Recent Blog Posts

This is a guest blogpost by James Loft, COO, Rainbird. If 2020 has been anything so far, ‘unpredictable’ is as good a descriptor as any. The financial services sector has suffered disrupted supply ...

This is a guest blogpost by Jason Kingdon, Chairman & CEO of Blue Prism And it's raining RPA [Robotic Process Automation]… IBM's announcement that they are acquiring a Brazilian Robotic Process ...

In the post-pandemic, post-Brexit world, businesses of all sorts face a range of new challenges – and many will be wondering if AI-based automation could help them win through. From adding more ...

In this week's Ask the Expert segment, Romain Bottier, senior solutions architect for high performance computing and artificial intelligence (AI) at Dell Technologies South Asia, advises ...

Microsoft’s move to replace MSN.com’s human editors with artificial intelligence has resulted in the software misidentifying one woman of colour for another – before regurgitating other outlets’ ...

Restaurants in the Netherlands have been easing themselves back into business with the help of robotic waiting staff, going some way to repair the profession’s reputation after China’s automated ...

AI and machine learning might not be the first thing you think of when you start listing the impacts of lockdown, but the Covid-19 crisis is having effects far beyond the obvious ones. It came up ...

Earlier this month Ocado Technology and a consortium of academic institutes announced Armar-6, the culmination of the five years EU-funded SecondHands project. The premise behind the project was to ...

This is a guest post by Nicola Millard, principal innovation partner, BT The future isn’t at all what we expected. Ten years ago, we might easily have imagined the contact centre of 2020 as an ...

Remember before the pandemic, when news of robotics firms and their increasingly capable creations filled us with dread? Well, to paraphrase Tim from The Office, we never thought we’d say this, but ...

Jeff Bezos may get brickbats over Amazon's treatment of its warehouse workers and Bill Gates may find himself at the centre of a coronavirus conspiracy theory, but for surefire billionaire Bond ...

You sometimes hear people say we might all be part of an elaborate simulation; a highly sophisticated video game created somewhere else in the universe for a bit of entertainment. If that’s the ...

This is a guest post by Raju Vegesna, chief evangelist at Zoho For many, artificial intelligence (AI) is a distant and incomprehensible concept associated only with science fiction movies or ...

This is a guest post by Zhang Dixuan, Atlas datacentre domain general manager at Huawei’s intelligent computing business department The quest for knowledge has driven us to discover the highest ...

So, the past few days has seen some serious deadlines and finals come and go. And, no, we're not going to talk about the rugby (yet). In the world of IT, the "Brexit" of our industry, AKA "Digital ...

There's no doubt now that AI works, and it can work very well indeed – as a technology, at least. And as one of our recent research projects reported, AI-based machine learning (ML) is increasingly ...

This is a guest post by Srinivasan CR, chief digital officer, Tata Communications No matter how much technology keeps evolving, making predictions about the future is always a risky business. But ...

This is a guest blogpost by Adam Kinney: Head of Machine Learning and Automated Insights at Mixpanel When it comes to data, machine learning (ML) is one of the hottest industry trends. But while ML ...

It’s not uncommon for cloud-first companies to participate in open source communities – after all, they have benefited from the very same open-source technologies that power their businesses. In ...

What are the chances of deepfakes poisoning the integrity of the UK’s current General Election? Probably a lot higher now a think tank has created clips of the two frontrunners endorsing each other ...

A robot hand has been taught by OpenAI to successfully solve a Rubik’s Cube in an average time of four minutes. “So what?” you ask, being the unbearable Rubik’s Cube expert you are. It’s true, mere ...

During the Future Decoded conference in London, Microsoft discussed a paradigm shift in application development. But it was not setting out its plans for a new software developer’s kit, programming ...

Amazon has revealed it will soon be introducing an option for users to change its Alexa virtual assistant’s voice to that of self-appointed Kangol ambassador Samuel L Jackson. The announcement ...

