarification: The headline of this post was altered slightly for clarity, and the language regarding the use of AI was changed to reflect the fact that new art was being created based on Tezukas work.

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Artificial Intelligence Is Creating New Art From The Work Of A Deceased Manga Great - Kotaku

Fearing a future of artificial intelligence haves and have-nots – The Seattle Times

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Each big step of progress in computing from mainframe to personal computer to internet to smartphone has opened opportunities for more people to invent on the digital frontier.

But there is growing concern that trend is being reversed at techs new leading edge, artificial intelligence.

Computer scientists say AI research is becoming increasingly expensive, requiring complex calculations done by giant data centers, leaving fewer people with easy access to the computing firepower necessary to develop the technology behind futuristic products like self-driving cars or digital assistants that can see, talk and reason.

The danger, they say, is that pioneering artificial intelligence research will be a field of haves and have-nots. And the haves will be mainly a few big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, which each spend billions a year building out their data centers.

In the have-not camp, they warn, will be university labs, which have traditionally been a wellspring of innovations that eventually power new products and services.

The huge computing resources these companies have pose a threat the universities cannot compete, said Craig Knoblock, executive director of the Information Sciences Institute, a research lab at the University of Southern California.

The research scientists warnings come amid rising concern about the power of the big tech companies. Most of the focus has been on the current generation of technology: search, online advertising, social media and e-commerce. But the scientists are worried about a barrier to exploring the technological future when that requires staggering amounts of computing.

The modern data centers of the big tech companies are sprawling and secretive. The buildings are the size of football fields, or larger, housing rack upon rack with hundreds of thousands of computers. The doors are bulletproof. The walls are fireproof. Outsiders are rarely allowed in.

These are the engine rooms of cloud computing. They help deliver a cornucopia of entertainment and information to smartphones and laptops, and they enable millions of developers to write cloud-based software applications.

But artificial intelligence researchers, outside the big tech companies, see a worrying trend in their field. A recent report from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence observed that the volume of calculations needed to be a leader in AI tasks like language understanding, game playing and common-sense reasoning has soared an estimated 300,000 times in the past six years.

All that computing fuel is needed to turbocharge so-called deep-learning software models, whose performance improves with more calculations and more data. Deep learning has been the primary driver of AI breakthroughs in recent years.

When its successful, there is a huge benefit, said Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute, founded in 2014 by Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft. But the cost of doing research is getting exponentially higher. As a society and an economy, we suffer if there are only a handful of places where you can be on the cutting edge.

The evolution of one artificial intelligence lab, OpenAI, shows the changing economics, as well as the promise of deep-learning AI technology.

Founded in 2015, with backing from Elon Musk, OpenAI began as a nonprofit research lab. Its ambition was to develop technology at the frontier of artificial intelligence and share the benefits with the wider world. It was a vision that suggested the computing tradition of an inspired programmer, working alone on a laptop, coming up with a big idea.

This spring, OpenAI used its technology to defeat the world champion team of human players at a complex video game called Dota 2. Its software learned the game by constant trial and error over months, the equivalent of more than 45,000 years of game play.

The OpenAI scientists have realized they are engaged in an endeavor more like particle physics or weather simulation, fields demanding huge computing resources. Winning at Dota 2, for example, required spending millions of dollars renting access to tens of thousands of computer chips inside the cloud computing data centers run by companies like Google and Microsoft.

This year, OpenAI morphed into a for-profit company to attract financing and, in July, announced that Microsoft was making a $1 billion investment. Most of the money, OpenAI said, would be spent on the computing power it needed to pursue its goals, which still include widely sharing the benefits of AI after paying off investors.

As part of OpenAIs agreement with Microsoft, the software giant will eventually become the labs sole source of computing.

If you dont have enough compute, you cant make a breakthrough, said Ilya Sutskever, chief scientist of OpenAI.

Academics are also raising concerns about the power consumed by advanced AI software. Training a large, deep-learning model can generate the same carbon footprint as the lifetime of five American cars, including gas, three computer scientists at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, estimated in a recent research paper. (The big tech companies say they buy as much renewable energy as they can, reducing the environmental impact of their data centers.)

Etzioni and his co-authors at the Allen Institute say that perhaps both concerns about power use and the cost of computing could be at least partially addressed by changing how success in AI technology is measured.

The fields single-minded focus on accuracy, they say, skews research along too narrow a path.

Efficiency should also be considered. They suggest that researchers report the computational price tag for achieving a result in a project as well.

Since their Green AI paper was published in July, their message has resonated with many in the research community.

Henry Kautz, a professor of computer science at the University of Rochester, noted that accuracy is really only one dimension we care about in theory and in practice. Others, he said, include how much energy is used, how much data is required and how much skilled human effort is needed for AI technology to work.

A more multidimensional view, Kautz added, could help level the playing field between academic researchers and computer scientists at the big tech companies, if research projects relied less on raw computing firepower.

Big tech companies are pursuing greater efficiency in their data centers and their artificial intelligence software, which they say will make computing power more available to outside developers and academics.

John Platt, a distinguished scientist in Googles artificial intelligence division, points to its recent development of deep-learning models, EfficientNets, which are much smaller and faster than conventional ones. That democratizes use, he said. We want these models to be trainable and accessible by as many people as possible.

The big tech companies have given universities many millions over the years in grants and donations, but some computer scientists say they should do more to close the gap between the AI research haves and have-nots. Today, they say, the relationship that tech giants have to universities is largely as a buyer, hiring away professors, graduate students and even undergraduates.

The companies would be wise to also provide substantial support for academic research including much greater access to their wealth of computing so the competition for ideas and breakthroughs extends beyond corporate walls, said Ed Lazowska, a professor at the University of Washington.

A more supportive relationship, Lazowska argues, would be in their corporate self-interest. Otherwise, he said, Well see a significant dilution of the ability of the academic community to produce the next generation of computer scientists who will power these companies.

At the Allen Institute in Seattle, Etzioni said, the team will pursue techniques to improve the efficiency of artificial intelligence technology. This is a big push for us, he said.

But Etzioni emphasized that what he was calling green AI should be seen as an opportunity for additional ingenuity, not a restraint or a replacement for deep learning, which relies on vast computing power, and which he calls red AI.

Indeed, the Allen Institute has just reached an AI milestone by correctly answering more than 90% of the questions on a standard eighth-grade science test. That feat was achieved with the red AI tools of deep learning.

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Fearing a future of artificial intelligence haves and have-nots - The Seattle Times

Zen and the art of artificial intelligence – The Drum

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Zen koans (or riddles) are short questions which can be difficult or even impossible to answer. Things along the lines of 'What is the sound of one hand clapping?' or 'Can a submarine swim?'

These questions do not just confuse the recipient, but also force them to think in a different way; to move forward without a precise destination in mind.

This technique can seemingly be applied for creativity in business. Many business and marketing books are written on the importance of trying to reveal the underlying challenge a brand has to solve. It's critically important to know the problem you want to resolve before figuring out what the solution should be.

In the last ten years, there has been a surge in a lot of new business - think Uber and AirBNB for starters. They've become successful by finding a new solution to problems that have emerged within an existing category. So, can AI help us to think in differently? Could AI open our minds using Zen koans and make us think more creatively? As far as I can see, the answer is yes and no... So far, so Zen.

The gradual AI evolution

One of the early successes in AI was a programme called ELIZA, developed by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966. He was determined to pass the Turing Test; to fool a human that they were talking to a human when in fact they were conversing with a machine. He realised that an easier way to do this - influenced by therapy - was to always ask open questions. So he programmed ELIZA to always respond this way:

Client: Men are all alike.

