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Company honors 35 professionals from 12 countries, as new global survey shows benefits of diversity to AI — but notes that work is still needed to close gender gap

ARMONK, N.Y., May 6, 2020 — IBM today at its Think Digital conference unveiled its list of Women Leaders in AI, recognizing 35 exceptional female business leaders from 12 countries who are using artificial intelligence to drive transformation, growth and innovation across a wide variety of industries.

These leaders were chosen because they and their companies are demonstrating the power of AI to help improve business and work for their customers and employees. The annual recognition not only celebrates the honorees’ accomplishments, but also creates a peer network for them to learn from each other and discover approaches for applying AI to solve pressing business challenges.

Research from a recent IBM global AI survey indicates that 34 percent of businesses surveyed across the U.S., Europe and China have adopted AI. From understanding and deriving insights from tens of millions of financial documents, to improving new employee onboarding experiences, to helping women have a better experience buying intimate apparel, these women leaders are shaping innovative AI use cases. Their AI efforts helped to increase customer satisfaction, improvements in employee retention, faster response times, significant cost savings, and more efficient processes.

Many honorees are demonstrating how the power of Watson’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) can be used to improve efficiency in business processes and drive greater customer and employee experiences. They are leveraging AI tools to build AI and supplement the data science skills shortage. And they are proving, through a variety of AI applications, that human and machine collaboration can truly help improve how people work.

Explore the stories of how these women leaders are using AI to help transform their businesses — and the lessons they’ve learned along the way — at ibm.biz/womeninai. Follow us at @IBMWatson for live social updates.

“Artificial intelligence will be at the center of business transformation over the next decade, and for us to mitigate bias moving forward, we need women and diverse teams at the forefront of AI. That’s why we are proud to share the stories of 35 remarkable women who are driving progressive use of AI using Watson,” said Michelle Peluso, IBM’s Senior Vice President for Digital Sales and Chief Marketing Officer, who also serves as the global leader for IBM’s Women’s Initiative. “Their accomplishments are an inspiration to all of us.”

To shed more light on diversity in AI, IBM recently teamed up with Morning Consult to conduct a new global study of more than 3,200 AI professionals. Notable findings of that study, being released today, include:

• 85 percent of AI professionals believe the industry has become more diverse over the past few years; of those, 91 percent think that shift is having a positive impact. 74 percent of AI professionals believing diversity hasn’t improved say the industry must become more diverse to reach its potential.
• While men and women working in AI were equally likely to be interested in math and hard sciences growing up, men working in AI were more likely to be told they had a natural talent for mathematics and hard sciences than women, while women were more likely to be told they had a natural talent for the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts.
• Two in five AI professionals facing hurdles in implementing AI reported challenges in building AI tech or getting their organization to adopt AI.
• Women in AI globally were nearly five times as likely as men to say their career advancement was negatively impacted by their gender.

The 2020 IBM Women Leaders in AI honorees are:

1. Tiphanie Combre, Senior Director, AI Assisted Service and Automation, ADP (U.S.)
2. Amy Shreve-McDonald, Lead Product Marketing Manager for Business Digital Experience, AT&T (U.S.)
3. Mara Reiff, Vice President, Strategy and Business Intelligence, Bell Canada (Canada)
4. Tammy Lucas, Vice President of Marketing, Best Western Hotels & Resorts (U.S.)
5. Sheila Ambruster, Senior Manager, Strategic Architecture, The Boeing Company (U.S.)
6. Claire Lucas, Head of Artificial Intelligence, Bouygues Telecom (France)
7. Rosa Martinez, Cognitive Project Manager, CaixaBank (Spain)
8. Michèle Brengou, Cognitive Factory Business Leader, Crédit Mutuel (France)
9. Ashley Lawrence, Research and Innovation Project Manager, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (U.S.)
10. Maiga Bishop, Director of Business Intelligence and Analytics, Dillard’s (U.S.) 
11. Jo Ann Tan, Head of Infrastructure, The Hartford (U.S.)
12. Susanna Shen, General Manager—Corporate IT, Hong Kong and China Gas Company Ltd. (Hong Kong, China)
13. Yui Ozawa, Chief, AI Promotion Team, its communications Inc. (Japan)
14. Ryoko Miyashita, Manager, Customer Service Department, Customer Service Section, JACCS Co., Ltd. (Japan)
15. Momo Tokumon, Assistant Manager, Web Sales, Japan Airlines (Japan)
16. Karla Capela Morais, CEO and Founder, KOY–Law Intelligence (Brazil)
17. Marisa Ferrara Boston, Automation and AI Lead Architect, Audit Technology, KPMG LLP (U.S.)
18. Junko Kato, Manager of the Customer Service Administration Office, Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co. (Japan)
19. Donna Dodson, Chief Cybersecurity Advisor, NIST: National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S.)
20. Kristen Bennie, Head of Open Experience, NatWest Group (U.K.)
21. Lisa Bouari, Executive Director, OutThought AI Assistants (Australia)
22. Melissa Molstad, Director of Common Platforms, Data Strategy and Vendor Relations, PayPal (U.S.)
23. Linda Maruta, Head of Product, Pulsar (U.K.)
24. Izumi Hatta, Manager, AI Skills & Dialog Group, Rakuten, Inc. (Japan)
25. Amala Duggirala, Enterprise Chief Operations and Technology Officer, Regions Bank (U.S.)
26. Carol Chen, Vice President for Global Marketing, Global Commercial, Royal Dutch Shell (U.K.)
27. Monica Pedraza Garcia, Operations Director, Santander (Spain)
28. Sabine Rinser-Willuhn, Manager, HR Systems, Siemens AG (Germany)
29. Aarthi Fernandez, Global Head of Trade Operations Product, Standard Chartered Bank (Singapore)
30. Jenni Barnett, Executive Director, Digital, Telstra (Australia)
31. Nicole Hein, Technical Product Owner, Telstra (Australia)
32. Lee-Lim Sok Keow, Deputy Principal, Temasek Polytechnic (Singapore)
33. Paola Molino, Head of Transformation Programs, Vodafone (Italy)
34. Atsuko Shinozuka, Manager, 3D Smart & Try and Omni-Channel Strategy, Wacoal Corp. (Japan)
35. Piera Valeria Cordaro, Commercial Operations Innovation Manager, Wind Tre S.p.A. (Italy)

IBM created the Women Leaders in AI program in 2019 to help provide visibility to women leading in AI, encourage increased female participation in the field of AI, and provide honorees a network for shared learning. As organizations hasten their digital transformations amid an unpredictable environment, technologies such as AI, edge and cloud are helping companies remain resilient and position themselves for the future. Recognizing leaders on the forefront of adopting AI and learning from their experiences in building AI that’s inclusive and transparent become even more important during this time of rapid evolution.

New Offerings and Partner Ecosystem Pave Way for Enterprises and Telcos to Deploy and Manage AI, IoT and Analytics Workloads at the Edge

ARMONK, N.Y., May 5, 2020 — IBM today at its Think Digital conference announced new services and solutions backed by a broad ecosystem of partners to help enterprises and telecommunications companies speed their transition to edge computing in the 5G era. This effort combines IBM’s experience and expertise in multicloud environments with Red Hat’s industry-leading open source technology, which became part of IBM last year in one of the biggest tech acquisitions of all time.

For organizations worldwide, the rollout of wireless 5G telecommunications networks, which bring blazing speed and extremely low latency—and minimal transmission delays—to mobile data, is designed to accelerate the utility of edge computing. With new edge services, IBM Business Partners and open multicloud solutions from IBM, enterprises will be able to tap into the potential of 5G to support crucial uses like emergency response, robotic surgery or connected-vehicle safety features that benefit from the few milliseconds latency saved by not having to send workloads to a centralized cloud.