Now, don’t get us wrong: we’re as jittery about living in a future of wearable technology as the next milquetoast loser. Some nights we can’t even sleep due to the nagging noughties fear that our ...

“Once you put someone in orbit, it is a lot harder to fix it if something goes wrong,” says Paul Kostek, a senior Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) member and senior systems ...

This is a guest blog post by Tom Dailey, chief international legal, policy and regulatory officer at Verizon The regulatory and policy landscape is a really important topic for all businesses given ...

It's hard to recall a recent presentation from a vendor that didn't include the AI or Machine-Learning buzz-phrases. I'm not just talking IT here - coffee vending machines probably also incorporate ...

Nationwide invests in a startup developing AI that can work out how it should change the way it communicates with different people.

This is a guest blogpost by David Richards, co-founder and CEO, WANdisco At its recent Cloud Next conference Google rolled out a number of new cloud products, services and packages – all designed ...

It has been a week of activism and a call for action, with the Extinction Rebellion, causing major disruptions in London. But alongside grass roots demonstrations, there appears to be a greater ...

Custom hardware is usually the only option available to organisations that need to achieve the ultimate level of performance for AI applications. But Nvidia has taken massive strides in flipping ...

China’s top insurance company, Ping An, has nabbed a coveted Hong Kong government project to develop the city’s electronic personal identity system, or e-ID, for local residents. When ready, e-ID ...

There are no lessons that can be gleaned from the tragic loss of life following the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crash on March 10, 2019. As has been reported across the web, the crash bears ...

Improving crop yield using artificial intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic as researchers and tech suppliers cast their sights on an industry that isn’t exactly the forerunners in applying ...

All the world loves robots, and when they are robots holding something a human might hold, doing an activity a human might do, and preferably doing it while looking a bit like a human (two legs, ...

In the run-up to Valentine's Day, toothpaste brand Closeup has teamed up with MullenLowe, a Singapore creative agency, to discover if love can overcome all boundaries (even firewalls), with a ...

A recent pop event at Lloyds Bank in London hosted by DominoData has highlighted one of the age-old ailments of IT. It is the illness of being misaligned with the business. The latest example of ...

The pace of change in the skills in demand (as machine intelligence, now called AI, matures) is matched only by the pace of change in educational technology (using machine intelligence to transform ...

There is a mantra in technology that if a program is fed bad data, it will produce bad results. The same is true of AI. The quality of a machine learning application is directly related to the ...

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and rural technology start-up Digital Agriculture Services (DAS) have launched a new platform that uses artificial ...

The big challenge for 2019 is not Brexit. It is the demographic time bomb. Britain can no more leave "Europe" than it makes sense to tie our economy to a protectionist "ever closer Union". I will ...

This is a guest blogpost by Julian Nolan, CEO, Iprova A technology revolution is taking place in the research and development (R&D) departments of businesses around the world. Driven by data, ...

World-renowned auction house Christie’s has offered up its first ever artwork created by an algorithm, but as usual with artificial intelligence (AI), there’s an elephant in the room: it’s crap. ...

Amazon has had to rein in the artificial intelligence it was using to help vet job applicants after picking up on its male chauvinist tendencies. As is the case with its human bigot counterparts, ...

Singapore’s National Environmental Agency (NEA) is roping in Alphabet life sciences research outfit Verily’s technology to separate male mosquitoes from female ones in an ongoing project to tackle ...

You don’t need to be told by two self-satisfied dudebros that poking AI with a stick might come back to bite us one day, but Joe Rogan’s recent podcast with Elon Musk has certainly reminded us to ...

The digital revolution is challenging the regulatory environment across every westernised, developed economy. Governments in the EU, UK, France, Germany and the US are each trying to take a lead in ...

What’s all this about deepfakes? We can’t move lately for the sinister imagery that accompanies this ubiquitous news item designed to make baby boomers put down their Oat So Simple. While the likes ...