ELIZA: IN WHAT WAY?

Client: Theyre always bugging us about something or other.

ELIZA: CAN YOU THINK OF A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE?

Client: Well, my boyfriend made me come here.

ELIZA: YOUR BOYFRIEND MADE YOU COME HERE?

Client: He says Im depressed much of the time.

ELIZA: DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DEPRESSED MUCH OF THE TIME?

However, as great as ELIZA was, it didnt take long for Weizenbaum and others to realise the limitations that conversations with the machine offered. There was no real benefit to the questions; and on this front, things havent improved much since.

In this instance, the questions put forward by the AI and its algorithm were too formulaic and therefore deemed useless.

However, scientists then questioned whether AI and machine learning could respond to non-verbal enquiries and answer questions through action rather than by responding to a specific question.

Proof in the pudding

Think of Chess programmes, where Chess Grand Masters and Chess World Champions can be beaten by a machine. The AI system, AlphaGo, has even defeated internationally recognised players in Go - a Chinese game considered to be far more complex than Chess and less likely to be beaten by brute force.

So, how did AlphaGo do it? The software asked questions through the medium of Go. In move 37 of the second game of four against Go World Champion Lee Sedol, AlphaGo placed a black stone on the line five steps in from the edge of the board. Everyone was shocked.

It turns out that in Go, in the early stages of the game, you only play stones on the outer four lines. Playing on the fifth is considered suboptimal and was ridiculed by the commentators at the time. But, you can guess what happened, right? AlphaGos unorthodox move set-up a strategic play that left Sedol open in the latter stages of that same game. AlphaGo won and went on to win the series 4-1, setting a new standard for AI.

AlphaGo questioned the orthodoxy of the game. Up until that point, Go players and culture had found a local maxima - what they believed was the high point of Go based on a set of rules and principles leading to optimum performance.

But AlphaGo discovered that there was a higher level of performance that could be unlocked by what was traditionally considered a bad move. It exploited this and beat Sedol.

Since that moment, this move has changed the course of the game with players now routinely using the fifth line throughout its early stages. So put more succicntly, AI changed the world of Go.

"Humanity has played Go for thousands of years, and yet, as AI has shown us, we have not yet even scratched the surface," said Go champion, Ke Jie. "The union of human and computer players will usher in a new era."

The effect of AI on advertising

So, does AI have the power to ask probing and creative questions, verbal or non-verbal, that can change the state of play within a game, or more importantly for us, for a brand? Well, yes... But, no as well... Still Zen!

AlphaGo did ask an open question, but it was very much within the concrete frame of reference within the game of Go. This is far more rigid than most situations an organisation would find itself in.

So, to be able to compare AI's knowledge bank to the creative process, it has to be able to operate in environments where rules or parameters don't exist to be able to create something truly new.

Psychologist Margaret Boden suggests there are three types of creativity, that context plays an important part.

So, can AI help marketers into the transformational space?

Unfortunately, theres little evidence that they can. Most examples of creative AI focuses on exploratory creativity and doesnt break the rules. Even those on the inside of the AI revolution, like Judea Pearl, computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence, thinks that our current techniques are limited.

"Current machine-learning systems operate almost exclusively in a statistical, or model-blind, mode, which is analogous in many ways to fitting functions to a cloud of data points," she said. "Such systems cannot reason about 'What if?' questions and, therefore, cannot serve as the basis for Strong AI."

Obviously, most powerful ideas are rejected at first; so even if we did have an AI capable of producing them, it's unlikely that the operator would understand the value of its output?

AI can ask questions and sometimes, those questions can be useful and surprising, but only if they're based within the constraints of a particular way of thinking. For now, the only place to get truly transformational creativity is from ourselves and our peers; we need to keep asking better questions and prioritise that ahead of creating better answers.

Like any Zen master - who typically answers every question with another question - before thinking of your next problem to solve at work, take a step back, look at your brand and try to come up with a better question first.

As Profsssor Luciano Floridi, puts it: "Data do not speak by themselves, we need smart questioners."

Nick Barthram, founder and strategy partner at Firehaus.

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Zen and the art of artificial intelligence - The Drum

Patenting Considerations for Artificial Intelligence in Biotech and Synthetic Biology – JD Supra

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Updated: May 25, 2018:

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Patenting Considerations for Artificial Intelligence in Biotech and Synthetic Biology - JD Supra

Artificial Intelligence is driving the next generation of jobs in the UK – Information Age

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The UK job market will drastically change in the coming years, with 133 million new jobs expected to be created globally, as industries adopt AI

The next generation of jobs in the UK will be determined by artificial intelligence.

As artificial intelligence continues to pervade a range of industries, the next generation of jobs is on the horizon.

In the UK alone, up to a third of jobs will be automated or likely to change as a result of the emergence of AI impacting 10.5 million workers, according to the latest report from global recruiter Robert Walters and market analysis experts Vacancy Soft.

As businesses become ever more reliant on AI, there is an increasing amount of pressure on the processes of data capture and integration. As a result, we have seen an unprecedented number of roles being created with data skill-set at their core, said Ollie Sexton, principal at Robert Walters.

Our job force cannot afford to not get to grips with data and digitalisation. Since 2015 the volume of data created worldwide has more than doubled increasing (on average) by 28% year-on-year.

Now is the perfect time to start honing UK talent for the next generation of AI-influenced jobs. If you look at the statistics in this report we can see that demand is already rife, what we are at risk of is a shortage of talent and skills.

The chorus of voices claiming that AI wont destroy jobs is getting louder. Read here

IT professionals dedicated to data management appeared to be the fastest growing area within large or global entities, with volumes increasing ten-fold in three years an increase in vacancies of 160% since 2015. And in general, data roles across businesses have increased by 80% since 2015 with key areas of growth including data scientists and engineers.

The emergence of the data scientist as a mainstream profession is perhaps the most interesting development, with job vacancies increasing by a staggering 110% year-on-year. The same trend can be seen with data engineers, averaging 86% year-on-year job growth.

Data scientists are in high demand, as companies look to take advantage of their data. But what exactly does the role entail? Read here

The rise of cybercrime has resulted in professional services particularly within banking and financial services hiring aggressively for information security professionals since 2016. Since then, however, volumes have held steady.

Within professional services, vacancies for data analysts (+19.5%), data managers (+64.2%), data scientists (+28.8) and data engineers (+62%) have all increased year-on-year.

1. Agriculture2. Business Support3. Customer Experience4. Energy5. Healthcare6. Intellectual Property7. IT Service Management8. Manufacturing9. Technical Support10. Retail11. Software Development

Tom Chambers, manager Advanced Analytics and Engineering at Robert Walters, explained that this uptake of AI across multiple industries is bringing about rapid change, but with that opportunity.

He said: Particularly, we are seeing retail, professional services and technology industries strive to develop digital products and services that are digitally engaging, secure and instantaneous for the customer leading to huge waves of recruitment of professionals who are skilled in implementing, monitoring and gaining the desired output from facial recognition, check-out free retail and computer vision, among other automation technologies.

Similarly, experimental AI is making huge breakthroughs in the healthcare industry, with the power to replace the need for human, expert diagnoses.

What we are seeing is from those businesses that are prepared to invest heavily in AI and data analytics, is they are already outperforming their competitors and so demand for talent in this area shows no signs of wavering.