“In today’s uncertain environment, our clients are looking to differentiate themselves by creating more innovative, responsive user experiences that are adaptive and continuously available – from the data center all the way out to the edge,” said Denis Kennelly, general manager, IBM Hybrid Cloud. “IBM is helping clients unlock the full potential of edge computing and 5G with hybrid multicloud offerings that bring together Red Hat OpenShift and our industry expertise to address enterprise needs in a way no other company can.”

IBM’s new offerings run on Red Hat OpenShift, the leading enterprise Kubernetes platform that runs everywhere — from the data center to multiple public clouds to the edge. They enable enterprises to overcome the complexity of managing workloads across a massive volume of devices from different vendors and provide telcos the agility they need to quickly deliver edge-enabled services to customers. Clients across industries can now fully realize the benefits of edge computing, including running AI and analytics at the edge to achieve insights closer to where the work is done. New solutions include:

• IBM Edge Application Manager – an autonomous management solution to enable AI, analytics and IoT enterprise workloads to be deployed and remotely managed, delivering real-time analysis and insight at scale. The solution enables the management of up to 10,000 edge nodes simultaneously by a single administrator.¹ It’s the first solution to be powered by a breakthrough open source project, Open Horizon, created by IBM engineers designed to enable a single person to securely manage such a vast network of edge devices.
• IBM Telco Network Cloud Manager – a new solution offered by IBM that runs on Red Hat OpenShift to deliver intelligent automation capabilities to orchestrate virtual and container network functions in minutes. Service providers will have the ability to manage workloads on both Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack Platform, which will be critical as telcos increasingly look for ways to modernize their networks for greater agility and efficiency, and to provide new services today and as 5G adoption expands.
• A portfolio of edge-enabled applications and services, including IBM Visual Insights, IBM Production Optimization, IBM Connected Manufacturing, IBM Asset Optimization, IBM Maximo Worker Insights and IBM Visual Inspector. All offer features to give clients the flexibility to deploy AI and cognitive applications and services at scale.
• New dedicated IBM Services teams for edge computing and telco network cloud that draw on IBM’s deep expertise to help clients deliver 5G and edge-enabled solutions across all industries.

In addition, IBM is announcing the IBM Edge Ecosystem, through which an increasingly broad set of ISVs, GSIs and more will be helping enterprises capture the opportunities of edge computing with a variety of solutions built upon IBM’s technology. IBM is also creating the IBM Telco Network Cloud Ecosystem, bringing together a set of partners across the telecommunications industry that offer a breadth of network functionality that helps providers deploy their network cloud platforms.

These open ecosystems of equipment manufacturers, networking and IT providers and software providers include Cisco, Dell Technologies, Juniper Networks, Intel, NVIDIA, Samsung, Packet, an Equinix Company, Hazelcast, Sysdig, Turbonomic, Portworx, Humio, Indra Minsait, Eurotech, Arrow Electronics, ADLINK, Acromove, Geniatech, SmartCone, CloudHedge, Altiostar, Metaswitch, F5 Networks and ADVA as members. 

Businesses that have already been working with IBM to deploy edge computing technologies include Vodafone Business, which is working with IBM to help improve worker safety and productivity in remote locations such as oil rigs, factories, warehouses, ports and mines. Combining Vodafone Mobile Private Networks, IBM Edge Application Manager and Red Hat OpenShift, the new solution uses sensors, AI, as well as predictive and video analytics to understand and respond to incidents in milliseconds, keeping workers safe.

“At Vodafone Business, our primary focus is keeping our customers and their employees connected and safe, whether remote working or working from remote locations. Vodafone Mobile Private Networks, IBM edge computing and AI technologies enable companies to oversee operations even in the most remote locations, where rapid action can mean the difference between a near miss and a disaster,” said Vinod Kumar, CEO, Vodafone Business.

Samsung is collaborating with IBM and telecommunications provider M1 to develop and test Industry 4.0 solutions using 5G and edge computing for Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).

