When it comes to the talk of technological advancements, artificial intelligence will always be one of the most revolutionizing technologies that are present in many industries. Artificial Intelligence is defined as the theory and development of computer systems to be able to perform human tasks like visual perception, speech recognition, and even decision-making.

The first AI program can be traced as early as the 1950s and since then, it’s been continuously developed. Right, now we can already see how powerful AI is and how widely present it is in many industries like gambling.

Artificial Intelligence has always been heavily acquainted with gaming including gambling. This is more specifically for online gambling or online casino gaming. AI has been playing an important role in different aspects when it comes to online gambling. Here are some of the aspects of online gambling that is benefiting from Artificial Intelligence.

• Getting New Customers

Online casinos are constantly trying to find ways to get new customers. The competition is just tough because there are now so many online casino operators out there nowadays and all operators have their ways of enticing people like giving great casino bonuses.

Players would usually always prioritize to choose a casino bonus that will be beneficial for them and this is why casinos must reach people who will be interested in their offers. And so, advertising plays an important part here and casino ads are usually more visible to people with casino gaming history. This is something that operators learn by using AI-powered algorithms.

• Player Verification

Security is extremely important to casino operators and they must screen their players well. The verification process allows them to make sure that people signing up on their site are real people. For some casinos, their verification process includes face-recognition as well.

Aside from the verification process, they also use AI tech to keep track of suspicious activities. The AI tech that they use on this can identify whether suspicious activities or fraudulent behaviors are going on. This helps ensure that the personal information of their customers are players are secure.

• Smart Data

Ever wonder why it is that whenever you log in to your casino account, you always seem to be presented with games that you are likely to play? AI technology is also responsible for that. The AI algorithm determines what games you might enjoy based on the other games that you’re playing. This way, online casinos get to ensure that what they are offering to their customers appear customized.

Just remember that any AI program functions based on the data it gets. It may get data from the player’s information and activities. Whatever the AI algorithm will do is based on its programming. Once data is gathered, that’s when the algorithm functions and knows if something is suspicious or this is something that a player will find interesting.

• Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality has been the talk for a while now in the gaming and gambling sector. There are already online casino games that you can play with a VR device. Playing with VR casino games lets you experience realistic online casino gaming and this is also made possible because of AI technology.

When playing any VR games, the result of the interaction you make with any object in the virtual world is the product of AI. How your virtual environment reacts towards your actions is the AI functioning. If you are playing an online casino game against a computer, that’s also AI. It’s the computer functioning like a real player and the actions that your computer opponent take is also the result of compiling data from other players.

• Combatting Gambling Addiction

Many online casinos nowadays are very much cooperative when it comes to combatting gambling addictions in different countries as it is a very serious issue. AI helps casinos combat gambling addiction by analyzing player activities. There are AI programs that could detect problematic gambling patterns or behaviors.

Problematic behavior can be detected in an early stage and it could alert online casinos. If proven that there seems to be something problematic when it comes to the activities of a player, then the online casino could suspend the player’s account. The operator could also give options to the player when it comes to how they could help fight gambling addiction.

AI technology is continuously developed. AI programs are consistently learning and are now function more human-like. Just imagine how far technology would go because of this and this could make online casino gaming more realistic in the future. It is understandable why many are fearing the power of AI, but its benefits are countless.

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You may not realize this, but you interact with AI technology on a consistent, if not daily basis. And if you do recognize it, chances are good that you take it for granted. Whether it’s a Spotify playlist, an Alexa reply, or one of the myriad cool things Google Assistant does, it’s powered by AI and cloud technology.

More and more, companies are turning to cloud technology for AI applications, and that means the demand for developers and architects is steadily rising.

The Google Cloud Platform, one of the largest in the space, is a suite of computing services and tools that power Google’s Search, YouTube, and much more. According to Glassdoor, a GCP Cloud Architect can pull in a starting salary of $120,000- $160,000. Ready for a piece of that?