Finding talent for those hard-to-fill AI jobs

AI will drive productivity not threaten workers jobs

CTOs must be clear that AI doesnt replace jobs, it makes them more strategic

The jobs artificial intelligence will take over first

UK tech sector leads Europe in AI but what about the rest of the world?

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Artificial Intelligence is driving the next generation of jobs in the UK - Information Age

New Survey Reveals that HR Leaders Are Prioritizing Artificial Intelligence to Improve the Employee Experience – PRNewswire

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SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 1, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --Espressive, the pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI) for enterprise service management and a 2019 Gartner Cool Vendor, today released the findings of a new Pulse Report focused on the top HR service management strategies and initiatives for 2019. The report revealed that increasing the efficiency of HR service management and improving the employee self-help experience will be critical for achieving the top three HR initiatives of 2019: increasing employee retention; improving employee satisfaction; and improving the new-hire onboarding experience. The report, sponsored by Espressive in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), surveyed senior HR decision makers across a wide variety of industries. With 59 percent of respondents already considering or actively adding virtual employee assistants (i.e., chatbots), it is evident that HR leaders are prioritizing AI to improve the employee experience.

"This past January, Espressive sponsored a similar report on IT service management and found that 62 percent of IT leaders were considering or actively adding virtual support agents," said Pat Calhoun, CEO and founder of Espressive. "The new report, done just six months later, reveals that HR leaders have almost caught up with IT in their desire to leverage AI to improve the employee experience. The new report also revealed that 26 percent would need IT approval even if HR had funding, and another 24 percent said that funding would have to come from IT. With that in mind, organizations would benefit by implementing one solution that can be shared across the enterprise."

Employees are Challenged with Getting Help in the Workplace

Although many enterprises provide an intranet or self-service HR portal for answering questions, survey respondents indicated that only 45 percent of employees commonly search there. More frequently used methods for getting help include calling the help desk (72 percent) and emailing the help desk (64 percent). This is problematic when 34 percent say they have no formal tracking or assignment process and 27 percent use a shared inbox with multiple people potentially working on the same questions.

When asked for employees' biggest complaints about getting answers from HR, the top complaint at 57 percent was that it is too hard to find the right answer when searching the HR portal. Another 53 percent of employees report that they can't keep track of where to go for an answer. 48 percent say that when they reach HR by way of phone or email it takes too long to get a response.

Giving Employees a Personalized Onboarding Experience is a Top Challenge

The report also revealed that new-hire onboarding is top of mind for HR leaders. The top onboarding challenge cited, providing a personalized onboarding experience, ranked 18 percentage points higher than the next challenge. The next three reported onboarding challenges were all related to process: getting hiring managers to kick off the process on time; creating and enforcing a business process framework across departments; and getting new hires to complete onboarding tasks.

"All of the challenges revealed in the new Pulse Report can be solved with automation and AI," said Calhoun. "When employees have one place to go across the enterprise to not only receive answers from HR, but also from IT, Payroll, Workplace Resources, and more, their productivity goes up. And when the self-help experience is similar to what they have come to expect in their consumer lives, employee satisfaction and retention rise as well."

Additional Resources

Pulse Report Methodology

Gatepoint Research fielded this survey during August and September 2019. 44 percent of survey respondents were Fortune 1000 companies and 81 percent were director level and above. The complete Pulse Report on Strategies for HR Service Management is available for download.

About Espressive

Espressive, the pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI) for enterprise service management and a 2019 Gartner Cool Vendor, redefines how employees get help by delivering exceptional employee experiences. Barista, the company's virtual support agent (VSA), brings the ease of consumer virtual assistants, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, into the workplace. Barista automates resolution of employee questions, issues, and requests with personalized experiences that result in employee adoption of 80 to 85% and reduced help desk call volume of 40 to 60%. Espressive is backed by General Catalyst Partners and Wing Venture Capital, and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Visit http://www.espressive.com for more information.

Media ContactJocelynn StidhamBhava Communications for Espressive703-863-1277 espressive@bhavacom.com

SOURCE Espressive

https://www.espressive.com

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Novartis and Microsoft announce collaboration to transform medicine with artificial intelligence – GlobeNewswire

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The digital press release with multimedia content can be accessed here:

Basel, and Redmond, October 1, 2019 Novartis today announced an important step in reimagining medicine by founding the Novartis AI innovation lab and by selecting Microsoft as its strategic AI and data-science partner for this effort. The new lab aims to bolster Novartis AI capabilities from research through commercialization and help accelerate the discovery and development of transformative medicines for patients worldwide.

As part of the strategic collaboration announced, Novartis and Microsoft have committed to a multi-year research and development effort. This strategic alliance will focus on two core objectives:1) AI Empowerment. The lab will aim to bring the power of AI to the desktop of every Novartis associate. By bringing together vast amounts of Novartis datasets with Microsofts advanced AI solutions, the lab will aim to create new AI models and applications that can augment our associates capabilities to take on the next wave of challenges in medicine.2) AI Exploration. The lab will use the power of AI to tackle some of the hardest computational challenges within life sciences, starting with generative chemistry, image segmentation & analysis for smart and personalized delivery of therapies and optimization of cell and gene therapies at scale.

Microsoft and Novartis will also collaborate to develop and apply next-generation AI platforms and processes that support future programs across these two focus areas. The overall investment will include project funding, subject-matter experts, technology, and tools.

Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, said, As Novartis continues evolving into a focused medicines company powered by advanced therapy platforms and data science, alliances like this will help us deliver on our purpose to reimagine medicine to improve and extend patients lives. Pairing our deep knowledge of human biology and medicine with Microsofts leading expertise in AI could transform the way we discover and develop medicines for the world.

Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, added, Our strategic alliance will combine Novartis' life sciences expertise with the power of Azure and Microsoft AI. Together, we aim to address some of the biggest challenges facing the life sciences industry today and bring AI capabilities to every Novartis employee so they can unlock new insights as they work to discover new medicines and reduce patient costs.

Novartis Data & Digital Novartis is focusing itself as a leading medicines company powered by advanced therapies and data science. Going big on data and digital is a key strategic pillar that helps Novartis realize that ambition. Data science and digital technologies allow the company to reimagine how to innovate in R&D, engage with patients and customers, and increase operational efficiencies. Novartis focuses its efforts around four strategic digital priority areas:1) Scaling 12 digital lighthouse projects: Build a strong foundation and jumpstart our digital transformation2) Make Novartis digital: sharing, learning and talent acquisition3) Becoming the #1 partner in the tech ecosystem: bridge Novartis with external expertise4) Bolder moves: lead through future disruptive healthcare scenarios with large-scale partnerships

DisclaimerThis press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that can generally be identified by words such as to transform, multiyear, commitment, to found, aims, vision, potential, can, will, plan, expect, anticipate, committed, or similar terms, or regarding the development or adoption of potentially transformational technologies and business models and the collaboration with Microsoft; or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the healthcare products described in this press release, or regarding potential future revenues from collaboration with Microsoft or such products. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the collaboration with Microsoft will achieve any or all of its intended goals or objectives, or in any particular time frame. Neither can there be any guarantee that any healthcare products described in this press release will be submitted or approved for sale or for any additional indications or labeling in any market, or at any particular time. Nor can there be any guarantee that the collaboration with Microsoft or such products will be commercially successful in the future. In particular, our expectations regarding the collaboration with Microsoft and such products could be affected by, among other things, uncertainties involved in the development or adoption of potentially transformational technologies and business models; the uncertainties inherent in research and development of new healthcare products, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally, including potential regulatory actions or delays with respect to the collaboration with Microsoft; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures and requirements for increased pricing transparency; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political, economic and trade conditions; safety, quality or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AGs current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About NovartisNovartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend peoples lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the worlds top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach more than 750 million people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 108 000 people of more than 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world. Find out more at http://www.novartis.com.

Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at http://twitter.com/novartisnewsFor Novartis multimedia content, please visit http://www.novartis.com/news/media-libraryFor questions about the site or required registration, please contact media.relations@novartis.com

About MicrosoftMicrosoft (Nasdaq MSFT @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

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Novartis Media RelationsE-mail: media.relations@novartis.com

Novartis Investor RelationsCentral investor relations line: +41 61 324 7944E-mail: investor.relations@novartis.com

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Novartis and Microsoft announce collaboration to transform medicine with artificial intelligence - GlobeNewswire

Science centers adults-only event has artificial intelligence (and spooky) theme – Orlando Sentinel

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Folks ages 21 and up can explore the entire museum and attend a presentation called Are You Afraid of Artificial Intelligence? More Importantly, Should you Be? It will feature speaker HP Newquist, the creator of the traveling exhibit Artificial Intelligence: Your Mind & the Machine. He will talk about AI myths and facts.

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Science centers adults-only event has artificial intelligence (and spooky) theme - Orlando Sentinel

Is Artificial Intelligence a danger to humanity? Take a look at the truth – India Today

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to disrupt our world. With intelligent machines enabling high-level cognitive processes like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem-solving and decision making, coupled with advances in data collection and aggregation, analytics and computer processing power, AI presents opportunities to complement and supplement human intelligence and enrich the way people live and work.

On the other hand, some of the leading scientists and thinkers have warned about 'technological singularity'. Technological singularity refers to the belief that ordinary humans will someday be overtaken by artificially intelligent machines or cognitively enhanced biological intelligence, or both.

It is a technology that takes in huge amounts of information from a specific domain and uses it to make a decision in the service of a specified goal.

For example, AI technology can be used to analyze loan repayment histories (information) of a person to decide whether to give an individual a loan or not (decision) so as to maximize the profits for the lender (goal).

In 2016, Google-run artificial intelligence (AI) programme "AlphaGo" defeated legendary player Lee Se-dol in Go - a complex Chinese board game that is considered the "quintessential unsolved problem" for machine intelligence.Though the AI has many benefits, it has sparked up a debate about its dangers to humanity.

AI machines are like other human beings in terms of their capacities for decision and action. They cannot be compared to other machines as the degree of independence that AI technologies have is much more complex.

AI is an attempt to reproduce super intelligent humans. It chooses one aspect of human beings, namely the intelligence, and artificially magnifies it to an extent that allows the machine to do things far better than humans can.

AI is associated with superlative memory, calculative power, decision-making capacity, high speeds of action, etc. These machines thus become super-beings, and a society filled with many super-beings is a recipe for disaster.AI machines are a mirror to our desire for immortality and the absence of human weaknesses.

Most importantly, the AI has not been used to get rid of poverty, to have a more equitable distribution of wealth, or to make people more content with what they have. Instead, they will primarily be dictated by profit for the companies that make them.

Healthcare and medicine become affordable and accessible with AI taking centre stage in telemedicine and quick diagnosis. Water and energy networks become accessible and widely usable when AI can mediate the use of different sources.

Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the computer revolution, the AI revolution is not taking certain jobs (artisans, personal assistants who use paper and typewriters) and replacing them with other jobs (assembly-line workers, personal assistants conversant with computers).

Instead, it is poised to bring about a wide-scale decimation of jobs - mostly lower-paying jobs, but some higher-paying ones, too. This transformation will result in enormous profits for the companies that develop AI, as well as for the companies that adopt it.

For example, imagine how much money a car-aggregators make if they remodel their business to userobots as drivers.

Thus, the world is facing two developments that cannot be placed together: enormous wealth concentrated in few hands and large numbers of people out of work.

Part of the solution lies in educating or retraining people in tasks that AI tools aren't good at. For example, artificial intelligence is not suited for jobs involving creativity, planning and "cross-domain" thinking.

A more promising solution is creating lower-paying jobs involving the "people skills" that AI lacks, such as social workers, bartenders etc. these professions require nuanced human interaction. But the question is how many such workers does a society really need?

The NITI Aayog has published an ambitious discussion paper on kick-starting the artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem in India.

The paper talks about powering five sectors - agriculture, education, healthcare, smart cities/infrastructure and transport - with AI.

The discussion paper accepts that adoption of AI till date has been driven primarily from a commercial perspective.Further, it notes that technology disruptions like AI are once-in-a-generation phenomenon, and hence large-scale adoption strategies need to strike a balance between narrow definitions of financial impact and the greater good.

Data is one of the primary drivers of AI solutions, and thus appropriate handling of data, ensuring privacy and security is of prime importance. In order for India to ride the AI innovation wave, a robust data protection framework and intellectual property framework are required.

Despite the beneficial uses of AI, scientists and leading thinkers like Stephen Hawking, Nick Bostrom, and Elon Musk warn us about the dangers of AI and the coming technological singularity.

It is believed that the purely intelligent creatures, whether people or machines are bad for humanity.

On the other hand, AI, by itself, is not looking to destroy humanity. Whether we use AI to augment ourselves, create new species, or use it to destroy lives and what we've built is entirely in our hands - at least for now.

No matter how dangerous AI might be for humanity, it's clear that there's no slowing down the pace of progress. Regardless of how many deponents come out against AI, there's no way to stop its advancement.

Future discussions will help in directing AI for good rather than bad, but no matter what happens, there's certainly no stopping the wheels of progress as they slowly grind forward.

(Article by ClearIAS Team. ClearIAS.com is a popular website which helps IAS aspirants to prepare for UPSC Civil Services Exam online)

Read: What is India-US Tri-Services 'Exercise Tiger Triumph': All you need to know

Read: India is the 6th wealthiest country in the world, total wealth grew by 160 per cent in 10 years

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Is Artificial Intelligence a danger to humanity? Take a look at the truth - India Today

Pope Francis on artificial intelligence: Does it really risk barbarism? – Verdict

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At The Common Good in the Digital Age conference last weekend, Pope Francis warned that artificial intelligence (AI) could, if unchecked by ethics, become an enemy of the common good.

But is his assessment of AI as a potential new barbarism a fair one?

The Common Good in the Digital Age was a three-day conference held at the end of September in the Vatican, which saw academics and religious authorities discuss the social, ethical and political implications of recent technological developments.

As part of the conference, Pope Francis addressed diplomats, financiers and tech company executives, warning that the rush to develop artificial intelligence must also be accompanied with ethical evaluations of the common good to mitigate the risk of increasing social inequality.

In his speech, Pope Francis said:

If technological advancement became the cause of increasingly evident inequalities, it would not be true and real progress.

If mankinds so-called technological progress were to become an enemy of the common good, this would lead to an unfortunate regression to a form of barbarism dictated by the law of the strongest.

But is that a fair assessment? According to Tech Nation applied AI lead Harry Davies, to some extent, yes.

Pope Francis is right to raise concerns about the social implications of technology, particularly AI, he said.

Whenever we utilise any new technology, there is a spectrum of possible outcomes some good, some bad but the potentially vast impact of AI upon society coupled with an exponential rate of changemean that we must endeavour to treat developments in AI with real responsibility.

Artificial intelligence has a great deal of potential to work toward the common good Pope Francis mentioned, mitigating human error and making everyday operations safer across a number of sectors.