“5G and edge will enable massive innovation for manufacturers, with 5G networks enabling phones and devices at the edge to deliver new AI-driven improvements to quality, productivity and safety. But the ability to achieve the scale and effectively manage the connectivity of the vast number of devices and sensors in a manufacturing environment is complex,” said KC Choi, EVP of Global B2B Sales, Samsung Electronics. “To address this challenge and enable Industry 4.0 innovation at scale, we’re collaborating to put IBM’s edge computing and AI solutions and Samsung end-to-end 5G network platform and mobile devices to work. Together, we’ll deliver new 5G enabled solutions leveraging sound and video insights as well as augmented reality to uncover anomalies that can occur throughout the manufacturing process.”

Equinix is building a reference architecture that brings the IBM Cloud Paks ecosystem to the edge of the network. With its interconnected Edge Metal infrastructure (powered by Packet bare metal technology), Red Hat OpenShift and IBM Edge Application Manager, enterprises can build edge applications once and deploy anywhere.

“Working with IBM on our Edge Metal Private Beta is a perfect example of how collaboration can enable enterprises to tap into the power of hybrid cloud for low-latency use cases,” said Zac Smith, Managing Director of Bare Metal at Equinix. “With interconnected, automated bare metal paired with edge computing and hybrid multi-cloud solutions from IBM and Red Hat, our customers can tap into a blueprint for rapid innovation at the network edge. Our Metro Edge locations will also have the advantage of enabling consolidation from the remote on-premises locations (edge-in) or migration from the cloud (cloud-out) and yet still remain close enough to where data is created and actions are taken to reduce latency, avoid bandwidth constraints, and retain a high level of operational resilience.”

Tech Mahindra and IBM Establish Technology Innovation Centers to Help Digital Transformation for Global Customers

Tuesday, April 21: Tech Mahindra Ltd. a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting and business reengineering services and solutions, is collaborating with IBM to help businesses transform their operations and accelerate their hybrid cloud strategies. Tech Mahindra will help clients migrate core business applications to the IBM public cloud using IBM Cloud Paks.

As part of this relationship, IBM and Tech Mahindra will establish innovation centers designed to help address complex business problems across industries, including telecommunication, manufacturing, financial services, insurance, retail and healthcare. The first center is planned to open in Bengaluru, India, later this year and specialize in transformation solutions built with IBM Cloud Paks, enterprise-ready containerized software solutions running on Red Hat OpenShift. Tech Mahindra currently plans to open additional centers throughout North America and the United Kingdom in 2020.

Pawan Sharma, President & Global Head of Strategic Initiatives at Tech Mahindra, said “The collaboration with IBM will help us accelerate the development of cloud-based applications for our customers and build multicloud data management solutions on the industry-leading hybrid platform. The commitment to building Innovation Centers aligns with our TechMNxt charter, an initiative that leverages emerging technology to solve real-world business problems for customers.”

Tech Mahindra is the latest company to join the IBM public cloud ecosystem, a new initiative to support global system integrators and independent software vendors to help clients modernize and transform mission-critical workloads on the IBM public cloud. The IBM public cloud is the industry’s most open and secure public cloud for business. With its security leadership, enterprise-grade capabilities and support for open source technologies, the IBM public cloud is designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprise workloads.

“This collaboration with Tech Mahindra is designed to help speed how businesses migrate critical enterprise workloads to the IBM public cloud and transform their operations using cloud-native technologies,” said Bob Lord, SVP, Cognitive Applications, Blockchain and Ecosystems, IBM. “IBM Cloud Paks are designed to help businesses speed their journeys to the cloud by giving them the flexibility and choice they need to modernize their applications. Because they are pre-integrated to deliver specific customer use cases, they can help quickly address pressing challenges for businesses across multiple industries.”

Tech Mahindra aims to help clients build scalable, cloud-native applications that can help address the most critical data and workload. Tech Mahindra’s technologists can also assist Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to develop network automation solutions, IT infrastructure and application modernization, further helping clients shift complex and mission-critical enterprise workloads to the IBM public cloud. The collaboration is in line with Tech Mahindra’s TechMNxt charter, which focuses on providing solutions that enable digital transformation and meet the customer’s evolving and dynamic needs. The innovation centers will be driven by Tech Mahindra’s spirit to deliver tangible business value and experiences to solve real business problems.