Google Cloud computing isn’t exactly something you master overnight. Hell, it could take you weeks just to form a basic understanding of it. It takes time to learn topics like deploying and implementing cloud solutions, software-defined networking, or virtual private clouds.

Fortunately, you can kick-start your education with some online training. Take the Google Cloud Certifications Practice Tests + Courses Bundle, for instance. This comprehensive online training features 43 hours of lectures and other tools to help prepare you for a career in the emerging field.

Sign up, and you’ll get lifetime access to the training so feel free to really dig in and learn things. Or, if you’re like many of us, drop in and out and spend the rest of the pandemic period fine-tuning yourself.

Considering how incredibly valuable the information in this 7-course bundle is, $29.99 is a small price to pay. It’s worth more than $630 if you were to purchase yourself, but we’d never let you pay that much.

Save even more!

In addition to the savings above, when you buy through AndroidGuys Deals, for every $25 spent, you get $1 credit added to your account. What’s more, should you refer the deal via social media or an email that results in a purchase, you’ll earn $10 credit in your account.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to disrupt our world. With intelligent machines enabling high-level cognitive processes like thinking, perceiving, learning, problem-solving, and decision making, coupled with advances in data collection and aggregation, analytics, and computer processing power, AI presents opportunities to complement and supplement human intelligence and enrich the way people live and work.

AI is set to have a significant transformational impact on the industry as well as academia. The Indian Government is playing a key role in sustaining the intervention in order to tackle the challenges that AI-specific startups face in order to grow in their verticals. During the 2018-2019 budget, the Government of India has mandated NITI Aayog to establish the National Program on AI. According to the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, the underlying thrust is to identify the specific applications of emerging technologies with maximum social impact.

It is quite interesting that India ranks third in the world in terms of research publications related to AI and the India Government has initiated a number of startup schemes related to emerging technologies. AI is set to have a significant transformational impact on the industry as well as academia in the country.

India, being the fastest growing economy with the second largest population in the world, has a significant stake in the AI revolution. Recognizing AI’s potential to transform economies and the need for India to strategize its approach, Hon’ble Finance Minister, in his budget speech for 2018 – 2019, mandated NITI Aayog to establish the National Program on AI, with a view to guiding the research and development in new and emerging technologies. In pursuance of the above, NITI Aayog has adopted a three-pronged approach – undertaking exploratory proof-of-concept AI projects in various areas, crafting a national strategy for building a vibrant AI ecosystem in India and collaborating with various experts and stakeholders. Since the start of this year, NITI Aayog has partnered with several leading AI technology players to implement AI projects in critical areas such as agriculture and health. Learnings from these projects, under various stages of implementation, as well as our engagement with some of the leading institutions and experts have given a better perspective to our task of crafting the national strategy for AI.

However, we are still miles away from unlocking the true value of the huge repository of data collected from different sources using AI and ML techniques, in both the government and the private sector.

There are two broad requirements for diffusion: policy push for spread of AI adoption, and trust of consumers or users, which is the ‘policy pull’. The policy push has been inadequate. The other key ingredient of diffusion is to gain the trust of consumers and citizens by protecting their privacy and data, which is again missing due to the absence of privacy law in India.

First, there has to be increased long-term investment in Artificial Intelligence in both the public and private sectors. India lags behind the top five geographies for private sector investment in AI. The US is far ahead, with investments worth $18 billion, followed by Europe ($2.6 billion) and Israel ($1.8 billion). According to one estimate, China accounted for a greater share of global private-sector funding than the US.

Large companies can afford to invest in R&D but only a few are venturing into it; they are either scared, being risk-averse, or are slow. The start-ups don’t have the money to invest in developing AI and are facing capacity issues. Accordingly, they prefer using existing models rather than develop new ones.

