Artificial Intelligence

Armonk, N.Y. –- IBM has released new high-speed analysis and criminal investigation software that is designed to uncover hidden criminal threats buried inside massive volumes of disparate corporate data. IBM i2 Enterprise Insight Analysis (EIA) can find non-obvious relationships within hundreds of terabytes of data and trillions of objects in just seconds.   

Mooresville, N.C. -- Lowe's Innovation Labs will introduce two autonomous retail service robots in an Orchard Supply Hardware store in midtown San Jose, Calif. during the upcoming holiday season to study how robotics technology can benefit customers and employees. Called OSHbot, the robots will assist customers to navigate stores by directing them to specific products and providing real-time information about product promotions and inventory.   

Sears and Amazon.com both recently came under fire for allowing rings decorated with the Nazi swastika symbol to be posted for sale on their third-party seller sites. While both retailers quickly pulled the items down and issued public apologies, they received a large amount of negative publicity and surely damaged their brand image with many offended customers, perhaps to the point of permanently losing some of them.  

New York -- The cat is finally out of the bag. Former J.C. Penney CEO and Apple retail head Ron Johnson confirmed that he is launching a new company—but it’s not a tech-gadget delivery service as was widely rumored. Instead,  the new initiative, set to launch in 2015,  is designed to help online hoppers make the right product choices.  

By John Gessau, ACI Worldwide   Wow. What a month in the world of mobile payments.   So much has been said and written since Apple Pay was announced on Sept. 9th, up to its official launch on Monday, Oct. 20. If I had dollar for every time Apple Pay was mentioned in the press and in blogs, well…   But Apple Pay isn’t the only thing that has happened since Sept. 9th. There has been a lot going on around the globe:

Sunnyvale, Calif. –- Strong mobile revenue and proceeds from the sale of a portion of its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. helped Yahoo Inc. beat Wall Street estimates for earnings per share (EPS) and revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2014. EPS totaled $0.52, up 62% from $0.32 the same quarter the prior fiscal year, and revenue grew 1% to $1.15 billion from $1.14 billion.  

New York -- Twenty percent of American adults already own a wearable device and the adoption rate, on par with tablets in 2012, is quickly expected to rise. According to a PwC survey of 1,000 consumers, after dietary, exercise and medical information, an enhanced retail experience was at the top of the list of information Millennials would like wearable tech to provide them.

Austin, Texas -- A majority of Americans would be comfortable divulging information about themselves anonymously to their favorite stores (60%) or a product brand (56%), and close to half would anonymously share personal data to an app (46%). According to a new national survey from Wearables.com and The Center for Generational Kinetics, some consumers will also share personal information in exchange for certain benefits.