Tech Mahindra and IBM Establish Technology Innovation Centers to Help Digital Transformation for Global Customers

Tuesday, April 21: Tech Mahindra Ltd. a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting and business reengineering services and solutions, is collaborating with IBM to help businesses transform their operations and accelerate their hybrid cloud strategies. Tech Mahindra will help clients migrate core business applications to the IBM public cloud using IBM Cloud Paks.

As part of this relationship, IBM and Tech Mahindra will establish innovation centers designed to help address complex business problems across industries, including telecommunication, manufacturing, financial services, insurance, retail and healthcare. The first center is planned to open in Bengaluru, India, later this year and specialize in transformation solutions built with IBM Cloud Paks, enterprise-ready containerized software solutions running on Red Hat OpenShift. Tech Mahindra currently plans to open additional centers throughout North America and the United Kingdom in 2020.

Pawan Sharma, President & Global Head of Strategic Initiatives at Tech Mahindra, said “The collaboration with IBM will help us accelerate the development of cloud-based applications for our customers and build multicloud data management solutions on the industry-leading hybrid platform. The commitment to building Innovation Centers aligns with our TechMNxt charter, an initiative that leverages emerging technology to solve real-world business problems for customers.”

Tech Mahindra is the latest company to join the IBM public cloud ecosystem, a new initiative to support global system integrators and independent software vendors to help clients modernize and transform mission-critical workloads on the IBM public cloud. The IBM public cloud is the industry’s most open and secure public cloud for business. With its security leadership, enterprise-grade capabilities and support for open source technologies, the IBM public cloud is designed to differentiate and extend on hybrid cloud capabilities for enterprise workloads.

“This collaboration with Tech Mahindra is designed to help speed how businesses migrate critical enterprise workloads to the IBM public cloud and transform their operations using cloud-native technologies,” said Bob Lord, SVP, Cognitive Applications, Blockchain and Ecosystems, IBM. “IBM Cloud Paks are designed to help businesses speed their journeys to the cloud by giving them the flexibility and choice they need to modernize their applications. Because they are pre-integrated to deliver specific customer use cases, they can help quickly address pressing challenges for businesses across multiple industries.”

Tech Mahindra aims to help clients build scalable, cloud-native applications that can help address the most critical data and workload. Tech Mahindra’s technologists can also assist Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to develop network automation solutions, IT infrastructure and application modernization, further helping clients shift complex and mission-critical enterprise workloads to the IBM public cloud. The collaboration is in line with Tech Mahindra’s TechMNxt charter, which focuses on providing solutions that enable digital transformation and meet the customer’s evolving and dynamic needs. The innovation centers will be driven by Tech Mahindra’s spirit to deliver tangible business value and experiences to solve real business problems.

Movius Leverages IBM public cloud and IBM Cloud Internet Services to Support Clients in Highly Regulated Industries as Businesses Rapidly Scale Remote Workforces

ARMONK, N.Y., April 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Movius, an emerging global leader in cloud-based secure mobile communications software, will host its MultiLine application on the IBM (NYSE: IBM) public cloud. This helps them meet critical demand for business communications continuity as enterprises migrate their mobile communication needs to the cloud, while still addressing their regulatory and data protection needs.

As global events dramatically reshape work environments, organizations are strategizing how to organize remote teams to be productive while also adhering to security, compliance and data protection guidelines. Movius’ MultiLine solution allows organizations to address this need, especially as highly regulated industries shift more employees to work-from-home environments. The MultiLine application allows users to deploy and control a second phone line – with a dedicated business phone number – on any device and carrier. The service can capture and archive all voice and text conversations to help meet their compliance requirements. As an example, to meet European Union requirements for capturing all business-related calls, Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland chose MultiLine to deploy across its wealth advisors with the goal of zero disruption in client service. Additionally, by hosting the solution on IBM public cloud, Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland can benefit from the industry’s most secure and open public cloud for business.