Second: the scope of using AI and blockchain to unlock efficiencies of organizations and systems is maximum in our public sector and government departments. To boost AI infrastructure in India, there is an urgent need for government departments both at the Central and the state levels to adopt AI-based solutions to solve the legacy and intractable problems being faced by them – from increasing agricultural productivity to climate change, from air pollution to disaster management. This will have a multiplier effect that could spur the private sector to jump in.

Third: the government and the private sector must work hand-in-hand, particularly on the R&D aspects of Artificial Intelligence. Public-private partnership models bringing together the expertise of research institutions and universities (including the institutions of eminence), market knowledge along with financial skin-in-the-game by the corporations, and partial financial grants by the government will inspire confidence to innovate using AI. The involvement of the private sector could ensure the research output is market-competitive.

Fourth: promoting STEM courses in early education, revisiting the course-curriculum in colleges and on-boarding industry experts to teach final year students were some of the key recommendations by a tech policy think-tank, The Dialogue, sometime back. Indian higher education programmes also need to be tweaked to include training on AI that cuts across disciplines. The vast network of hugely successful and talented Indian-origin professionals heading large multi-national corporations abroad must be utilized to institutionalize knowledge-sharing, mentoring, and collaborative R&D initiatives.

Fifth: a fundamental challenge with regards to the development of AI in India is the quality of connectivity in the country. India needs to work towards improving its infrastructure and thereby allow for an environment that supports the growth of new technology.

Last: because Artificial Intelligence is so powerful as it has all the information about a consumer to potentially be able to manipulate their behavior, choices, and preferences, India immediately requires a data protection law to ensure individual privacy.

The post PROGRESS AND DIFFUSIONS IN DYNAMIC AI ECOSYSTEM MAPPED BY NITI AAYOG appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School has launched a new research center called the Centre on AI Technology for Humankind (AiTH).

Founded and headed by Professor David De Cremer, Provost’s Chair in the Department of Management and Organisation at NUS Business School, AiTH aims to promote a human-centered mindset in the use of AI by researching the areas of leadership and authority, augmentation of human capital, as well as trust and ethics.

“You still need people to define the ultimate purpose of AI. How we use it, what kind of values. I see a shift towards the cooperation of humans and AI. In business, we are starting to see AI as a new coworker. The end-user of technology is always humans; it’s not technology for use by technology,” explained Prof De Cremer in a video media briefing with CDOTrends.

He emphasized that the center will not design the technology but will serve as a thought leader on the consequences around AI, ranging from its business value, establishing a business case, and identifying the most optimal model for use.

The research projects will seek to answer questions such as how AI-empowered business models should be employed in trustworthy and ethical ways; how AI can be used to enhance human well-being; and what the enhanced relationship between man and machine means for the future of work specifically, and the development of future society more generally.

AiTH will hence bring researchers, thought- and business leaders together to nurture an intellectual and value-driven ecosystem to ensure new AI technologies that will improve the human condition.

“AI is touted as the new hero of society that may match or even surpass human intelligence in the future. However, we should examine AI development in the context of co-creation with humans. We hope to develop insights that will inform policymakers, the industry, and the public on how AI technologies can be advanced while still maintaining a focus on humans,” said Prof De Cremer.

“We want to be a voice based on evidence. To collaborate with governments, academia, and the private sector,” he summed up.

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LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, Signal AI, one of the leading companies transforming how business leaders make sense of the world’s information, has announced the launch of AIQ, the next generation of AI technology powering their media monitoring and market intelligence platform. AIQ enhances the proprietary artificial intelligence underpinning Signal AI’s platform and heralds a step-change in the use of AI to address common public relations challenges.

The PR and communications industry is poorly served by incumbent legacy technology that has failed to meaningfully integrate artificial intelligence. Signal AI’s introduction of AIQ to the market further distinguishes them as the pioneer in this space, offering real AI technology that delivers tangible results to PR professionals and beyond.

