New collaboration paves the way for Artificial General Intelligence
The concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that is able to carry out tasks and understand the world in the way that humans do has been around since 2005 when it was first mooted by Dr Ben Goertzel and Cassio Pennachin in their book Artificial General Intelligence.
A new collaboration between network specialist Cisco and AI company SingularityNET brings practical AGI a step closer, with a commitment to developing applied technologies and customer solutions.
Mainframes are a critical element for new technologies like AI and blockchain
The death of the mainframe is something that's been widely predicted since the 1990s, but these big guns of the computing world stubbornly refuse to succumb.
New research carried out by Forrester for hybrid services provider Ensono and IT consultancy Wipro shows that 50 percent of organizations will continue with and increase mainframe use in the next two years versus just five percent planning to decrease or remove mainframe activity.
Embracing our deepfake future
"Is it live? Or is it Memorex?" Those of us who’ve been around a while will recall those iconic TV commercials where the announcer challenged the audience to tell the difference between a recorded performance and a live one (or as "live" as a pre-recorded TV spot can be). The idea was that the recording medium -- in this case, Memorex brand audio cassette tapes -- reproduced the full fidelity of the original so faithfully that, in one case, a singer’s high note recorded on one of their tapes literally shattered a nearby wine glass.
I like to think of the above as the first, crude precursor to what today we call "deepfake" technology. But whereas faithfully reproducing audio content has been a net positive for humanity (you wouldn’t be enjoying your MP3s or Spotify streams without those pioneering first steps), deepfake -- or the ability to recreate and/or completely simulate (using AI) both the audio and video representations of a live person -- has been universally panned because of its potential for abuse. After all, in a world full of fake news, it’s not hard to imagine some bad actor deciding to put out bogus recordings (or recreations) of high-profile individuals for personal or political gain.
Chipotle plans to implement AI ordering system before year's end
Chipotle's recent experiments with allowing artificial intelligence (AI) to handle some elements of phone orders seem to have met the chain's expectations.
After initially launching the option at 10 locations, it rolled out the technology to 1,800 restaurants. Now, Chipotle intends to bring the high-tech system to all its branches by the end of 2019.
How can Artificial Intelligence change transformation? [Q&A]
In the same month it was announced that computer pioneer, codebreaker and the father of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Alan Turing, will feature on the new design of the Bank of England's £50 note, a report from IDC suggests that spending across Europe will hit $5.2 billion in 2019 up from 2018 by 49 percent and expected to rise to $13.5bn by 2022.
The race to build machines capable of matching and beating human vision, language understanding, intelligence, and movement is on. Change management and business transformation is one area of business operations where AI could make an exciting impact. In this article, three experts share their thoughts to help to better understand what AI is, how much of what we know is real, what it can and should do, and, most importantly, how it might affect business transformation programs around the world.
How the data talent gap risks our AI future
Data workers are at the center of our ambitious targets for universal artificial intelligence adoption as they are the ones responsible for building the technology on a strong and stable foundation. However, there is one significant hurdle that stands between data workers and designing the perfect AI solution; the talent gap. Recent research has revealed that 44 percent of data workers are wasting time every week because they are unsuccessful in their activities, as they face challenges such as lengthy data preparation processes and a lack of collaboration. If organizations can't attack the data and analytical talent gap head-on, they will increasingly be buried under rising data volumes, complexity and an incomplete understanding as to whether their workflows are doing the job they want.
Without a productive workforce, organizations simply cannot proceed to tackle the technical challenges existing in a data-driven industry, such as reversing the inconsistencies and set-backs with data-led AI projects. With the right analytics platform, data capabilities can be put in the hands of the business experts who not only have the context of the problems to solve but the data sources needed to deliver insights quickly and efficiently. By alleviating data workers of some of the mundane, day-to-day tasks that are consistently clogging up their to-do lists, more time can be allocated to pushing through large-scale AI projects.