“One of the reasons for choosing MultiLine is that we believe the regulator would be quite satisfied with how robust it is compared to some of the other options,” said David Mitchell, CTO, Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland. “The real value comes from being able to demonstrate quickly, easily and obviously that you are addressing your requirements.”

By hosting its app on IBM’s public cloud, Movius is allowing companies to work remotely while still supporting their regulatory and data protection needs for specific industries and countries. IBM public cloud delivers enterprise-grade workload capabilities, market-leading data and app protection, and open source innovations to some of the world’s largest and most complex enterprises as they protect sensitive data.

Movius is part of the IBM Public Cloud Ecosystem, a new initiative to support global system integrators (GSIs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) to help clients modernize and transform mission-critical workloads on the IBM public cloud.

“IBM’s leadership in security has helped establish IBM public cloud as the preferred destination for businesses to run their most complex workloads,” said Aki Duvvur, VP, IBM public cloud. “Movius turned to the IBM public cloud to help them meet their regulatory demands and provide a high level of protection for its clients’ data, while enabling enterprises across the globe to take advantage of its MultiLine application.”

– Announces first commercial availability of key technologies from Project Debater;

– Integrated into IBM Watson, the new capabilities help enable businesses to begin mining & analyzing some of the most challenging aspects of human language

NEW YORK, March 11, 2020 — IBM, the leader in artificial intelligence for business¹, is announcing several new IBM Watson technologies designed to help organizations begin identifying, understanding and analyzing some of the most challenging aspects of the English language with greater clarity, for greater insights.

The new technologies represent the first commercialization of key Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities to come from IBM Research’s Project Debater, the only AI system capable of debating humans on complex topics. For example, a new advanced sentiment analysis feature is defined to identify and analyze idioms and colloquialisms for the first time. Phrases, like ‘hardly helpful,’ or ‘hot under the collar,’ have been challenging for AI systems because they are difficult for algorithms to spot. With advanced sentiment analysis, businesses can begin analyzing such language data with Watson APIs for a more holistic understanding of their operations. Further, IBM is bringing technology from IBM Research for understanding business documents, such as PDF’s and contracts, to also add to their AI models.

“Language is a tool for expressing thought and opinion, as much as it is a tool for information,” said Rob Thomas, General Manager, IBM Data and AI. “This is why we’re harvesting technology from Project Debater and integrating it into Watson – to enable businesses to capture, analyze, and understand more from human language and start to transform how they utilize intellectual capital that’s codified in data.”

Today IBM is announcing that it plans to integrate Project Debater technologies into Watson throughout the year, with a focus on advancing clients’ ability to exploit natural language:

A.    Analysis – Advanced Sentiment Analysis. IBM has enhanced sentiment analysis to be able to better identify and understand complicated word schemes like idioms (phrases and expressions) and so called, sentiment shifters, which are combinations of words that, together, take on new meaning, such as, “hardly helpful.” This technology will be integrated into Watson Natural Language Understanding this month. In addition, we are announcing a new classification technology that will enable clients to create AI models that can more easily classify clauses that occur in business documents, like procurement contracts. Based on Project Debater’s deep learning-based classification technology, the new capability can learn from as few as several hundred samples to do new classifications quickly and easily. It is planned to be added to Watson Discovery later this year.

B.    Briefs – Summarization. This technology pulls textual data from a variety of sources to provide users with a summary of what is being said and written about a particular topic. An early version of Summarization was leveraged at The GRAMMYS this year to analyze over 18 million articles, blogs and bios to produce bite-sized insights on hundreds of GRAMMY artists and celebrities. The data was then infused into the red carpet live stream, on-demand videos and photos across www.grammy.com to give fans deeper context about the leading topics of the night. It is planned to be added to IBM Watson Natural Language Understanding later in the year.

