News

Artificial intelligence, automation and robotics

• October 26, 2021 26 Oct'21

  Government selects network analytics tech to combat Covid-19 loan fraud

  The UK government has awarded a contract to network analytics software provider Quantexa as part of its efforts to fight fraud, especially that connected with Covid-19 business support schemes

• October 25, 2021 25 Oct'21

  Singapore-developed chatbot to provide genetic counselling

  National University Cancer Institute, Singapore’s chatbot will kickstart the counselling process for patients who have a higher risk of contracting hereditary breast and ovarian cancer

• October 22, 2021 22 Oct'21

  MEPs vote to expand Europol data mandate

  The European Parliament has voted in favour of expanding Europol’s mandate to process data and develop AI tools, but critics claim it contradicts a previous vote which opposed using new technologies to predict crime

• October 21, 2021 21 Oct'21

  SAP Q3 2021: Cloud year-on-year revenue up one-fifth, S/4 Hana adoption steady

  SAP’s third quarter 2021 showed 20% year-on-year growth in cloud revenue and steady, incremental growth in S/4 Hana adoption

• October 20, 2021 20 Oct'21

  What does Saudi Arabia’s autonomous vehicle agenda mean to the rest of the world?

  If all goes according to plan, within a few years, one million people will live in Saudi Arabia’s ‘city of the future’ – and every one of them will depend on a fleet of self-driving cars

• October 20, 2021 20 Oct'21

  Police IT buyers should compel suppliers to prove AI claims

  House of Lords told that UK law enforcement bodies should use their position as buyers to compel private sector suppliers to divulge more information about how their AI-powered technologies work

• October 19, 2021 19 Oct'21

  Zopa becomes unicorn with latest funds to go to bank operation

  Zopa will invest in its growing digital bank operation after becoming a unicorn in its latest fund-raising round

• October 19, 2021 19 Oct'21

  Making machine learning operational

  As artificial intelligence matures, IT departments will need to take control of change management and governance of data models

• October 17, 2021 17 Oct'21

  Graphcore opens Southeast Asia hub in Singapore

  The AI chipmaker is looking to expand its sales teams and hire more engineers to support customer deployments in Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia

• October 15, 2021 15 Oct'21

  Manchester City teams up with Qualtrics for fan experience management

  Manchester City is teaming up with online survey software firm Qualtrics, part-owned by long-term City Football Group supplier SAP, to engage more intelligently with the football club’s fanbase

• October 14, 2021 14 Oct'21

  CIO interview: Cynthia Stoddard, CIO, Adobe

  Leading IT at one of the world’s best-known software companies brings its own challenges and opportunities around digital transformation

• October 12, 2021 12 Oct'21

  BCS calls on government to retain protections against AI

  BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, wants the government to retain protections that allow people to have decisions about them made by an AI reviewed by humans if needed

• October 12, 2021 12 Oct'21

  Ban UK police use of facial-recognition, House of Lords told

  Experts giving evidence to the House of Lords have said that UK police use of facial-recognition technology is disproportionate and ineffective, and further questioned the utility of algorithmic crime ‘prediction’ tools

• October 12, 2021 12 Oct'21

  Nearly half of finance firms will acquire or partner fintechs in next year

  UK financial services firms are preparing to acquire or partner fintechs as they target business growth

• October 12, 2021 12 Oct'21

  AI estimated to provide 10% boost to UK GDP by 2030

  AI has financial benefits but there are concerns the technology could displace a significant number of human workers in the next decade, says report

• October 11, 2021 11 Oct'21

  UnaBiz raises $25m in Series B funding

  Regional IoT tech supplier will use the funds to strengthen its foothold in key markets and develop new products and services

• October 07, 2021 07 Oct'21

  How data drives Air Canada’s cargo business

  Data-driven insights and artificial intelligence are helping Air Canada to find a new business path as it expands its cargo business following the pandemic