AI has applications in multiple financial infrastructures, ranging from mundane interactions to multinational industries. In March 2019 the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) launched the UKs first National Data Repository, which uses AI to interpret over 130TB of reservoir and infrastructure data to support the UKs energy transition efforts.

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The medical sector could also benefit greatly from AI. Artificial intelligence algorithms have the potential to detect useful patterns based on millions of data points to help detect signs of disease early, and could assist in the development of new technologies and cures through analysing data faster than any human could.

The development of AI has raised concerns about job loss and redundancy, but recent data suggests that the rise of AI could create jobs. The demand for AI comes with a demand for data scientists and engineers, and vacancies for these jobs have increased considerably in recent years.

The Harnessing the Power of AI: The Demand for Future Skillsreport, produced by global recruitment agency Robert Walters and market analysis company Vacancy Soft, predicts that the uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to create 133 million new jobs globally and drastically change the UK job market.

Popular fear of AI and its algorithms reflects not only concerns about job loss, but also widespread anxiety that simply being human will lose value as our lives become patterned according to programs that tell us what we like and what to do, and over which we have no control, says Guido Joure, CDO of Swedish technology multinational ABB.

I see things in a far more positive light. I work with AI every day, sometimes in the lab but more often in factories, the high seas, remote mines, the ocean floor, aircraft aloft, city transit systems, wilderness power stations and ordinary offices.

Rather than a menace to humanity, I believe artificial intelligence represents a potential path to an upgrade that could be called HumAIn.

This view is echoed by Davies.

Though meant as a warning, not a proclamation of where we aretoday, it is premature to suggest that we are entering a new age of barbarism, he says.

For every opportunist, there are well-intentioned people building AI products that powerfully make the world a better place, be it diagnosing cancer earlier, combatting misinformation and fake news, or using AI to solve climate change. We must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Equally, the oft floated criticism of huge job losses and mass inequality is not a forgone conclusion, though to avoid this scenario will require thorough thinking, reasoned debate, and creative ways of rethinking our approach to education and the economy.

Despite the potential of AI to work for the common good, the technology still has its limitations as well as the ability to reinforce existing social inequalities without careful scrutiny and supervision.

Like so many of the great challenges of our time climate change, ageing, and others this feels an inherently political one. Supranational and global cooperation will be paramount to avoid the race to the bottom that Pope Francis highlights, where countries and corporations cut corners to stay ahead, says Davies.

This is not just theoretical. We already see the effects of malevolent technology where implemented in our society, be it the deep fakes he highlights, pernicious uses of facial technology, and we all know the story of Cambridge Analytica.

Artificial intelligence algorithms can cause problems through lacking human context. In June 2019 Ubers AI algorithm sparked outrage by increasing trip prices during the terror attack on London Bridge, and YouTubes content algorithms have been the subject of much debate for their propensity to recommend provocative and extremist content.

As well as problems caused by a lack of human insight, AI created by humans can in turn reflect human biases.

Artificial intelligence being deployed in sectors such as employment, the justice system or even medicine could internalise and reinforce prejudices from their human programmers, with these biased calculations being given additional weight through preconceptions of AI as more objective than their human counterparts.

Increasing the influence of AI on society could also make a number of financial and social infrastructures vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and putting machine-learning algorithms in charge of important administrative duties could pose a threat to the common good if the AIs learning process is exploited.

Ethics in Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic, but its not necessarily a new topic, since AI can trace its roots back to 1956, says Simon Driscoll, dataand intelligence practice lead at IT services provider NTT Data UK.

As the use of AI becomes more prevalent, and in order to ensure that it is accepted in society, its important that the decision-making process is open, moral and explainable if it is to be trusted and accepted by humans.

Artificial Intelligence is founded on data it can only learn from the data its given, and it can only keep on learning if the data it receives continues to be good.

If an AI-enabled machine makes a decision, there has to be a reason that can be rationalised by the person who created it and if any bias has seeped into this process, it is the human who is to blame, rather than the AI itself. Reliable and trustworthy data, validated by a human, is therefore a key requirement to ensure AI remains morally correct and useful in the future.

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Pope Francis on artificial intelligence: Does it really risk barbarism? - Verdict

New Artificial Intelligence Tool Will Show Nonprofits What’s Working and What’s Not – PRNewswire

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HEALDSBURG, Calif., Oct. 1, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --TheGlobal Center of Nonprofit Excellence announced today the release of an innovative tool for nonprofits called OpX360. Combining nonprofit best practices and artificial intelligence, this online tool will measure and offer improvements to operational competency in less than 60 minutes.

OpX360 is like a $50,000+ consulting engagement without the cost or the weeks of discovery involved. Instead the program is comprised of six AI modules; one for each of the areas of operations of a nonprofit organization. Each OpX360 module has 60 Best Practice statements based on proven industry standards to help nonprofit organizations determine their current level of competence in any of the six operational areas of their organization.

The tool will also help nonprofits understand the consequences for non-performance and what they can immediately do to improve any areas that are underperforming.

"As former nonprofit executives, we understand that when it comes to knowing how well a nonprofit is performing, most nonprofit executives and their board members are simply too close to be objective and few know where to start," say OpX360 inventors Bob Lipps and Marc Stein. "Assessing competence against prescribed industry standards takes all the guesswork out."

"The premise is simple: Nonprofits need more funding. Funders need more confidence. More confidence comes from demonstrated operational competence. Funders with more confidence give nonprofits more funding. Operational competence can be measured and improved with OpX360," says Lipps.

CPA & Nonprofit Leader Jim McKee said, "We've paid consultants many thousands of dollars in recent years. For a fraction of the cost, OpX360 provided us with more focused feedback, recommendations, and actionable steps for improvement than our consultants ever have."

Within one hour of completing any of the six modules, the nonprofit will receive an Executive Briefing designed to be shared with their executives or board and a 70+ page Detailed Report addressing all 60 Best Practice statements for the person or team responsible for the specific area of operations.

Any of these assessments can be taken individually or together, depending on the needs of the organization.

The six areas of nonprofit operations are:

To receive a 20% discount throughout 2019, visit https://www.opx360.comand use code "LAUNCH" upon checkout.

About The Global Center of Nonprofit Excellence

The Global Center for Nonprofit Excellence (https:///www.theglobalcenter.net) is an orchestrated network helping nonprofits, funders and industry experts work better together for the greatest impact. OpX360 (https://www.opx360.com) was invented by co-founders Bob Lipps and Marc Stein and is a proprietary product of The Global Center of Nonprofit Excellence.

Contact:Marc SteinCo-Founder of The Global Center for Nonprofit Excellence, Co-Inventor of OpX360 805-469-8123223931@email4pr.com https:///www.theglobalcenter.net

SOURCE The Global Center for Nonprofit Excellence

https:///www.theglobalcenter.net

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On-Demand Concierge & Life-Saving Artificial Intelligence Now Available to 5.3M California Medicare Recipients Through Alignment Health Plan -…

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ORANGE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alignment Health Plan, a Southern Calif.-based Medicare Advantage plan, is expanding its coverage into eight greater Sacramento and Bay Area counties, where more than 862,000 Medicare recipients live1: Marin, Placer, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Sonoma and Yolo. This means that the more than 5.3 million Medicare-eligible individuals who live in Alignments full service area will have the option to select one of its plans with exclusive access to a concierge-level member services team and health care black card during Medicares annual election period, Oct. 15 through Dec. 7, 2019.