The first in a series of new features to be powered by AIQ will be Signal AI’s “Briefings”. When speaking to customers, Signal AI identified an unmet need in the market where PR teams wanted to share market insights to assist with the larger business goals. However, the volume of news is so significant, they could not adequately share insightful news stories. Signal AI’s “Briefings” uses the latest AI technologies to cluster and rank the content in high volume news scenarios and create a briefing email consisting of a manageable number of stories that help colleagues stay on top of current events within and across industries.

Luca Grulla, VP Technology, Signal AI: “We have been using AI to solve common challenges in PR & communications since our inception. The market has been struggling with longstanding problems such as accurately quantifying PR impact, and time-consuming, manual tasks such as media monitoring, which is plagued by poor accuracy and too much noise. The launch of AIQ underscores how we are leveraging our proprietary AI technology to develop the capabilities of our platform and ultimately, help our customers uplevel their work.”

David Benigson, Co-Founder, and CEO, Signal AI: “Our vision at Signal AI is to provide communication professionals and senior leaders with the same clarity and transparency about the world beyond their organisation as they have inside it. AIQ allows us to level up communications professionals to help them be more strategic, and empower business leaders to work smarter, react in real-time, and make informed business decisions.”

In 2019, Signal AI saw unprecedented success, more than doubling its customer base, international expansion into the US and APAC, and a successful Series C funding. Signal AI will be launching new capabilities powered by AIQ and upgrading existing features within the platform.

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2020 has a great ring to it. In lots of ways, it has for a long time been a signifier of ‘the future’. Many researchers and experts have, over the past decades, projected 2020 as a landmark year when we might expect any multitude of things to happen or come to a head in some way.

And now ‘the future’ is here. We don’t yet have flying cars- or even self-driving cars in any widely adopted way- but we have seen technology advance in leaps and bounds in other ways in recent decades. As computing power continues to grow, we can expect to see this momentum increase.

One area that continues to see rapid advancement is artificial intelligence (AI). There have been some critical breakthroughs in AI technology within the last decade that have allowed AI to be applied in truly revolutionary ways in both business and society- take medical diagnostics for example- and I’d like to share some thoughts on how we might expect to see AI continue to transform the way we do things in 2020.

AI will be more strategic and able to act on its own

To date, AI has become extremely good at analyzing data to make predictions. Human decision-makers then take these outcomes and determine how to proceed. However, in the coming year and beyond, we can expect to see that AI will not only predict what happens next, but also act on that information itself. Some of these decisions will require extremely efficient use of data, and AI’s continued ability to learn from just a small amount of data.

Let’s look at an example in digital marketing. By looking at past behavior of customers, it’s possible to predict whether someone might make an online purchase. That said, the behavioral data available for someone who makes purchases frequently will be different (and more abundant) from the data available for someone who makes purchases infrequently, or perhaps never, on your website.

AI will get better at identifying these differences and acting based on what it learns. Moreover, AI can go beyond the relatively simple task of predicting what frequent buyers will do and start to explore the unique pattern of hesitant or infrequent buyers on its own, suggesting actions to take to engage them.

AI will be able to consider multiple objectives

One major difference between artificial and human intelligence is that currently, most AI programs are very good at optimizing one single objective (i.e. achieving one goal), whereas humans are typically able to balance multiple objectives and modify that balance on the fly as they move towards a goal.

For instance, driving from location A to location B is one obvious single goal, but other goals such as how fast, how safe, and how comfortable the drive should be are also implicitly considered by human drivers. We can expect to see AI become better at balancing multiple goals at once.

Traditionally, AI is trained with one quantifiable goal or a goal that manually combines multiple goals or objectives. Newer AI can be trained to optimize multiple objectives and learn to explore the trade-off between objectives. Such trained AI can be controlled by human users to operate at a specific trade-off.