• October 06, 2021 06 Oct'21

  MEPs approve report opposing certain uses of AI by police

  European policymakers have approved a report on the use of AI in criminal matters, rejecting several amendments in the process that would have made it easier for police to potentially conduct predictive analytics and biometric surveillance

• October 06, 2021 06 Oct'21

  Ocado gets closer to autonomous delivery with Wayve trial

  Startup Wayve takes what it believes is a different approach to autonomous driving by modelling the behaviour of a driver

• October 06, 2021 06 Oct'21

  Aetos to deploy Singtel MEC for security operations

  Security firm Aetos will use Singtel’s multi-access edge computing platform to run applications such as surveillance robots, drones and video analytics at its security command centre

• October 05, 2021 05 Oct'21

  Australian organisations lack maturity in responsible AI

  Most Australian organisations are still in the early stages of their responsible artificial intelligence efforts despite growing use of AI by businesses and consumers, study finds

• October 04, 2021 04 Oct'21

  Chancellor uses Tory Party conference speech to announce AI scholarships

  Artificial intelligence holds the key to unlocking productivity, and developing the right skills to harness this potential was one of the focal points at the Tory Party conference

• October 01, 2021 01 Oct'21

  Met Police purchase new retrospective facial-recognition system

  Retrospective facial-recognition software purchased for £3m by the Met Police will be deployed in coming months amid continuing controversy around the use of biometric technologies by law enforcement bodies

• September 29, 2021 29 Sep'21

  Blue Prism deal adds RPA to Tibco software product range

  Robotic process automation provides another piece of the jigsaw in Tibco’s drive to be a data company

• September 28, 2021 28 Sep'21

  APAC IT spending to grow by 9.3% in 2021

  Organisations across the region will spend more on technologies such as AI and IoT this year, as part of their long-term investment plans to improve operational efficiency and customer service

• September 27, 2021 27 Sep'21

  Uber drivers strike over pay issues and unfair dismissal claims

  Unionised Uber drivers take industrial action in response to ongoing disputes over pay and claims that drivers are being unfairly dismissed as a result of the company’s technologies

• September 24, 2021 24 Sep'21

  Big Data London: Mitigate AI bias rather than try to remove it, say experts

  Bias cannot be stripped from artificial intelligence systems, but organisations can work to mitigate it, Big Data London 2021 attendees heard this week

• September 24, 2021 24 Sep'21

  Big Data London: NHS Digital data service struggled with Covid testing demands

  A critical component of NHS Digital’s data processing struggled to cope with demand caused by Covid-19 testing, Big Data London 2021 attendees heard this week

• September 24, 2021 24 Sep'21

  IBM ramps up quantum education initiative

  IBM is trying hard to break quantum computing away from the boffins to find real-world application areas

• September 24, 2021 24 Sep'21

  London publishes guidelines for ethical use of smart city tech

  Latest draft of the ‘Emerging Technology Charter for London’ encourages local authorities, public services and technology companies to improve how they implement technology in the capital

• September 22, 2021 22 Sep'21

  Dreamforce 2021: Benioff declares Salesforce as net zero and Slack ubiquitous across stack

  Marc Benioff, CEO and chair of Salesforce, declares his company net zero in a keynote at Dreamforce 2021 in San Francisco, alongside update on Slack integrations

• September 22, 2021 22 Sep'21

  UK government launches first national artificial intelligence strategy

  Ten-year plan is expected to drive corporate adoption of the technology, boost skills and attract international investments

• September 22, 2021 22 Sep'21

  Newham aims to harness local talent to build data economy in London

  The London Borough of Newham sets out to enable its young, digitally savvy population to build a data economy for sustainable growth through the launch of Newham Sparks at London Tech Week 2021

• September 22, 2021 22 Sep'21

  AI cannot be regulated by technical measures alone

  The regulation of artificial intelligence must address the power of tech companies, as technical measures alone will not be enough to prevent the harms caused by AI-driven technologies, says report