Available only to Alignment Health Plan members, the ACCESS On-Demand Concierge program provides round-the-clock access to a board-certified doctor by phone or video; a dedicated concierge team; and a special black card that can be used as a debit card to buy eligible items at more than 50,000 retailers across the country.

The company today revealed its 2020 portfolio of health plans, featuring benefits2 designed to provide better care, service and value than traditional Medicare, including:

Alignments ACCESS On-Demand Concierge is evolving as health care consumers expectations become more sophisticated. We purposely built Alignment to provide seniors the care and service they deserve, and we are delighted to be able to give them peace of mind that all their health care needs will be taken care of, said John Kao, CEO of Alignment Healthcare, which owns and operates Alignment Health Plan.

Expanded ACCESS On-Demand Concierge Includes Groceries, Grandkids On-Demand

With new flexibility from federal regulators to provide supplemental benefits that address social determinants of health, Alignment has added both grocery and companion care benefits to certain plans in 2020 for members who have qualifying chronic diseases. The grocery benefit provides a monthly allowance of $10 to $20 per month depending on the plan, automatically loaded onto the members black card to buy eligible groceries at participating stores like CVS, Walmart and Walgreens. The companion care benefit connects college students with members who need assistance with non-medical services such as light house chores, technology lessons and general companionship. These grandkids on-demand are available to meet with qualified members for up to two hours per day, 12 hours per quarter and 48 hours per year. Medical records will be used to establish qualification and, once qualified, the member will qualify for the remainder of the plan year.

Expanded Coverage Options Now Available in Northern California

During this years annual election period, Alignment is offering new Medicare Advantage options that give Northern California members access to the Sutter Health network: Sutter Advantage (HMO) and My Choice (PPO). The six new HMO plans are available in eight counties3 and the four new PPO plans are available in seven counties.4 Depending on their plan, effective Jan. 1, 2020, members will be able to seek in-network care with the high-quality doctors, hospitals, medical foundations and other health care services affiliated with Sutter Health, a not-for-profit integrated health care system. The network also includes some providers associated with Sutter Independent Physicians and Mills-Peninsula Medical Group, two physician organizations aligned with Sutter.

In Marin County, Alignment is introducing its CalPlus (HMO) and Platinum (HMO) plans, with access starting Jan. 1, 2020 to in-network care from Brown & Toland Physicians, a network of more than 2,700 Bay Area doctors.

Alignment Healthcare is powered by AVA, the companys proprietary command center, an artificial intelligence-based platform that provides real-time analytics on every Alignment member, empowering clinicians with medical insights that lead to life-saving care, sometimes predicting care before its even needed. In addition to its expansion in Northern California, Alignment serves Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Joaquin, Santa Clara and Stanislaus counties in California. For more information, visit alignmenthealthplan.com.

About Alignment Healthcare

Alignment Healthcare is redefining the business of health care by shifting the focus from payments to people. Weve created a new model for health care delivery that cuts costs and improves lives by unraveling the inefficiencies of the current system to drive patients, providers and payers toward a common goal of wellness. Harnessing best practices from Medicare Advantage, our innovative data-management technology allows us to commit to caring for seniors and those who need it most: the chronically ill and frail. With offices and care centers across the country, Alignment Healthcare provides partners and patients with customized care and service where they need it and when they need it, including clinical coordination, risk management and technology facilitation. Alignment Healthcare offers health plan options to California residents through Alignment Health Plan, and partners with select health plans in North Carolina and Florida to help deliver better benefits at lower costs. For more information, please visit http://www.alignmenthealthcare.com.

1 Medicare enrollment as of July 2019, https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/CMSProgramStatistics/Dashboard.html

2 Benefits vary by plan. Copays and certain restrictions may apply.

3 Placer, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Sonoma and Yolo

4 Placer, Sacramento, San Mateo, San Joaquin, Sonoma, Stanislaus and Yolo

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On-Demand Concierge & Life-Saving Artificial Intelligence Now Available to 5.3M California Medicare Recipients Through Alignment Health Plan -...

Will AI really transform education? – The Hechinger Report

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The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

For all the talk about how artificial intelligence could transform what happens in the classroom, AI hasnt yet lived up to the hype.

AI involves creating computer systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. Its already being experimented with to help automate grading, tailor lessons to students individual needs and assist English language learners. We heard about a few promising ideas at a conference I attended last week on artificial intelligence hosted by Teachers College, Columbia University. (Disclosure: The Hechinger Report is an independent unit of Teachers College.)

Shipeng Li, corporate vice president of iFLYTEK, talked about how the Chinese company is working to increase teachers efficiency by individualizing homework assignments. Class time can be spent on the problems that are tripping up the largest numbers of students, and young people can use their homework to focus on their particular weaknesses. Margaret Price, a principal design strategist with Microsoft, mentioned a PowerPoint plug-in that provides subtitles in students native languages useful for a teacher leading a class filled with young people from many different places. Sandra Okita, an associate professor at Teachers College, talked about how AI could be used to detect over time why certain groups of learners are succeeding or failing.

But none of these artificial intelligence applications are particularly wide-reaching yet, the transformation of every aspect of the traditional learning environment which will usher in a bold new era of human history that promoters have imagined.

There is also plenty of reason to worry about what might happen as tech developers accelerate efforts to bring artificial intelligence into classrooms and onto campuses.

Paulo Blikstein, an associate professor at Teachers College, drew laughs by talking about Silicon Valleys public relations coup in getting us so excited about technologys promise that we happily parted with our private data, only to learn much later of the costs. A handful of tech CEOs caused enormous harm to our society, he said. I dont want that to happen in education yet again. Stavros Yiannouka, chief executive of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), a project of the Qatar Foundation, and a panel moderator, agreed that there are great risks in letting artificial intelligence loose in classrooms. He pointed out, You dont need to have sinister objectives or plans for world domination to get things horribly wrong. Andre Perry, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Hechinger contributor, talked about how tech companies may cement racismand other biases into algorithms unless they employ diverse teams and consciously fight against inequities.

As Blikstein noted, AI educational applications come in two types tools that involve computers shaping how learning happens, and those that engage students in using AI to code and program. In a panel moderated by my colleague Jill Barshay, Stefania Druga, a PhD candidate at the University of Washington, discussed a platform shed created called Cognimates. It enables children to use artificial intelligence to train and build robots.

Druga talked about how kids first assumed the robots were super brainy. But once students learned how to train a robot, she said, their perception goes from, its smarter than me to, its not smart, significantly. We see that kids become not only more critical of these technologies but also more fluent.

She mentioned the creative and unexpected projects students wanted to tackle, including building a chatbot that gave back-handed compliments (a concept that Druga, who grew up in Romania, wasnt initially familiar with). We need more silly instead of smart technologies, Druga said, that puts the focus on people and allows people to do what they do best. In her evaluations of Cognimates, she found that students who gained the deepest understanding of AI werent those who spent the most time coding; rather, they were the students who spent the most time talking about the process with their peers. That left me thinking that its from other humans that we tend to learn the most and peers and teachers will always play a central role in education.

Editors note: This story led off this weeks Future of Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers inboxes every other Wednesday with trends and top stories about education innovation. Subscribe today!

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Will AI really transform education? - The Hechinger Report

Spending on Artificial Intelligence systems in the Middle East & Africa to top $374 million in 2020 – TelecomTV

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Spending on artificial intelligence (AI) systems in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) is expected to maintain its strong growth trajectory as businesses continue to invest in projects that utilize the capabilities of AI software and platforms. That's according to the latest forecast from global technology research and consulting firm International Data Corporation (IDC), with a recent update to the firm's Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide showing that spending on AI systems in MEA is expected to reach $374.2 million next year, up from $261.8 million in 2018 and an anticipated $310.3 million in 2019. Over the longer term, IDC expects spending in the region to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19% for the 2018-2023 period.