From Huawei’s Kirin 970 system-on-chip (SoC) that packs in a neural processing unit to Google’s new Edge TPU that performs machine learning tasks on IoT devices, the use of dedicated chips to speed ...

Why is there so much publicity for 40 year old AI techniques, albeit with more processing power, bigger data files and more reliable communications lines?

As much as we try to embrace all the various wonders of modern technology, we still turn into Danny DeVito’s character as the bitter, resentful father in Matilda whenever we see a news story about ...

Technology companies are always coming up with increasingly elaborate ways to announce their new products. But when drone manufacturer decided to postpone the press event where it would announce ...

Bosch has forced startup firm Mayfield Robotics to cancel the release of Kuri, a home robot that was all set to patrol your house and rob your dog of its last shreds of dignity. Could it be that ...

Businesses need to give robots a probabtion period for different roles andd must be prepared to bring out the P45

If you are starting to suspect that the AI hype is overblown, and that it's just the latest term that marketing folk love to add to make their product sound more interesting, you are not alone. ...

This week, we suppose we’re meant to have some kind of sideways take on Downtime icon Elon Musk selling flamethrowers to his lamewad fans, but documenting this man’s hijinks is starting to become ...

One app mentioned at Zendesk’s customer experience conference this month was Replika, an AI friend that on first impression seems barely an improvement on grandparent’s crumpet Eliza from 1964. ...

Amid the growing arms race between the US and China to dominate the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence (AI), it is industry players and markets that will really drive adoption of the ...

Every time a robot does something that humans deem to be suspicious, a debate is sparked about when artificially intelligent beings will take over the world. There have been more than enough films ...

This is a guest post co-authored by Zach Katsof, director of intelligent communications at Arkadin; Holger Reisinger, SVP of large enterprise solutions at Jabra; and Alan Shen, VP of consulting ...

Guangzhou-based drone company EHang has broken the world drone display record for the most drones used at an airborne show, but the decidedly indifferent Chinese media preferred to point out the ...

A new study by Seagate has revealed that APAC organisations are warming up to artificial intelligence (AI), but a significant number have not invested in the data and technical solutions required ...

One of machine learning’s most well-known use cases is fraud detection, an area that has drawn the attention of a growing number of technology suppliers looking to develop the best algorithms and ...

The House of Lords report on AI and UK economy and society came out this week, with the guardedly bullish title: “AI in the UK: ready, willing and able?” The question mark is moot. I think a strong ...

At Huawei’s annual analyst summit in Shenzhen this week, the Chinese technology giant unveiled its predictions about what the future holds from a technology perspective in its Global Industry ...

It’s the week of the 2018 London Book Fair at Olympia, and the worrying news has reached Downtime that our jobs are indeed under threat from the rise of the robots, with the publication of the ...

What will happen to London's high streets when robots replace the people that buy all the flat whites?

The technology industry is still relatively young, and certainly has a lot more growth to come. But it’s old enough now for us to see the repeating trends that make regulatory and legal ...

In a country that, according to Michael Gove, has “had enough of experts”, you might have expected the death of Stephen Hawking to trigger a bunting rush not seen on these shores since the street ...

Philip Hammond’s Spring statement, as UK chancellor, reached, predictably, for the rhetoric of the so-called fourth industrial revolution. Not for the first time. Whenever he gets the chance to say ...

It is not surprising that telemarketing jobs will be taken by robots but the fact that modelling jobs are 98% likely to be done by robots in 2035 is.

This is a guest blogpost by Luiz Aguiar, data scientist at GoCompare. We produce a massive amount of data every day. Not only that, our attitudes towards the data we produce are also changing. ...

This is a guest blogpost by Matt Jones, lead analytics strategist at Tessella, in which he argues companies with physical products and infrastructure cannot simply cut and paste the tech giant’s AI ...

Despite recent advancements in deep learning, which has its roots in neuroscience, it not a dramatic breakthrough in artificial intelligence as it is sometimes portrayed. That was the key point ...

