Capgemini: AI is a $340 billion opportunity for the retail sector

French digital consultation firm Capgemini predicts AI offers a yet untapped $340 billion opportunity for the retail sector.

Retail is a major focus of AI but there’s debate over whether it will have a positive or negative on society, especially with regards to jobs. Some believe AI will assist existing jobs while others take a view it will replace workers.

Capgemini found just one percent of retailers have achieved the level of AI deployment needed to reach its full...

2 January 2019 | Research

Apple promotes AI engineer poached from Google to SVP

Sometimes it’s difficult keeping track of Silicon Valley appointments, but John Giannandrea’s journey is one worth keeping tabs on. Giannandrea is one of Silicon Valley’s brightest minds in AI. He came under the spotlight for heading Google’s search and artificial intelligence operations. After spending eight years at Google, back in April he was poached by Apple to lead its Siri and CoreML efforts. His positive impact at Apple was clearly noted. In a statement, Apple CEO Tim...

21 December 2018 | Apple

AI is at risk of bias due to serious gender gap problem

AI needs to be created by a diverse range of developers to prevent bias, but the World Economic Forum (WEF) has found a serious gender gap. Gender gaps in STEM careers have been a problem for some time, but it’s not often the end product matters what gender it was developed by. AI is about to be everywhere, and it matters that it’s representative of those it serves. In a report published this week, the WEF wrote:

“The equal contribution of women and men in...

18 December 2018 | Ethics

Microsoft wants AI to predict when a PC is going to be infected

Microsoft wants to harness AI's incredible prediction abilities to detect PC malware attacks before they even happen. The company has sponsored a competition on Kaggle which challenges data scientists to create models which predict if a device is likely to become infected with malware given a current machine state. In a blog post, Microsoft wrote:

“The competition provides academics and researchers with varied backgrounds a fresh opportunity to work on a...

14 December 2018 | Microsoft

European AI researchers form group over falling behind fears

A group of European researchers are coming together in a bid to advance AI research over fears the continent will fall behind. The initiative will be called the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) and was launched on 6th December at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) meeting in Montreal, Canada. Almost 200 researchers signed an open letter published in April warning AI investment and expertise in Europe is lagging behind the likes of North...

12 December 2018 | Europe

AI beats AI: AlphaZero becomes the best game player in history

DeepMind – a UK-based subsidiary of Google’s parent organisation Alphabet – has beat rival AI records with AlphaZero. The AI, introduced by DeepMind in a research published in Science on 6th November 2018, was put against three of the world’s most complex board games and their current AI record holders. This included world-champion chess AI Stockfish, DeepMind’s very own AlphaGo Zero – known as the best Go player in history – and elmo, winner of the 27th annual World Computer...

10 December 2018 | Gaming

AI targets cryptocurrency ‘pump-and-dump’ schemes

Pump-and-dump schemes result in serious penalties in regulated markets, but in the wild west of cryptocurrencies, they’re a regular occurrence. For those unaware, a pump-and-dump is typically a group of individuals who use their combined buying power to artificially inflate the price of an asset before selling off near its peak. Outsiders believe the price is a sign of increased interest and end up buying high. Anonymous messaging app Telegram is often used for organising these groups,...

6 December 2018 | Blockchain

Baidu sets record for AI patents in China with 2,368 filings

Baidu, often considered China’s equivalent of Google, has set a record for the number of AI-related patents filed in the country. The search engine giant has filed 2,368 AI patents in China according to PPAC’s Analysis on Artificial Intelligence Patents report. Baidu’s patents are followed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2036), Microsoft (1648), Tencent (1168), and Samsung (1047). The report notes Baidu started late in filing applications, but the company quickly exceeded...

5 December 2018 | China

Nvidia’s AI can turn real-life videos into 3D renders

Nvidia has developed an AI which can turn real-life videos into 3D renders – making creating games and VR experiences simpler. Creating 3D renders is a painstaking and time-consuming process requiring specific skills and can be incredibly costly. By reducing the barriers, Nvidia could enable more ideas to move from concept into reality. During the NeurIPS AI conference in Montreal, Nvidia set up a dedicated area showing its technology. The company used its DGX-1 supercomputer for the...

4 December 2018 | Entertainment

DeepMind is using AI for protein folding breakthroughs

Protein folding could help diagnose and treat some of the worst diseases, and DeepMind believes AI can speed up that process. Conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and cystic fibrosis are suspected to be caused by misfolded proteins. Being able to predict a protein’s shape enables a greater understanding of its role within the body. Previous techniques used for determining the shapes of proteins – such as cryo-electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, and...

3 December 2018 | Healthcare