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The decision to invest in a company can rely on a lot of guesswork, but Kim Polese, co-founder and chairman of CrowdSmart, is using artificial intelligence to turn qualitative information into quantitative dataand reduce bias along the way.

When were talking about using collective intelligence, augmented collective intelligence, what were really talking about is using a combination of human and machine intelligence to improve the way that diligence is done, Polese said this past Wednesday at a BarronsInvesting in Tech panel. The founder of an artificial-intelligence platform designed to predict a companys potential for success, Polese detailed how the CrowdSmart platform works, and how it could help remove bias from the diligence process.

The system draws on the insights of a group of 25 or more people, selected for their different levels of expertise, to evaluate prospective investments, explained Polese, who said her career in Silicon Valley began 30 years ago at the first artificial-intelligence company to go public.

Those people are able to access all of the full diligence materials, so that might be videos, live Q&As with the teams, all of the financials, and, ultimately, a brainstorming process is kicked off, Polese said. Participants are given prompts, like do you find this a compelling investment opportunity? and what are your top concerns? to assist in evaluating the companies.

By ranking the anonymous responses that come in, investors can start to drill down into those specific elements within this investment opportunity, Polese said.

Using natural language processing, the insights gathered are transformed into a quantitative score, which can determine the investment risk or opportunity.

While the platforms primary goal was to accurately predict investment success, one side effect has been the reduction of bias, she said. Traditionally, venture-capital funding has been very much a relationship-driven, network-driven business that can leave behind underrepresented founders without connections in the industry, Polese said.

When Polese first used the platform to pick investments about four years ago, she said 42% of the highest-scoring companies were founded or led by women. That result was not something we set out to achieve as a goal, [but] a side effect of reducing ingrained bias, which is an important element of this approach, she said.

The diligence process takes place over the course of a couple of weeks and is designed from the ground up to be virtual, remote, said Polese. It can be applied to companies in different stages, from start-ups to public offerings.

By scaling diligence this way, you dont have this tiny little funnel that only a few deals can get through, Polese said. Youd have a much wider funnel that then you can evaluate with more predictive accuracy.

Email: editors@barrons.com

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How Artificial Intelligence Could Lead to Better Investment Decisions - Barron's

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often at the heart of big blockbusters, as evidenced by the popularity of The Matrix and Terminator franchises. The Hollywood films typically envision scenarios in which sentient machines rise against their human masters. And though scientists are yet to develop machines that can truly think for themselves, many fear science-fiction could one day become science-reality.

Paul Begley, a Christian evangelist from West Lafayette in Indiana, US, believes fears of artificial intelligence can be addressed by reading the Bible.

Pastor Begley is the host of The Coming Apocalypse, a programme linking modern-day events to biblical scripture that is broadcast on some US TV channels.

During his latest broadcast, the preacher has bizarrely claimed AI technology is linked to biblical prophecies of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

He said: "Today we're going to be looking at AI technology; how it's becoming part of the biblical narrative; how that in the last days AI technology will be used to judge and convinct, and maybe even execute the human race.

READ MORE:Bubonic Plague: How infection 'was prophesied inBible'

"Given the power to the computer, to the electronics, to the all-seeing eye, are you serious?"

Although the Bible was penned long before the advent of electricity, pastor Begley is certain clues about the rise of AI are found in scripture.

He said humans are placing their confidence in machines rather than God, arguing the world has drastically changed.

Pastor Begley then read from the Bible, quoting a prophetic dream by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

The prophetic passage in question can be found in Daniel 2:31.

In the last days AI technology will be used to judge and convinct

Paul Begley, The Coming Apocalypse

Daniel 2 reads: "Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statuean enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance.

"The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.

"While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them

"Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer.

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"The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth."

In pastor Begley's opinion, the dream is a prophecy of changing technology and a blending of human and machine.

The evangelist then linked the prophecy to the Book of Revelation - the final chapters of the Bible that describe the end of the world.

Pastor Begley said: "We notice in the Book of Revelation it talks about an image, just like Nebuchadnezzar saw an image of the coming empires that would eventually fall - it was an image - so does John see an image of the beast of the Antichrist, and the Beast Kingdom that will also fall."

Revelation 13 reads: "Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth.

"It ordered them to set up an image in honour of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived."

Pastor Begley said: "I don't need to be counterbalanced by technology when we've got what's called the Holy Spirit.

"We have the Word of God, we have the truth, we're told the things we should do, and the things we shouldn't do - it's pretty easy.

"And if you listen to your conscience, and you understand the Word, and you're being led by the Holy Ghost, you don't need to be monitored."

Most experts, however, will agree the Bible does not reference the rise of artificial intelligence in scripture.

Engineering student Bruce Gutman wrote on Quora: "If you twist interpretation to suit the propoganda then you can find everything in it."

Read more from the original source:
Artificial Intelligence: Has the Bible warned us against the rise of AI? - Express.co.uk

Artificial intelligence, seen as the cure-all for a plethora of enterprise shortfalls, from chatbots to better understanding customers to automating the flow of supply chains. However, it is delivering the most impressive results to information technology departments themselves, enhancing the performance of systems and making help desks more helpful. At the same time, there's a recognition that AI efforts -- and involvement -- need to expand beyond the walls of IT across all parts of the enterprise.