It’s nice that we have a prime minister that chooses to use one of her most high-profile speeches of the year to talk about technology. It’s equally good that her chancellor similarly discussed the ...

Amazon, originator of the smart speaker category in the home, is taking Alexa into the office too. However, as David McClelland explores in the first of a two-part feature, Amazon isn't the only ...

Time now to check in with Downtime linchpin Sophia the robot, who’s been dazzling the world once again – this time at CES 2018. No, it’s not wig-cleaning day for Ray’s wife at Disney World’s “Hall ...

The babel fish is around the corner but look out for the arrival androids that are indistinguishable from humans

In this guest post, Darren Roos, president of SAP ERP Cloud, explains why automation, AI, machine learning and cloud are key to improving workplace productivity. If you take productivity at its ...

Robots should be ideal at home or in the workplace, right? These fully co-operative, obedient and reliable machines should make all our lives easier, right? They can’t think for themselves, they ...

Helpdesk technicians in IT departments around the world will rejoice at Amazon’s announcement of a corporate version of its voice-enabled assistant Alexa for use in the workplace. It cannot now be ...

At a recent media event in Singapore, the CEO of Boston-based AI tools supplier DataRobot blamed the media for hyping up the potential of AI, and over-stating the technology’s impact on jobs. After ...

Did anyone else catch Richard & Judy on 1 April 2003? In case you missed it, they pranked the nation with a segment on a device they claimed could convert sampled speech into other languages in ...

Software has been taking over roles carried out by humans for a long time but the humanisation of tech is making it personal

Despite millions of pounds being spend on software to automate business processes, known as robotic process automation, some CIOs have never heard of it

The practical harnessing and application of AI and Robotics, beyond what was achievable decades ago, requires a supply of technician level skills (including statistics and security by design) that ...

Sony is bringing back Aibo, Japan’s original answer to a human hankering for a robotic dog that needlessly cocks its leg. How relaunching what is essentially an elaborate Furby helps the company’s ...

You: “You alright?” Boss: “Good morning Joe, I trust you slept well and the commute was satisfactory.” This could be a regular welcome if we start to work for robot bosses, and new research has ...

Government, business and the tech sector are getting very excited about artificial intelligence (AI). For government, AI presents an opportunity for a technology where the UK hopes to lead the ...

This is a guest blogpost by Emil Eifrem, CEO, Neo4j Google's dominant search engine has always been driven by smart software. But around 2012, the search giant quietly transformed the way users ...

This is a guest blogpost by Greg Kefer, vice-president, marketing, Infor. Blockchain is arguably, one of the most hyped technologies around. Despite the fact that Gartner believes that 90% of ...

People are trying to work out why Siri thought Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee hit Despacito was the Bulgarian national anthem. But the chance to enjoy the error for yourself has come and gone. Indeed, ...

UK should be ready to fill holes in its white collar workforce with robots a real alternative

This is a guest blogpost by Matt Jones, lead analytics strategist, Tessella Recent converts to AI and machine learning’s amazing potential may be disappointed to discover that many of its more ...

“Let me tell you about your first match. Ooh la la! She lives five miles away!” You probably wouldn’t think Alexa would say something like that but now it can, thanks to some creative intervention ...

Clearly we are going through the phase in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology where rationality and reasoned debate are replaced by science-fiction scaremongering and ...

Previously on Downtime, we saw Mark Zuckerberg rule out AI’s potential for disaster with all the casual oblivion of a scientist in the opening part of a film of that very genre. Elon Musk, as ...

Some surprisingly vapid musings on the future of artificial intelligence (AI), live streamed by Mark Zuckerberg whilst smoking some brisket in his back garden, have been brushed aside by Elon Musk, ...

Over a quarter of Aussies are now ready to use an internet-connected device, like a virtual assistant or connected fridge to make payments on their behalf, according to a new YouGov study ...

An office building in Washington DC has lost its Knightscope K5 security robot after it obliviously face planted into the premises’ water fountain centrepiece. It’s the most ambitious television ...