"The AI software applications and AI platforms markets continue to show steady growth in the MEA region, and we expect this momentum to continue over the forecast period," says Manish Ranjan, IDC's program manager for software and cloud in the Middle East, Africa, and Turkey. "The use of AI and machine learning (ML) is on the rise in a wide variety of business applications from ERP and CRM to analytics, content management, and collaboration solutions. Many global vendors have started embedding AI, ML, and cognitive applications to provide ultimate business benefits to their users."

Spending on AI systems in the region will be led by the banking and retail industries. Together, these verticals will account for more than 33% of spending in 2020, followed by federal/central governments and telecommunication industry. Investments in AI systems across MEA will continue to be driven by a wide range of use cases. The three largest use cases automated customer service agents, IT automation, and automated threat intelligence and prevention systems will account for around 30% of total AI spending in 2020.

"With the growing adoption of various use cases across all industries, organizations are continuing to invest significantly in optimizing their business processes, automating their operations and enhancing their products and services offerings in order to maximize the overall customer experience," says Ranjan.

Looking at individual countries, IDC's forecast shows South Africa accounting for 20.5% of AI spending in MEA during 2020, followed by the UAE on 19.7%. Saudi Arabia will be the region's third-biggest spender next year with 15.7% share. Turkey will rank fourth, accounting for 11.1% of regional AI spending.

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Spending on Artificial Intelligence systems in the Middle East & Africa to top $374 million in 2020 - TelecomTV

AI IN BANKING: Artificial intelligence could be a near $450 billion opportunity for banks – here are the strat – Business Insider India

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Discussions, articles, and reports about the AI opportunity across the financial services industry continue to proliferate amid considerable hype around the technology, and for good reason: The aggregate potential cost savings for banks from AI applications is estimated at $447 billion by 2023, with the front and middle office accounting for $416 billion of that total, per Autonomous Next research seen by Business Insider Intelligence.

Most banks (80%) are highly aware of the potential benefits presented by AI, per an OpenText survey of financial services professionals. In fact, many banks are planning to deploy solutions enabled by AI: 75% of respondents at banks with over $100 billion in assets say they're currently implementing AI strategies, compared with 46% at banks with less than $100 billion in assets, per a UBS Evidence Lab report seen by Business Insider Intelligence. Certain AI use cases have already gained prominence across banks' operations, with chatbots in the front office and anti-payments fraud in the middle office the most mature.

The companies mentioned in this report are: Capital One, Citi, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Personetics, Quantexa, and U.S. Bank

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

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AI IN BANKING: Artificial intelligence could be a near $450 billion opportunity for banks - here are the strat - Business Insider India

How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing The Landscape Of Digital Marketing – Inc42 Media

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All digital marketing operations are now affected by AI-powered tools

Digital marketers are trying hard to leverage AI for strategic planning and campaign decision making

A roadmap is required to stay ahead from the crowd, few tips to prepare for that

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is now a big thing now in digital marketing. All digital marketing operations are now affected by AI-powered tools. From startups to large firms are opting for AI-powered digital marketing tools to enhance campaign planning & decision making.

AI-based tools are now a flourishing market, with a drastic change in demand. According to most of the digital marketers AI enhancing all the areas where the predictive analysis, decision making & automation efforts required.

Digital marketers are trying hard to leverage AI for strategic planning and campaign decision making. Most of them found AI helpful and enhancing their productivity and reducing their efforts. AI-powered analytics tools provide better insights for campaign management, budget planning, & ROI analysis. AI can gather the insights from a truckload of unstructured and structured data sources in a fraction of sec.

All the human interactions with a business affect the digital marketing strategy and business revenue.

Reportedly, brands who have recently adopted AI for marketing strategy, predict a 37 percent reduction in costs along with a 39 percent increase in revenue figures on an average by the end of 2020 alone.

Artificial intelligence tools help digital marketers to understand customer behavior and make the right recommendation at the right time. A tool with the millions of predefined conditions knows how customer react to a particular situation, ad copy, videos or any other touchpoint. While human cant assess the large set of data better than a machine in a limited timeframe.

You can collect the insights on your fingertips with the help of AI. Where to find an audience? how to interact with them? What to send them? How to send them? What is the right time to connect? When to send a follow-up? All these answers lie in the AI-powered digital marketing platforms.

With a smart analysis pattern AI, tools can make better suggestions and help in decision making. A personalized content recommendation to the right audience at the right time guarantees the success of any campaign.

Digital marketers are really getting pushed harder to demonstrate the success of content and campaigns. With AI tools utilization of potential data is very easy and effective.

According to a2019 studyby Forrester and Albert, only 26% of marketers are making use of autonomous AI, while 74% take a more manual approach with assistance from AI.

AI technology evolving every aspect of digital marketing to name a few audience targeting, audience interest analysis, web optimization, smart content writing and recommendation, advanced tracking and reporting and more.

AI in digital marketing is poised to reach a global market of $21 Bn by 2023, growing at a steady Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 26%.

Digital marketing technology platforms are evolving with great pace and it needs some specific set of skills. If you want to opt for smart marketing technology you should start using AI-powered tools from a small scale and increase the limits as you grow. A roadmap is required to stay ahead from the crowd, few tips to prepare for that:

AI has a remarkable impact on all the areas of digital marketing and will keep growing in the future. The future of digital marketing is here, the fast you learn the faster you grow. The days are gone when digital marketers run the data and find the insight and other team works on the campaign based on the insights. Things are moving with great pace in digital marketing space. The early adopters will win the game!

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How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing The Landscape Of Digital Marketing - Inc42 Media

THE AI IN TRANSPORTATION REPORT: How automakers can use artificial intelligence to cut costs, open new revenue – Business Insider India

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This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here. Current subscribers can log in and read the report here.

New technology is disrupting legacy automakers' business models and dampening consumer demand for purchasing vehicles. Tech-mediated models of transportation - like ride-hailing, for instance - are presenting would-be car owners with alternatives to purchasing vehicles.

In fact, a study by ride-hailing giant Lyft found that in 2017, almost 250,000 of its passengers sold their own vehicle or abandoned the idea of replacing their current car due to the availability of ride-hailing services.

This will enable automakers to take advantage of what will amount to billions of dollars in added value. For example, self-driving technology will present a $556 billion market by 2026, growing at a 39% CAGR from $54 billion in 2019, per Allied Market Research.

But firms face some major hurdles when integrating AI into their operations. Many companies are not presently equipped to begin producing AI-based solutions, which often require a specialized workforce, new infrastructure, and updated security protocol. As such, it's unsurprising that the main barriers to AI adoption are high costs, lack of talent, and lack of trust. Automakers must overcome these barriers to succeed with AI-based projects.

In The AI In Transportation Report, Business Insider Intelligence will discuss the forces driving transportation firms to AI, the market value of the technology across segments of the industry, and the potential barriers to its adoption. We will also show how some of the leading companies in the space have successfully overcome those barriers and are using AI to adapt to the digital age.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

In full, the report:

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you've given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of AI in transportation.