For instance, a user can control an AI ‘driver’ to go to A from B in under 30 minutes with maximum comfort. Another user can control the AI driver to go to A from B in under 10 minutes while sacrificing comfort as little as possible. This is an advance toward human-centered AI, which makes AI easier for people to control.

As noted, humans are typically able to manage multiple priorities and outcomes and weigh them against each other and now, AI will be able do this at greater speed and scale. In general, we can expect to see all AI systems designed with the human end-user in mind, allowing for optimal collaboration between artificial and human intelligence.

Advances in distributed learning

Data is king, and optimal collection, management, accessibility and unification is going to continue to be critical to be able to effectively leverage it in the real world. As the amount of data grows and the types of data become more disparate – text, video, imagery, audio, etc. – it’s going to be vital for industries, organizations and governments to develop effective data ecosystems that share information.

This means that distributed learning- the ability for AI systems to solve problems by learning from a broad set of existing and shared data that doesn’t need to be relocated or reacquired – will become increasingly important. We can certainly expect to see this when it comes to, for example, initiatives like smart cities where policy makers will want to leverage data without moving it around to better understand things like transportation patterns, road safety, and so on.

Overall, the ability for AI to do more is good news for business and society. Humans will be able to work more efficiently, with tools at their fingertips that allow them to do their jobs faster and more accurately. This also gives people time to focus on the things that are still best suited for humans, such as creative development and empathetic and thoughtful communications.

AI also encourages boundless innovation in the ways it can be applied, and as it becomes capable of doing more, AI practitioners and researchers around the world will no doubt be able to find exciting and useful ways to use it, improving how we live, work and play.

The post Artificial Intelligence in 2020 and Beyond appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is creating a new frontline in information security. Systems that independently learn, reason and act will increasingly replicate human behavior. Like humans, they will be flawed, but also capable of achieving great things.

AI poses new information risks and makes some existing ones more dangerous. However, it can also be used for good and should become a key part of every organization’s defensive arsenal. Business and information security leaders alike must understand both the risks and opportunities before embracing technologies that will soon become a critically important part of everyday business.

Already, AI is finding its way into many mainstream business use cases. Organizations use variations of AI to support processes in areas including customer service, human resources, and bank fraud detection. However, the hype can lead to confusion and skepticism over what AI actually is and what it really means for business and security. It is difficult to separate wishful thinking from reality.

What Are the Information Risks Posed by AI?

As AI systems are adopted by organizations, they will become increasingly critical to day-to-day business operations. Some organizations already have, or will have, business models entirely dependent on AI technology. No matter the function for which an organization uses AI, such systems and the information that supports them have inherent vulnerabilities and are at risk from both accidental and adversarial threats. Compromised AI systems make poor decisions and produce unexpected outcomes.

Simultaneously, organizations are beginning to face sophisticated AI-enabled attacks – which have the potential to compromise information and cause severe business impact at a greater speed and scale than ever before. Taking steps both to secure internal AI systems and defend against external AI-enabled threats will become vitally important in reducing information risk.

While AI systems adopted by organizations present a tempting target, adversarial attackers are also beginning to use AI for their own purposes. AI is a powerful tool that can be used to enhance attack techniques or even create entirely new ones. Organizations must be ready to adapt their defenses in order to cope with the scale and sophistication of AI-enabled cyberattacks.

Defensive Opportunities Provided by AI

Security practitioners are always fighting to keep up with the methods used by attackers, and AI systems can provide at least a short-term boost by significantly enhancing a variety of defensive mechanisms. AI can automate numerous tasks, helping understaffed security departments to bridge the specialist skills gap and improve the efficiency of their human practitioners. Protecting against many existing threats, AI can put defenders a step ahead. However, adversaries are not standing still – as AI-enabled threats become more sophisticated, security practitioners will need to use AI-supported defenses simply to keep up.

The benefit of AI in terms of response to threats is that it can act independently, taking responsive measures without the need for human oversight and at a much greater speed than a human could. Given the presence of malware that can compromise whole systems almost instantaneously, this is a highly valuable capability.