• September 22, 2021 22 Sep'21

  Legacy, unautomated IT was root cause of human error in pensions underpayment

  Caseworkers at Department for Work and Pensions had to use systems dating back to 1988 and manually move data to different systems, leading to human error

• September 21, 2021 21 Sep'21

  UK needs coordinated effort to regain ground in high-performance computing

  The UK is falling behind in the supercomputer league as a lack of skills and awareness of large-scale computing holds back organisations

• September 21, 2021 21 Sep'21

  IDC: Salesforce-related economic activity will create 271,000 UK jobs and £52bn in sales by 2026

  IDC research published on the eve of Dreamforce 2021 claims Salesforce-related economic activity will create 271,000 British jobs by 2026 and stoke £52bn in revenue

• September 21, 2021 21 Sep'21

  DBS eyes AI and blockchain talent

  Singapore-based bank DBS is looking to hire 150 developers and engineers skilled in artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain through its hackathon programme

• September 20, 2021 20 Sep'21

  Trust deficit retards predictive analytics adoption in banking, says Qlik

  Concerns about trust and regulatory compliance are impeding the adoption of predictive analytics in financial services, according to data analytics firm Qlik

• September 20, 2021 20 Sep'21

  NGO Fair Trials calls on EU to ban predictive policing systems

  The use of artificial intelligence to predict criminal behaviour should be banned because of its discriminatory outcomes and high risk of further entrenching existing inequalities, claims Fair Trials

• September 17, 2021 17 Sep'21

  Whittingdale and Warman ousting completes reshuffle of every digital, data and tech minister

  All of the UK ministers responsible for technology, digital and data are moving on as a result of Boris Johnson's latest reshuffle

• September 15, 2021 15 Sep'21

  UN human rights chief calls for moratorium on AI technologies

  High commissioner’s call for a moratorium on the use of AI systems that pose a serious risk to human rights is accompanied by a UN report on the negative human rights impacts associated with the technology

• September 14, 2021 14 Sep'21

  Renault set to test out Google supply chain digital twin

  Digital twin simulation of supply chain draws in disparate data sources to deliver efficiencies and prevent disruptions

• September 14, 2021 14 Sep'21

  Oracle Q1 2021-2 results: Cloud revenue reaches a quarter

  In its first-quarter results for fiscal 2021-22, Oracle claims that its IaaS plus SaaS revenue represents 25% of its total

• September 13, 2021 13 Sep'21

  RPA adoption still in its infancy in Asia-Pacific

  While there have been successful deployments of robotic process automation in mature markets, adoption of the technology is largely in its infancy across Asia-Pacific, says a regional Blue Prism executive

• September 13, 2021 13 Sep'21

  Portcast secures $3.2m, eyes global expansion

  Logistics startup Portcast will use its pre-Series A funding to expand globally and bolster its cloud-based service with prescriptive AI capabilities

• September 09, 2021 09 Sep'21

  Government relies on tech to reduce NHS waiting lists

  Health and social care secretary Sajid Javid aims to reduce NHS waiting list backlog through use of virtual wards, artificial intelligence and new surgical hubs

• September 09, 2021 09 Sep'21

  Tech R&D gets cash boost through £113m Future Leaders Fellowships

  Projects including a four-legged, multi-terrain robotic walker, ‘biogeobatteries’ and organic smartphone materials are among 97 projects to receive funding

• September 09, 2021 09 Sep'21

  Ali Ghodsi, Databricks CEO: Scandi-Californian hybrid is an ideal

  Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, reflects on the business culture of Silicon Valley, his Iranian-Swedish background, and where big data analytics is going during these early days of machine learning

• September 07, 2021 07 Sep'21

  Procuring law enforcement tech needs greater scrutiny

  Tech firms are playing a high-stakes game to drive adoption of artificial intelligence and surveillance technology in law enforcement