Editorial: Stopping AI’s discrimination will be difficult, but vital

Several human rights organisations have signed a declaration calling for governments and companies to help ensure AI technologies are indiscriminate, but it's going to be difficult. Amnesty International and Access Now prepared the ‘Toronto Declaration’ (PDF) that’s also been signed by Human Rights Watch and the Wikimedia Foundation. As an open declaration; other companies, governments, and organisations are being called on to add their endorsement. In a post, Access Now wrote:

17 May 2018 | Ethics & Society

Gartner: Global business value from AI will reach $1.2 trillion by the end of 2018

Global business value derived from artificial intelligence (AI) will hit $1.2 trillion (£859.4bn) this year, according to the latest forecast from analyst house Gartner. The total use cases come under three categories, Gartner puts it: customer experience, new revenue, and cost reduction. By 2022, Gartner predicts this overall number will threaten $4 trillion – but what’s more interesting is the growth percentage. 2018 will see 70% growth, from $692bn to $1.2tn, with 2019 seeing an...

26 April 2018 | Virtual Assistants

Huawei wants to develop the first digital assistant with emotions

huawei ai digital assistant virtual artificial intelligence

Technology giant Huawei wants to develop the first digital assistant which evokes an emotional bond with the user to offer a more personal experience. "We want to introduce emotional interactions,” said Felix Zhang, VP of Software Engineering at Huawei, in an interview with CNBC. “We believe that in the future all of our end users will want to interact with the system more passionately.” If the movie ‘Her’ comes to mind when hearing about Huawei’s plans, executives said they were...

23 April 2018 | Virtual Assistants

Boost.ai secures $5 million investment for global expansion

Boost.ai, a provider of chatbots and virtual assistants, has secured up to $5 million in a new round of financing from Alliance Venture. Lars Ropeid Selsås, founder and CEO of boost.ai, said: "The investment comes at a very exciting time for boost.ai and will enable us to expand internationally, at greater pace. After acquiring several major clients in recent months, we have identified several areas in which to strengthen our operations, helping us meet the demands of our rapidly growing...

9 March 2018 | Virtual Assistants

Morality algorithm proves AI can also be friendly

We’re used to seeing headlines of AI beating us at our own games in adversarial roles, but a new study has proven they can also excel when it comes to cooperation and compromise. The study, from an international team of computer scientists, found AI can be programmed with a higher degree of morality than humans. The researchers set out to build a new type of algorithm for playing games which requires working together rather than simply winning at all cost. Jacob Crandall, BYU Computer...

22 January 2018 | Ethics & Society

Constable Alexa: Police consider using Amazon’s AI to fight crime

Lancashire Constabulary considers using Amazon’s popular voice assistant, Alexa, in a bid to improve efficiency and fight crime. Users would be able to report crimes using the assistant on supported device, or have warnings about local issues spoken to them. For example, a spate of car thefts in the area could prompt an alert to neighbours to be more vigilant of people acting suspiciously around vehicles. In the event of a developing situation, such as a suspect fleeing from a scene on...

4 January 2018 | Legislation & Government

Nuance launches AI-powered virtual assistant for healthcare providers

US-based Nuance Communications has launched the new AI-powered “Dragon Medical Virtual Assistant” especially for healthcare providers. The solution takes root from the award-winning Nuance Virtual Assistant platform, and is a great help for medics as it streamlines a wide range of clinical workflows. Over 500,000 clinicians in the US are already depended on the Dragon Medical Virtual Assistant for their day-to-day documentation. The solution delivers sophisticated conversational...

28 September 2017 | Healthcare

Virtual personal assistants to evolve quickly over next few years, says Gartner research VP

In an interview, Annette Zimmermann, research vice president at Gartner, has shared her thoughts on what she expects for the AI sector from the ongoing IFA 2017 event. While the market is being inundated with new AI-powered devices or services coming every month, Zimmermann advises to investigate beyond the AI label to understand the underlying machine learning methods because the type of data used for training machines has a direct impact on the quality of AI products. Zimmermann...

4 September 2017 | Virtual Assistants

Facebook’s AI-driven M assistant chatbot reaches the UK

facebook ai chatbot m assistant

Facebook’s AI-driven M assistant chatbot has safely made it across the Atlantic and is now helping Messenger users in the UK. The chatbot will butt into your conversations if it feels it can be of assistance. For example, when discussing making plans it could find you nearby places, create a poll about where to go, and find time in participants’ diaries. When you arrive you could follow up with a question like “Where are you?” and the chatbot will prompt the other person to send...

16 August 2017 | Machine Learning

LogMeIn acquires AI and chatbot provider Nanorep to improve customer engagement offering

LogMeIn, a conferencing software as a service (SaaS) provider, has announced the acquisition of Nanorep, an Israel-based organisation which aims to improve customer service and experience through patented natural language processing technologies. The acquisition aims to complement LogMeIn’s recent release Bold360, as the company points out, an intelligent customer engagement platform created to enable companies to deliver more human, personalized and intelligent engagement. Both these...

3 August 2017 | Virtual Assistants