The number of ways in which defensive mechanisms can be significantly enhanced by AI provide grounds for optimism, but as with any new type of technology, it is not a miracle cure. Security practitioners should be aware of the practical challenges involved when deploying defensive AI.

Questions and considerations before deploying defensive AI systems have narrow intelligence and are designed to fulfill one type of task. They require sufficient data and inputs in order to complete that task. One single defensive AI system will not be able to enhance all the defensive mechanisms outlined previously – an organization is likely to adopt multiple systems. Before purchasing and deploying defensive AI, security leaders should consider whether an AI system is required to solve the problem, or whether more conventional options would do a similar or better job.

Questions to ask include:

• Is the problem bounded? (i.e. can it be addressed with one dataset or type of input, or does it require a high understanding of context, which humans are usually better at providing?)
• Does the organization have the data required to run and optimize the AI system?

Security leaders also need to consider issues of governance around defensive AI, such as:

• How do defensive AI systems fit into organizational security governance structures?
• How can the organization provide security assurance for defensive AI systems?
• How can defensive AI systems be maintained, backed up, tested and patched?
• Does the organization have sufficiently skilled people to provide oversight for defensive AI systems?

AI will not replace the need for skilled security practitioners with technical expertise and an intuitive nose for risk. These security practitioners need to balance the need for human oversight with the confidence to allow AI-supported controls to act autonomously and effectively. Such confidence will take time to develop, especially as stories continue to emerge of AI proving unreliable or making poor or unexpected decisions.

AI systems will make mistakes – a beneficial aspect of human oversight is that human practitioners can provide feedback when things go wrong and incorporate it into the AI’s decision-making process. Of course, humans make mistakes too – organizations that adopt defensive AI need to devote time, training and support to help security practitioners learn to work with intelligent systems.

Given time to develop and learn together, the combination of Human and Artificial Intelligence should become a valuable component of an organization’s cyber defenses.

Planning for the Future Begins Now

Computer systems that can independently learn, reason and act herald a new technological era, full of both risk and opportunity. The advances already on display are only the tip of the iceberg – there is a lot more to come. The speed and scale at which AI systems ‘think’ will be increased by growing access to big data, greater computing power and continuous refinement of programming techniques. Such power will have the potential to both make and destroy a business.

AI tools and techniques that can be used in defense are also available to malicious actors including criminals, hacktivists and state-sponsored groups. Sooner rather than later these adversaries will find ways to use AI to create completely new threats such as intelligent malware – and at that point, defensive AI will not just be a ‘nice to have’. It will be a necessity. Security practitioners using traditional controls will not be able to cope with the speed, volume, and sophistication of attacks.

To thrive in the new era, organizations need to reduce the risks posed by AI and make the most of the opportunities it offers. That means securing their own intelligent systems and deploying their own intelligent defenses. AI is no longer a vision of the distant future: the time to start preparing is now.

The post Deciphering Artificial Intelligence in the Future of Information Security appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

The AI Hype Train has left the station. You know you’re in the middle of a hype cycle when products and companies start using a term regardless of whether or not their product incorporates any of that technology. This is where we currently are with regards to the market for AI products and services. While there is a lot of great, new innovation that’s pushing the industry forward towards more intelligent systems capable of many of the challenging areas that have previously not been able to be solved due to extreme complexity or the need for human labor, there are just as many companies who are using the term AI as more of a marketing ploy or a way to raise money.

Many firms are claiming to be AI-enabled when all they have done is put some thin capability provided by a third-party library or API that doesn’t really transform their existing product into something that is inherently different with that new intelligent technology. One of the biggest offenders of this AI-as-a-buzzword is the entire Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market. While automation is they key word in this phrase, this corner of the process automation market somehow is identified not with the traditional workflow automation and Business Process automation or management (BPM) space that has existed for decades, but rather the more widely hype and strongly invested in AI space. This whole category is currently attempting to rebrand itself as intelligent and AI-enabled because they’ve added OCR or some other add-on. While automation is valuable and provides a ROI in and of itself, there’s no reason to conflate automation activities with intelligent activities. Automation is not intelligence.

