AI Future Outlook Articles and Reports

[This story has been revised and updated.]

Big data has turned out to be a key ingredient in turning machine learning from an abstract technology into a potentially invaluable tool of insight and foresight for businesses across industries. The burgeoning cognitive technologies of predictive analytics and data visualization are opening new windows of opportunity to companies trying to solve complex problems with multiple moving parts. From finding ways to retain new customers to more efficiently monitoring multiple performance metrics and easing performance volatility, more companies are gravitating towards machine learning-based data analysis tools in an effort to optimize operations and find innovative solutions and opportunities that were once too obscure for only the human eye.

Machine learning has the best chance of achieving meaningful return on investment when companies model previous success.

Horse betting is harder than it looks. At the 142nd Kentucky Derby last week, only one of five experts from Churchill Downs Racetrack correctly predicted the winner. None of them correctly predicted the top four horses. Known as a superfecta, this latter bet came with 540 to 1 odds, meaning $100 down would return $540,000. And although the experts failed to predict the finishing order, an anonymous group of internet users did.

If you aren’t yet convinced by the real world potential of artificial intelligence, Microsoft’s chief envisioning officer, Dave Coplin has a few words for you. Speaking at an AI conference in London on Tuesday, Coplin emphatically told business leaders that AI is “the most important technology that anybody on the planet is working on today,” reports Business Insider.

The inventors of Apple’s virtual assistant software, Siri, have just demonstrated their secret, next-generation, artificial intelligence assistant. Created by Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer, Viv is four years in the making. She offers an open platform through which queries can connect with third-party merchants. And yesterday, during Kittlaus’s demo at TechCrunch Disrupt NY, Viv performed flawlessly as her creator gave her tasks that would likely see Siri fumbling for answers.
 
Viv’s talent is in analyzing natural language queries, breaking them down to their components to determine intent, and feeding these requests off to bots that can easily process them. In this sense, Viv is a flexible “top bot” that commands a number of very inflexible specialized bots. This enables Viv to satisfy many unique requests by delegating tasks vertically. Whereas the highly specialized, personal assistant X.ai is capable of competently managing a calendar, Viv – like Siri – is designed to handle multiple tasks at various times. However, where Siri often falls back on a search engine to answer complicated questions, Viv seems to capably find an answer by relying on the support of the company’s partners. See Kittlaus's demonstration and interview at Disrupt NY below.

Artificial intelligence may be making the world smarter, safer, more functional and accessible. But can it make the world more beautiful? A number of researchers hope to do so by developing AI systems that can paint, write, and colorize photographs.

Big data is big business. But in an age of digital privacy paranoia, it isn’t always easy for tech companies to get their hands on information – particularly when some of the most potentially beneficial data is also confidential, locked up in healthcare and finance companies who aren’t comfortable sharing.

How secure is your company’s online data?
Probably not as secure as you think. Recent statistics from a security risk benchmarking startup called SecurityScorecard suggest that the United States federal government ranks dead last among major cybersecurity industries, despite having spent $100 billion on cybersecurity measures over the past decade.