Warren Enskat – Weekly AI Summary Dec 23-2018 (WE-WAIS)

Warren Enskat / Weekly AI Summary (WE-WAIS) / 12-23-2018

Some of the AI developments and thoughts from this past week:

– The AI Index 2018 … artificial intelligence outpaces computer science in research; Europe is the largest publisher of AI papers, followed by China and the US; ML and probabilistic reasoning top the list of papers; papers on neural networks had a CAGR of 37% from 2014-2017; introductory courses in ML last year were 5x greater than in 2012. Read more here.

– NeurIPS 2018: The ComiCon of AI…. in its 32nd year and held in Montreal, it sold out in less than 10 minutes. Featured talks included: diversity and inclusivity in tech; ML and public policy; what bodies think about; robust re-inforcement learning; the human-AI trust phenomenon; making algorithms trustworthy; designing computer systems for software 2.0; financial lead sponsors included Citadel, Two Sigma, DE Shaw, JP Morgan, ANT Financial, Man AHL, Morgan Stanley, Capital One, RBC, Bloomberg and others, such as Disney Research or Netflix; a prized paper on a new family of deep neural networks; read more here .

– BlackRock to Partner with Microsoft to create a retirement solution investment platform with digital financial planning tools and guaranteed income; anchor investment in Acorns, the micro-investing app, to improve the savings and investing behaviors of the next generation; strategic partnership with Envestnet, for quality data and to enhance the FA experience on the digital and wealth side; read more here..

– Facebook AI Research (FAIR) is open-sourcing PyText, a modeling framework that blurs the boundaries between experimentation and large-scale deployment, built on PyTorch; goal is to make it easier for developers to build and deploy NLP systems; read more here.

– The Art of Computer Programming, also known as the Bible of Technology, so far has four 750-1,000 page volumes, shaping the last century of science; hit control+F to search for text with the Knuth-Morris-Pratt string-searching algorithm; back to the origins of algorithms in the 9th century; read more here.

– WeWork hires Head of AI and launches AI Desk: the $20B+ NY/Israel startup this year is pushing towards an IoT future for office space; Amazon Alexa powered AIDesks adjust user preferences when a client approaches the desk, including temperature, table height and lighting; the future of work and deep work; read more here.

– Morgan Stanley hires AI execs and launches AI tool for FAs: the firm in June 2018 hired AI veteran Michael Kearns to lead AI efforts; the „next best action“ tool combines ML, predictive analytics and workflow technology; new chief tech and digital officers also push to AI for MS; partnerships such as with boutique Yext (in November 2018) focus on their AI ready data structure for client prospecting; read more here.

– The SEC and their AI and digital innovation efforts: in June 2018, the SEC appointed Valerie Szpzepanik senior advisor for digital assets and innovation; she also heads up the new FinHub, set up in October 2018, a center for innovation and financial technology; read more here.

– Apple moving AI front and center and to the executive team: John Giannandrea, brought in earlier this year from Google as SVP for ML and AI Strategy, was named to Apple‘s executive team, emphasizing the importance of AI for Apple‘s future; he leads tools including Siri, Core ML and Create ML; read more here.

– Amazon, Google, IBM monitor your emotional state: Alexa now uses transfer- and self-learning to improve on its own; the tech giants are also patenting tech to monitor your emotional state; Apple filed a patent for Alexa tech to monitor emotions through the pitch and volume of speech; Google has one that provides help information based on emotion detection; and IBM is working on web search based on emotional state; read more here.

Coming next week… UniCredit invests in an AI startup to revolutionize its syndicated loan offerings; the US Department of Defense‘s Defense Digital Service and how they are approaching AI for warfare; and more…