This is one of the takeaways of a recentsurveyof 154 IT and business professionals at companies with at least one AI-related project in general production, conducted and published by ITPro Today, InformationWeek and Interop. Among those survey respondents with at least one AI application in general production, those with "excellent" and "very good" results comprise 64% of the group -- excellent results account for 23% of respondents and 41% report very good results.

Looking at the characteristics of the successful AI leaders, top use operational cases include predictive maintenance (54%), Inventory and supply chain optimization (50%) and manufacturing analytics (50%). At the same time, many respondents see the greatest benefits going right to the IT organization itself -- 63% say they hope to achieve greater efficiencies within IT operations. Another 45% aim for improved product support and customer experience. Another 29% seek improved cybersecurity systems.

The top IT use case is security analytics and predictive intelligence, cited by 71% of AI leaders. Another 56% say AI is helping with the help desk, while 54% have seen a positive impact on the productivity of their departments. "While critics say that the hype around AI-driven cybersecurity is overblown, clearly, IT departments are desperate to solve their cybersecurity problems, and, judging by this question in our survey, many of them are hoping AI will fill that need," relates Sue Troy, author of the survey report. "On the help desk, meanwhile, AI tools are using predictive analytics to improve decision-making around incident management and demand planning. And AI is being used for help desk chatbots and intelligent search recommendations."

There is a significant need for AI expertise and skills. More than two in three successful AI implementers, 67%, say they are seeing shortages of machine learning and data modeling skills, while 51% seek greater data engineering expertise. Another 42% say compute infrastructure skills are in short supply.

Security ranks as the top concern among successful AI implementers, with 44% citing this as their leading issue. Model transparency or the degree to which the inner workings of AI algorithms are visible to users of the technology was the second-leading concern, as cited by 36%, "Model transparency is an especially thorny issue," Troy relates. "A high level of transparency can help mitigate bias and promote trust of the system, but it carries concerns that model explanations can be hacked, making the tech more vulnerable to attack." Built-in bias follows among 33%, as well as concerns about unexpected or unusable outcomes with 33%.

When asked about specific AI technologies they expected to incorporate into their workplaces in the next six to 24 months, machine learning tops the list among successful AI sites, cited by 55%. Deep learning follows at 53%, and intelligent robotic process automation (RPA) rounds out the top three at 52%.

Successful AI projects take time to roll out. The typical AI project took six months to a year to complete, close to half of successful AI implementers (47%) indicate. Close to one-third, 32%, report taking more than year. Only 21% were able to wrap up AI initiatives in less than six months. The costs of these projects were kept in line -- 45% said the project cost about as much as planned, while 25% said the costs ran over budget. By contrast, 40% of those with less-successful AI initiatives report cost overruns. "The more experienced IT practitioners are with AI, the better able they are to project costs and avoid going over budget," Troy says.

See more here:
The main beneficiaries of artificial intelligence success are IT departments themselves - ZDNet

More and more job applicants need to persuade Artificial Intelligence (AI) of their qualities before they can reach the interview stage for a vacant position. It is AI that regularly reads resume submissions which makes the job of writing a resume somewhat different from years ago. AI will be looking for keywords and phrases in the resume in order to find the candidates best suited to the position that is available. Where a company has some very successful employees, it may be that AI is looking for similarities between an application and the resumes that those employees had submitted, and the latters development once they joined the company.

This is not an exact science and its success is a subjective opinion. Nevertheless, it is something that job applicants need to consider when presenting a resume for inspection. It begs the question as to whether the most able of people need help to fashion their resume in such a way that it will trigger a positive response from the robot reading it.

Companies looking to recruit rarely understand the processes that AI follows, and do not really need to as long as they are persuaded that it works effectively to fill important vacancies. An added advantage of artificial intelligence is that it can identify an applicant that is suitable for another possible vacancy within a company, a vacancy for which the candidate is unaware.

Given AI is a reality, it makes absolute sense to employ any of the top 5 resume writing services to make adjustments to any existing resume to get AI approval. Alternatively, a good writer will start from scratch to lay out a resume in the best way, highlighting the things that will get a positive response.

It may seem obvious that no one will get past AI without having the necessary skills for the vacancy. That does not mean that skills alone will give an applicant the chance to get to the next stage. Specific words and phrases are still important with professional resume writers understanding them without having to refer to search engines. A cloud generator will identify them for example should you wish to research for yourself. It is important not to underestimate the importance of skills that can be repeated throughout the resume.

There are reasons why similarly qualified applicants will stand out against each other. They include evidence that an applicant has shown the ability to work well within a team in the past, can create good relationships with co-workers and business contacts. Communication skills have never been as important before.

The resume itself must be clear and well laid out. Here are some tips to improve how it should appear to AI and potential employers when they are finally read by humans.

Artificial Intelligence is a valuable resource that is widely used. By definition, it is able to sift the good from the not so good when it comes to reading resumes and creating a shortlist. If you want to succeed with a job application, you should master the requirements of AI or engage someone with the knowledge to do it for you. It is not cheating. After all, it is you who will have to do the job if you succeed.

Author bio: Alina Burakova is a very experienced writer and researcher who can initiate a readers interest in a given subject. She often turns her attention to in-depth analysis in the spheres of modern technology and artificial intelligence and the impact they are making in the modern world.

Read more here:
How to get past AI resume readers and get that job - The Burn-In