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THE AI IN TRANSPORTATION REPORT: How automakers can use artificial intelligence to cut costs, open new revenue - Business Insider India

Researchers Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Reconstruct Ancient Games – Atlas Obscura

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Games are a serious matter, and they have been for thousands of years. Fun is fun, but games need rules. Before the dawn of proprietary gamesthe ones in boxesmost board games didnt come with instructions, though. The rules were passed on orally, and thats one of the reasons that ancient games still played today, such as mancala or backgammon, have murky origins. Now, an interdisciplinary team of software engineers, game historians, and archaeologists is attempting to piece together the lineage and rules of ancient board gameswith modern technology.

Board games are one of the oldest documented forms of leisure. It is hard to tell when hide-and-seek or chopsticks came along, because they dont leave any material evidence, but game boards and playing tokens have given archaeologists a lot to work with. They were etched on the landscape, left or lost in habitation sites, and even buried with the dead (for playing in the afterlife). They occur all over the world, from Viking hnefatafl to Chinese liubo to a mancala variant in Borneo, and involve a range of boards, dice, and pieces. And games spanned social divisions, from the general public, some of whom played on game boards incised into surfaces in temples, to ancient royalty, who had suitably luxurious game paraphernalia.

Tutankhamun had four senet sets in his tomb, says Cameron Browne, a computer scientist at Maastricht University, referring to an ancient Egyptian game about the passage to the afterlife. Browne is the head of the Digital Ludeme Project (lude from the Latin, to play), which is using archaeological evidence and modern game rules to figure out how hundreds of ancient games and their variants were played, and changed over time and by location.

As far as the archaeological record goes, board gaming began with senet, nearly 1,800 years before Tut was even born. About 700 years later, in ancient Sumer, the Royal Game of Ur was important enough that its rules were written downactually incised on a cuneiform tablet. (Otherwise, rules were almost never set in stone.) The names of many ancient games have slipped through the cracks of history, so researchers identify them by what remains. Theres 33 Circles from Egypt, 10-Ring from Bronze Age Crete, and the Middle Eastern 58 Holes. Since the rules have been lost over time, the way many ancient games were played is based on speculation. With so many games, and so many variations, Brownes work isnt merely an archaeological-meets-ludological project. Its genealogical, too.

Were really dealing with families of games, Browne says. The mancala games, the chess-like games, the tafl games, card games. Each of these probably have their own distinct family.

Like the humans that invented them, games evolved over time. Board sizes have changed, pieces have shifted shape, and rules have mutated as games have been passed along and slowly fanned out across the map.

The Silk Road is a perfect example for how the games spread, Browne says. Many of these games started in the Fertile Crescent and progressed through Europe and Asia.

And as they spread they left behind a convoluted lineage of adaptions and local flavor. For example, according to Ulrich Schdler, a games historian at the Swiss Museum of the Game and an editor of the journal Board Game Studies, the aristocrats at Versailles in the 17th century played a languid form of trictrac, a backgammon variant. When the game got to the banking Brits across the channel, with a sense of economy of time, it was compressed into 15-minute bouts.

This all adds up to a complex, poorly documented, and global family tree, and that makes defining any given, long-forgotten rule set a challenge. Games changed hands across cultures, over the course of millennia. Many games fell out of style, disappeared altogether, or evolved into something unrecognizable. The archaeological record is fragmentary at best, and game compendiasuch as Alfonso X of Castiles 1284 Libro de los Juegosare few and far between. What games did leave, in some cases, were boards and spare pieces, which in turn has led to a lot of guesswork among amateurs, enthusiasts, and interested insiders. The same Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon who opened Tuts tomb proposed what is now a common play style for 58 Holes. Modern game experts can only pick up the pieces.

Lost rules are made in a very superficial way by people who dont really know games. From archaeologists, philologists, Ive read so many, Schdler says. Theyre made up by people who have never played a game, or dont know their mechanics very well. Bringing some order to this complicated history might take something more than speculation.

At the Fourth Annual Board Game Symposium in New York in September 2019, Walter Crist, an anthropologist with the Digital Ludeme Project, briefly described how their project is dealing with thisby going from we cant know what the rules of the game are to figuring out what the rules must have been, using artificial intelligence.

To do this, the researchers model each game using ludemes (literally, game memes) to digitally reconstruct the games based on their fundamental conceptual information. The ludeme idea breaks down the games formits physical components and any known rule setand separates it from function, or how those components are employed in reality. Ludemes are game genes, and once the genetic information is mapped, the Digital Ludeme Project can calculate the ludemic distance between games, or the number of steps necessary for one game to evolve into another. The ludeme concept makes all game information more manageable pieces of a much larger puzzle. By adding or removing any one component, a game might be a step closer to another one, and then with historical and archaeological data, the researchers can tell whether one game borrowed from another. Then, in a crucial step, the ludemes are loaded into a game system made specially for the projectLUDII game softwareand the computers go to work by playing every game thousands upon thousands of times in different variations.

In a game of Boggleproprietary, invented in 1972players shake an enclosed box of 16 cubes, each inscribed with a different letter on each side. Once the cubes settle, players try and make as many words as they can by connecting the face-up letters. This is precisely what the LUDII software is doing, with game simulations in the place of letters, and functional games in the place of words.

Schdler has long worked on reconstructing ancient games without the assistance of artificial intelligence, and says that to find out if a set of rules works, you need to play it a lot of times to find glitches where the rules break down and leave the game unplayable, unevenly matched, or impossible to win. A veteran of many, many of these playthroughs, Schdler is excited about the Digital Ludeme Project.

If we have a large number of ludemes, elements that make up a rule set, we can perhaps see that certain ludemes go together, he says. You can simply let the computer play 10,000 times and this will give you a result as to whether or not these rules work.

With so many ludemes involved with each game, what would have taken a lifetime of playtesting can be done in hours, says Eddie Duggan, a games historian at the University of Suffolk. Once the game has been programmed using the LUDII game system to model, play, and analyze the games, it will be possible to determine a games interestingness or game quality. The more test runs a given game gets in the machine learning system, the better the Digital Ludeme Project team can understand how the game would most optimally operate.

Our reconstructions will also, crucially, provide confidence scores for our reconstructions, says Crist, the teams anthropologist, to communicate our conclusions about the likelihood that these rule sets could reflect the reality of the past.

The game family tree operates like an evolutionary tree, and can be tracked through a method called computational phylogenetics. After each game is boggled, and thousands of different rule sets are tested, the Digital Ludeme Project determines how the game fits in with others, and can track their changes like in a game of telephone. Between points A and B, Duggan notes, there are many small steps, so the project provides opportunities to both interpolate new games and optimize existing ones.

As well as revealing something about ancient games, he says, it is likely that new games will be discovered that were not known or played in the ancient world.

The Digital Ludeme Projects ultimate goal is to make hundreds of reconstructed and optimized ancient games available online for everyone to learn about and enjoy.

Games without rulesplayis something all animals do, says Duggan. But one day somebody used a stick to scratch a line in the dirt and started to arrange pebbles or seeds along the line according to rules and invented a game. That is when we became human.

As the project continues, Browne says theyll pay special mind to quality and historical authenticity. The compendium of fun is set to officially publish in January 2020, though some of the games are playable now. To, Duggan it all illustrates our collective adaptabilitywhen applied to the task of fun.

Whether we are modern board game players, Vikings, ancient Romans, ancient Egyptians, ancient Babylonians, he says, we are all Homo ludens, the species that plays games.

Whats the oldest game youve ever played? Let us know, and share any other thoughts and feelings you might have about the story in the Atlas Obscura Community Forums!

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Researchers Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Reconstruct Ancient Games - Atlas Obscura


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