The Guide to Retail Innovations using Machine Learning Innovations using Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are among the top technology trends in the retail world. They are having a great impact on the industry, in particular in e-commerce companies that rely on online sales, where the use of some kind of AI technology is very common nowadays. Big players like eBay, Amazon or Alibaba have successfully integrated AI technologies across the entire sales cycle, from storage logistics to post-sale customer service. However, you do not have to be a big company or sell exclusively online to take advantage from the tremendous power of Machine Learning.
Computer says no: the people trapped in universal credit's 'black hole' When the universal credit computer says no, fragile lives can quickly crumble. Lucy Morris, a 32-year-old mother of one in Rochdale, was scraping by on her beauty therapist’s wage topped up with UC when she failed to check a box on the benefit’s online form and lost a £400 payment. It was enough to torpedo her finances and before long the heating was off, vegetables were dropped from meals and the house grew filthy because she could not afford cleaning products. “It is designed to make it difficult so that they can get as many people off it as they can,” she said. Mark Abraham, a married father of twins in south London, was denied a month’s benefits because an automated system linking salary data from HMRC with the Department for Work and Pensions misreported his previous income from a TV production job.
Is Stephen Hawking Right? Could AI Lead To The End Of Humankind? The famous theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, has revived the debate on whether our search for improved artificial intelligence will one day lead to thinking machines that will take over from us. The British scientist made the claim during a wide-ranging interview with the BBC. Hawking has the motor neurone disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and the interview touched on new technology he is using to help him communicate. It works by modelling his previous word usage to predict what words he will use next, similar to predictive texting available on many smart phone devices. But Professor Hawking also mentioned his concern over the development of machines that might surpass us. “Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it would take off on its own and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate,” he reportedly told the BBC.
The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 1 PDF: We made a fancy PDF of this post for printing and offline viewing. Buy it here. (Or see a preview.) CNIL Releases Software Tool For DPIA On the 22 November, the CNIL released on its website an open source ready to use software tool for DPIAs, which can be downloaded for free. The explanations on the website are currently only in French, but the CNIL’s intention is to have an English explanations as well. The CNIL’s tool offers the following features: Our New Publishing Platform Will Make You a Better Writer Forbes has been publishing hundreds of articles a day for more than five years. As a Data Scientist, when I hear about that volume of data, the first thing that jumps to mind is: what can we learn from it? Are there best practices we can glean?
Franken-algorithms: the deadly consequences of unpredictable code The 18th of March 2018, was the day tech insiders had been dreading. That night, a new moon added almost no light to a poorly lit four-lane road in Tempe, Arizona, as a specially adapted Uber Volvo XC90 detected an object ahead. Part of the modern gold rush to develop self-driving vehicles, the SUV had been driving autonomously, with no input from its human backup driver, for 19 minutes. An array of radar and light-emitting lidar sensors allowed onboard algorithms to calculate that, given their host vehicle’s steady speed of 43mph, the object was six seconds away – assuming it remained stationary.
DeepMind wants to teach AI to play a card game that’s harder than Go If you’ve ever played the card game Hanabi, you’ll understand when I say it’s unlike any other. It’s a collaborative game in which you have full view of everyone else’s hands but not your own. To win the game, each player must give the others hints about their hands over a limited number of rounds to arrange all the cards in a specific order. It’s an intense exercise in strategy, inference, and cooperation.
The ethics of artificial intelligence In this industry, it's a tired old cliche to say that we're building the future. But that's true now more than at any time since the Industrial Revolution. The proliferation of personal computers, laptops, and cell phones has changed our lives, but by replacing or augmenting systems that were already in place. Email supplanted the post office; online shopping replaced the local department store; digital cameras and photo sharing sites such as Flickr pushed out film and bulky, hard-to-share photo albums.
CNIL Makes Recommendations on "Bad Debtor Data Bases" It is common for a company to create an exclusion file that allows it to identify “bad debtors” and exclude them from all future transactions. The Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (“CNIL”) published on 13 November the following recommendations for this type of data base. The exclusion file must only concern actual unpaid bills, rather than be used to detect a simple risk. It will be necessary to delete the data within 48 hours of payment.A human verification must be carried out before the registration in the data base.