What is automation?

Automation is not a bad word. The primary movement of the industrial revolution was to take much of what we were doing at the time with manual labor and automate that work so that we could achieve significantly greater productivity, quality of life, and transform society as a result. Automation is the process of applying technology to some repeatable task or process so that the task or process can be accomplished with predictable repeatability, lower total cost of operation, increased safety, and provide better efficiency. This is what we demand of most of our technology, and technology has delivered that value. In fact, technology continues to deliver increasingly greater value to enterprises and individuals, squeezing more efficiency and capabilities and increasing productivity on a daily basis. So, automation is good. There’s nothing bad about it.

Mechanization and the unleashing of power from steam and electricity, the development of the assembly line and factorization of manufacturing, and the evolution of computing and the Internet have truly revolutionized the way we work, live, and exist. However, while these are fundamentally potent and transformative technologies, they are not intelligent technologies. We can’t walk up to a steam engine and ask it to recognize who we are or answer a random question or even learn from its experiences. A web server is just a web server no matter how many times it’s served the same content to the same sort of people. Automation has provided enormous and fundamental value to society. However it is different than the value we are seeking from intelligent systems, because automation is not intelligence. Today In: Innovation

Intelligence is much more than automation

Humans demand more from intelligent systems than simply repeating or simplifying a repetitive task that requires zero cognitive skills. From the beginnings of what researchers have been attempting to do with AI, we’ve been striving for systems that can understand and comprehend their surroundings, learn from their experiences, make judgements and decisions that are based on rational thinking, handle new situations and apply their learning from previous experience, and perhaps even address bigger questions of self-awareness, consciousness, and more. These are complex problems AI researchers are trying to solve, and fundamental questions of cognition including self-awareness and reasoning.

The post Automation Is Not Intelligence appeared first on Artificial Intelligence.

Despite pledging to cut ties with weapons-based artificial intelligence (AI)projects, Google is using its investment arm to cultivate startup firms that actively engage in military and law enforcement contracts.

The industry giant’s involvement in a highly contentious AI-powered Pentagon drones project last year, dubbed Project Maven, garnered anger and protestations from its own employees.

Following a messy public dispute, Google published an ethical code of conduct and declared it would pull out Project Maven, as well as work on any direct AI military applications. The firm even withdrew from a $10 billion Pentagon cloud project in October because it may conflict with its “corporate values”.

Whistleblowers, however, have claimed Google is circumventing its own guidelines by providing funds and guidance to AI startups via its investment arm Gradient Ventures, according to The Intercept. This is a financial fund created by Google specifically to invest in AI startups.

Not only do these companies receive financial support, Google employees said, but they are also granted access to Google’s vast repository of training data accumulated through work with its own AI systems.

Moreover, these startups will receive advanced AI training on behalf of Google. Emails also suggest senior Google engineers will take up roles in these startups in order to offer “the kind of hand-holding support that we think is helpful in growing an AI ecosystem”.

When the company published its code of ethics, critics suggested the exact terms left the door open to continued involvement with the military and law enforcement in other areas such as recruitment and training.

Companies supported by Gradient Ventures, however, are directly involved in supplementing weapons systems with AI technology. Cogniac, for example, provides image-processing software to the US army in order to assess battlefield drone data.

CAPE productions, meanwhile, provides law enforcement with AI-powered software to guide fleets of drones to conduct aerial surveillance.

Google isn’t the only major tech company to sustain heavy criticism for its involvement with law enforcement. Amazon, for instance, has been savaged by immigration rights groups for its work on behalf of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).

IT Pro asked a Google spokesperson to explain how its investment activities were consistent with its own ethical guidelines.