Privacy concerns mount over Chinese face-swap app Zao
Zao -- a Chinese face-swapping app with the potential to be used to create deepfakes -- went viral over the weekend, shooting to the top of the App Store download charts. But concerns have been raised not only over the potential for the app to be abused, but also over its privacy policies.
Of particular concern are clauses which grant the developers "free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable, and relicense-able" rights over users' photos. Zao responded by tweaking its privacy policy, but complaints are still flooding in.
Brain Simulator II technology: What you need to know
Ever since computers were invented, people have made up stories about how they'd one day become smarter than the humans that made them. While that seemed impossible with the first mega computers that had limited functional capabilities, the idea of an independent computer system is becoming more real with the development of AI.
AI, also known as artificial intelligence, has captured the fascination of people around the world. If it's developed correctly, it could be the next major technology transformation that the world undergoes. It would help many people and change lives, so what progress is being made? Recently, the Brain Simulator II was announced as a major step forward in the advancement of AI. Read on to learn more about this program and what it means for the tech community.
Executives believe AI will help businesses cope with changing environments
A new study by management consultancy AT Kearney reveals that confidence is growing among C-suite executives that technology will help businesses navigate a complex and rapidly changing environment.
In an age of increasing automation and artificial intelligence (AI), leaders recognize the differentiating role of non-technical and interpersonal skills such as creativity and leadership -- skills that are not only difficult to find but also expected to become even more important. 42 percent for example say that creativity and innovation skills are hard to find.
AI is great at tasks, but what about jobs?
There's been a fear of automation in the workforce as far back as work has existed. Machines taking jobs away from the people who need them has been and will continue to be a source of anxiety for many.
Though it may seem like a reasonable fear, it's far from reality. Yes, machines are capable of a growing number of increasingly complex tasks, but not every job is at risk of disappearing. Machines can handle menial labor and difficult calculations, but work that requires critical thinking skills is impossible to automate. Things might be different in the movies, but the machines that exist in real life learn through patterns and repetition. There are some jobs where automation doesn't enter the picture at all. So where's the line?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Ethical AI
In the 1979 cult-fiction novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an enormous super computer named Deep Thought took 7.5 million years to conclude that "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42."
He may not have meant it, but what Douglas Adams wrote in 1979 was a portent to why so many questions are being asked about the practical use of AI in business. The recent explosion in AI technology has largely been driven by the availability of large quantities of data, the availability of sufficient computation power and the ever-increasing demand for data analytics to support business strategy. These strategies can be driven by greater efficiency by reducing operating costs or increasing revenue opportunity by improving customer service and product availability.
IBM launches new toolkit to boost understanding of and trust in AI
AI and machine learning have demonstrated some impressive abilities in recent years, but the models behind the technology and the reasons why it came to the decision it did are often hard for the people interacting with it to understand.
In order to help people gain an insight into machine decision making, IBM Research is launching AI Explainability 360, a comprehensive open source toolkit of state-of-the-art algorithms that support the interpretability and explainability of machine learning models.
When did computers get smarter than us?
There are few aspects of our everyday lives that don’t now rely on computers at some level. But does this reliance on technology mean that the machines are getting smarter than we are?
Server and network monitoring specialist CloudRadar has put together an infographic examining our reliance on technology.
Microsoft plows $1 billion into OpenAI partnership
Microsoft is investing $1 billion in a multi-year partnership with OpenAI-- a company co-founded by Elon Musk three years ago.
The partnership will see Microsoft and OpenAI working together to build new Azure AI supercomputing technologies. Microsoft says that it will focus on building a platform to create new AI technologies and deliver on the promise of artificial general intelligence (AGI).
How machine learning and AI are changing data center management
Data center environments must stay consistent regarding things like humidity and temperature. Otherwise, the costly equipment inside them could begin malfunctioning. Moreover, data center clients want assurances that the valuable information stored within a facility will be available whenever they need it, and maintaining consistency comes into play there, too.
Here are four ways machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are upending data center management.
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