Each week on a Wednesday Nikolas Badminton, Futurist highlights the top stories from the past week relating to the incredible rise of artificial intelligence and its application in society, the workplace, in cities, and in our lives.
In  Artificial Intelligence Bulletin – AI and the Fractal Economy we see finance and AI, mental health being addressed, evolving AI in 2017, Jaron lanier weighs in on AI, and Mark Zuckerberg discusses AI and his goals.

Artificial intelligence and the evolution of the fractal economy

(Nikolas Badminton has been asked to be a regular controbutor for TechCrunch)
Money makes the world go round, or so they say. Payments, investments, insurance and billions of transactions are the beating heart of a fractal economy, which echoes the messy complexity of natural systems, such as the growth of living organisms and the bouncing of atoms.
Financial systems are larger than the sum of their parts. The underlying rules that govern them might seem simple, but what surfaces is dynamic, chaotic and somehow self-organizing. And the blood that flows through this fractal heartbeat is data.
Today, 2.5 exabytes of data are being produced daily. That number is expected to grow to 44 zettabytes a day by 2020 (Source: GigaOm). This data, along with interconnectivity, correlation, predictive analytics and machine learning, provides the foundation for our AI-powered future.
Read more at TechCrunch

New AI Mental Health Tools Beat Human Doctors at Assessing Patients

Machine learning has yet to be used in therapy, according to Franklin, while most conventional treatments for suicide fall short.
“So even though several groups are on the verge of being able to accurately predict suicidality on the scale of entire healthcare systems [with AI], it’s unclear what we should do with these at-risk people to reduce their risk,” Franklin says.
To that end, Franklin and colleagues have developed a free app called Tec-Tec that appears effective at “reducing self-cutting, suicide plans, and suicidal behaviors.”
The app is based on a psychological technique called evaluative conditioning. By continually pairing certain words and images, it changes associations with certain objects and concepts, according to the website, so that within a game-like design, Tec-Tec seeks to change associations with certain factors that may increase risk for self-injurious behaviors.
“We’re working on [additional] trials and soon hope to use machine learning to tailor the app to each individual over time,” Franklin says, “and to connect the people most in need with the app.”
Read more at Singularity Hub

How AI Will Evolve in 2017?

Artificial intelligence (AI) will remain one of the hottest topics in 2017 and we’ll be hearing  more news about various advances of the technology made by the top tech companies.

• Emergence Of Standards
• Voice-Activated AI
• Facilitating Parental Use
• AirPods AI
• Multi-Platform Brand Personalities
• Hardware Peripheral Support

Read more at iTechPost

Interview: Jaron Lanier on artificial intelligence

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.