Recent progress in Artificial Intelligence has given rise to fears of technological unemployment, when a large part of the population will be replaced by robots in the workplace. That said, a number of companies operating in the sector are proving that these machines are meant to work with humans rather than replace them. 

On Saturday, May 27, Google’s AlphaGo faced off for the third time with world-renowned professional Go player, Ke Jie of China. Go is a board game, known for its complexity, it has long been considered too difficult for a computer to play because the number of possible combinations needed to win is much greater than the number of possible failures. However, AlphaGo surprised the public last year when it played head-to-head with one of the best players in the world, Lee Sedol of Korea. And after defeating Ke Jie 3 to 0 this weekend, the software has essentially proven its superiority. Some may recall the theory of the Singularity, a subject often defended by American entrepreneur and futurist Ray Kurzweil, and will see this as proof that no task is too difficult for AI, and that suchprogramming will surpass human intelligence in all sectors.

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47% of jobs could possibly be replaced by robots. 60% of careers in the future don’t exist yet. 50 % of skills currently considered valuable will be obsolete in the future.

We know the job market is in the midst of a major transformation, one that makes things uncertain for job seekers. It is thus necessary to invent a new model, that, rather than being imposed, should be built hand-in-hand with employees themselves.

Hackathons, internal entrepreneurial project incubators, innovations and so on, these are the kinds of initiatives companies have put into place to respond to innovation and better prepare employees for the future. But within these changes lies an opportunity for Human Resources to reinvent themselves, and focus on, what really matters: the “human” part of the job.

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Unsatisfied with media coverage concerning artificial intelligence, researcher Zachary C. Lipton launched the blog Approximately Correct to do justice to his subject. According to Lipton, media coverage of artificial intelligence is based on approximate data and discusses speculative prophecies to the detriment of the true nature of AI innovation.

In an article entitled “AI’s PR problem,” Jerry Kaplan, an entrepreneur, writer and futurist based in San Francisco, posits that Artificial intelligence is the victim of fantastic exaggerations and misconceptions of all kinds. According to Kaplan, recent progress made in this sector has been susceptible to embellishment by the media giving it a false image. Because of this, technical advances as diverse as AlphaGo, self-driving cars and voice-activated virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa, are synonymous with the progressive development of super intelligence that is on its way to surpassing even the human mind.

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Last week, here in Paris, we participated in the Big Data Paris congress, an event dedicated to innovative developments relating to Big Data. This year, the congress decided to also showcase innovations in Artificial Intelligence through their Lab AI. In fact, Artificial Intelligence is a logical extension to intelligent data analysis; after all, the value of data lies in our capacity to analyze it.

Let’s come back to this successful conference!

What is Big Data anyway?

The expression “Big Data” first appeared in 1997 in scientific articles emphasizing the technological challenges when it comes to the visualization of large volumes of data.

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“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.” George Washington.

Giving an external person the responsibility to control your calendar is a sign of trust: Julie chooses time slots in your name, communicates with your interlocutors, etc. But until now, she could not monitor and validate the people with whom you schedule meetings. You, as a user, had to give your approval before Julie would schedule meetings, calls and other appointments with the people who contact you.

This approach makes sense for people you do not know or who are not in your network. After all, we do not want to open the access to your calendar for everybody. However, what about the other people, those you know and trust?

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Even though the tech industry is largely dominated by men, this has not always been the case!

On this day dedicated to women, let’s explore the main role played by women in the tech industry and discover some initiatives and projects that showcase the audacity and expertise of many women as well as encourage others to follow in their footsteps to restore balance.

Happy international women’s day!

An industry purely male dominated?

Although represented in minority today, historically, women were the first to learn how to code.

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