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The 21st century has brought many incredible new technologies that were once dreamed about in old sci-fi epics, and even some technologies we never saw coming. However, artificial intelligence — sometimes called machine intelligence or just AI — is proving to be one of the most disruptive of all. It’s already being applied by businesses across the globe in a variety of ways, from automating a portion of customer communications to determining product/market fit.

A survey of CEOs from small and medium-sized businesses conducted by executive coaching company Vistage found that AI is quickly becoming an important part of business processes. In the survey, 29.5% of leaders said that of new technologies, AI will have the greatest impact on their business in the next year.

But you don’t have to look to the future to see what AI may be able to do for your business now. Tools have been developed for virtually every task, with AI-based tools offering several benefits including:

• Reducing time spent on tasks

• Lowering costs

• Increasing results

• Improving flexibility and responsiveness

• Reducing risk

In the finance industry, some lenders have started using (and my company has begun testing) machine learning/AI to improve the risk assessment process.

Whether you’ve already begun using AI technology to grow your business or not, you may not be aware of all the benefits artificial intelligence offers. Here are four ways artificial intelligence can help your small business.

1. Improve Sales And Marketing With An AI-Infused CRM

Customer-relationship management (CRM) systems are designed to gather customer data across communication channels such as email, phone and social with the purpose of helping improve and even automate the sales process. Platforms such as Salesforce have begun implementing AI that helps small business owners analyze customer feedback from those communication channels and then automatically adjust marketing and lead generation activities based on that information.

AI-infused CRMs can not only maximize lead generation results, allowing you to generate more leads for an equivalent amount of marketing dollars, but they’ve begun to show how AI can be used to acquire marketing- and sales-relevant insights, optimizing nearly the entire customer acquisition process.

2. Automate Customer Communications (With A Chatbot)

Both product- and service-based small businesses have begun using chatbots on their websites to initiate customer communication and help answer questions. Think of it as a sales and customer service rep that works for you 24/7, even when you sleep.

Chatbots are likely something you’ve already encountered before, whether you realized you were dealing with AI or not. If you’ve seen one of those popups on the bottom right of the screen when you first visit a website asking if you have any questions, you’ve encountered a chatbot.

Many small businesses don’t have dedicated customer service or sales teams yet. If that’s you, chatbot AI can help alleviate the pressure and allow you to focus your time on the tasks that matter most.

3. Streamline Human Resource Tasks

One of the more unexpected areas AI has begun to creep into is human resources. AI tools have been developed that not only help streamline the hiring and onboarding process but also acquire feedback from new employees about how HR can improve those processes, both of which can have a real impact on a company’s bottom line.

AI can be used to automatically wade through hundreds of applicants to find those that most closely match the criteria you’re looking for, not only increasing the likelihood that you find the best candidate available but saving you valuable time and resources. Plus, once the candidate is brought on board, software can serve as a knowledge base for employees with questions on things such as benefits and company policy.

This not only helps reduce the time spent during the hiring process; it can also increase the number of quality applicants you receive (because you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to wade through hundreds of applications) and save HR time on the back end by cutting down on answering new employee questions.

4. Acquire Competitive Intelligence

Ever wish you had a way of analyzing every bit of digital information your competitors produce — from written and video content to social media posts — quickly and easily? AI can do that. Several tools have been created that allow you to keep tabs on everything your competitors do online, gather the data and then distill it into easy-to-read reports. Competitor analysis tool Crayon, for example, uses AI to track competitors across various digital channels such as their websites and social media and gathers a variety of data, such as slight adjustments in their marketing language and pricing changes.

These types of AI competitive intelligence tools let you gather much more detailed information faster, allowing you to respond faster and more efficiently to changes in your industry that could affect your business.

AI has only begun to enter the workplace. However, it already shows great promise as a valuable tool that can not only save you time and money but improve nearly every facet of your daily processes.

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