Liulishuo gets $100 million in series C funding to develop existing smart teaching platform

China's leading AI and education company, Liulishuo, has achieved a series C funding of $100 million in a round of funding led by China Media Capital ("CMC") and Wu Capital with participation also coming in from its earlier investors, such as Trustbridge Partners, IDG Capital, GGV Capital, Cherubic Ventures and Hearst Ventures, to enable AI-infused teaching. Liulishuo has a vast data collection of Chinese people speaking English that has led to the company to develop automatic assessment...

28 July 2017 | Applications

AI to help boost global GDP by $15.7 trillion in 2030, says PwC

A new study conducted by research firm PwC suggests that AI will add $15.7 trillion to the global economy in 2030. Over the period of 2016-2030, labour productivity improvements are likely to account for over half of all economic gains from AI, whereas the increased consumer demand resulting from AI-enabled product enhancements will account for the rest. China and North America are the two regions that will witness the greatest economic gains from AI. The former will provide 26% and the...

10 July 2017 | Enterprise

Exscientia partners with GSK to further drug discovery through AI

UK-based drug design company Exscientia has announced it has entered into a strategic drug discovery partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Under this partnership, Exscientia will use its artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled platform, combined with the expertise of GSK, to discover novel and selective small molecules for up to 10 disease-related targets, nominated by GSK across multiple therapeutic areas. It will receive research payments from GSK in lieu of this. Exscientia will also...

6 July 2017 | Healthcare

CrowdFlower raises $20 million in venture funding citing ‘Cambrian’ AI explosion

San Francisco-based crowdsourcing firm CrowdFlower has raised $20 million in venture funding which will be used to extend its ‘human-in-the-loop’ AI platform functionality and develop integrations into other machine learning technologies. The funding will also enhance its operations team by hiring new data scientists, machine learning experts, engineers, customer success managers, and sales and marketing professionals. The investment round was led by Industry Ventures, with new...

14 June 2017 | Funding

Here’s how AI can assist medical science in telling a patient’s lifespan

Artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning can help analyse images of a patient’s organs to assess potential diseases and predict their potential lifespan, according to new research. Researchers from the University of Adelaide’s School of Public Health and School of Computer Science, along with Australian and international collaborators, have merged AI and medical images in a first-of-its-kind study. The research was published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports. This...

12 June 2017 | Healthcare

New intelligent street light software aims to respond to real-time events

TCS Digital Software & Solutions Group, part of Tata Consultancy Services, has launched a cloud-based software, the Intelligent Urban Exchange (IUX), for Adaptive Streetlight Optimisation designed for both conventional streetlights and LED lights. The product uses self-learning algorithms to learn about real-time events occurring on streets and responds to them by enabling individual streetlights to adjust according to changes in crime patterns, traffic, people movement, and weather. For...

24 May 2017 | IoT

UNICEF joins Apple, Google, Facebook et al in AI partnership

UNICEF has announced it has joined Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (AI), with data technologists at the organisation’s Office of Innovation aiming to create collaborations to innovatively solve humanitarian challenges for social good and to benefit children. Chris Fabian, senior advisor of ventures at UNICEF Innovation believes UNICEF to be in a position to cater to the needs of vulnerable children and to bring about positive changes in their lives through usage of advanced...

18 May 2017 | Healthcare

Cisco acquires AI firm MindMeld to create more natural conversations

Cisco has announced its intent to acquire MindMeld, a privately held artificial intelligence (AI) provider based in San Francisco, for $125 million (£97m). MindMeld offers what is described as a unique AI platform which ‘enables customers to build intelligent and human-like conversational interfaces for any application or device’ – in other words, enabling more natural conversation with voice and chat assistants. “At Cisco, we believe that AI and machine learning will play an...

15 May 2017 | M&A

Medicine, law and IT may be affected by the rise of the robots by 2022

Gartner has given a tentative guideline of 2022 as when smart machines and robots may replace highly trained professionals in medicine, law and IT, according to the firm’s latest missive. The analyst house argues there is a fear of skilled practices becoming ‘utilities’ through the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). One example Gartner uses is through law; if an enterprise uses a smart machine which substitutes for a lawyer, after the first long and expensive period of training, the...

9 May 2017 | Healthcare

AI falls on the final furlong in predicting Kentucky Derby winner

The Kentucky Derby, one of the three races which make up the Triple Crown in US horse racing, was won over the weekend by Always Dreaming, the 9-2 favourite which came home by 2 ¾ lengths in cool and damp conditions. Yet for one company which placed its collective AI efforts on predicting the runners and riders correctly, Always Dreaming did not feature in their winners’ enclosure – despite getting the result spot on last year. Unanimous AI, founded in 2015, offers what it calls...

8 May 2017 | Big Data