C.    Clustering – Advanced Topic Clustering. Building on insights gained from Project Debater, new topic clustering techniques will enable users to “cluster” incoming data to create meaningful “topics” of related information, which can then be analyzed. The technique, which is planned to be integrated into Watson Discovery later this year, will also allow subject matter experts to customize and fine-tune the topics to reflect the language of specific businesses or industries, like insurance, healthcare and manufacturing.

IBM, has long been a leader in NLP, developing technologies that enable computer systems to learn, analyze and understand human language – including sentiment, dialects, intonations, and more – with increasing accuracy and speed. IBM has brought its NLP technology, much of which was born in IBM Research, to market via Watson. Product such as, Watson Discovery for document understanding, IBM Watson Assistant for virtual agents, and Watson Natural Language Understanding for advanced sentiment analysis, are all infused with NLP.

ESPN Fantasy Football uses Watson Discovery and Watson Knowledge Studio to analyze millions of football data sources each day during the season to offer millions of fantasy football players real-time insights. By processing natural language, Watson identifies the tone and sentiment of news articles, blogs, forums, rankings, projections, podcasts and tweets that cover everything from locker room insights to injury analysis. ESPN Fantasy Football surfaces these insights in player cards that snapshot the “boom” and “bust” potential of each player, as well as a “Player Buzz” section that summarizes the positive or negative commentary about a player.

KPMG, a multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations, worked with IBM to create an AI solution based on a variety of Watson services, including Watson Natural Language Understanding. This technology makes it more effective for companies to identify, claim and retain potential R&D income tax credits. Developed by KPMG, the solution can help clients increase the amount of R&D income tax credits they capture because the Watson technology is able to review more documentation quickly while minimizing disruption to the client’s business.

In the past year, KPMG clients have seen more potential for R&D tax credits, with some projects even seeing more than a 1000% increase in the number of documents reviewed. The solution helps clients uncover more potential activities that qualify for additional income tax credits, while reducing business disruption. As a result, engineers and scientists can stay focused on innovative R&D work by spending less time on income tax compliance activities.

Solution to combine real-world drug and disease content, natural language processing and cloud-based tools with the goal of streamlining clinical decision-making at the point-of-care

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 11, 2020 — IBM Watson Health and EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) today announced a strategic collaboration aimed towards enhancing clinical decision support (CDS) and operations for healthcare providers and health systems. The companies are combining their respective solution suites – DynaMed^® and IBM^® Micromedex^® with Watson™ – into a single, high-value global solution called “DynaMed and Micromedex with Watson.” The combined solution suite will be designed to bring together drug and disease content, into a single source for evidence-based insights to help inform clinical decisions.

DynaMed provides peer-reviewed clinical content, including systematic literature reviews in 28 specialties for comprehensive disease topics, health conditions, and abnormal findings to highly focused topics on evaluation, differential diagnosis, and management. The content undergoes a rigorous, seven-step process, giving clinicians access to current, evidence-based diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations. IBM Micromedex is one of the largest online reference databases for medication information. It is used by more than 4,500 hospitals and health systems worldwide to support decision-making in medication therapy management, disease and condition management, toxicology, alternative medicine and patient education.

“Research shows that healthcare provider confidence in clinical decision support comes from knowing the evidence-based methodologies that helped build the content foundation¹,” said Anil Jain, Vice President, Chief Health Information Officer, IBM Watson Health. “When clinicians are confident that their clinical decision support is drawing recommendations from accurate and timely information, they are more likely to use the technology to support their care decisions.²”

IBM Micromedex with Watson is designed to use artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to bypass keyword searches in favor of a more conversational approach to searching drug content. DynaMed and Micromedex with Watson will be designed to provide clinicians direct access to drug and disease content at the point-of-care to support clinical decision making.

“The synergy of our world class, evidence-based content is expected to drive efficiencies for more healthcare systems using data-driven insights for decision making,” said Betsy Jones, Executive Vice President, EBSCO Clinical Decisions. “Built on the latest cloud-based technology, we will harness world class content from DynaMed and IBM Micromedex onto a seamless and personalized solution. A terrific alternative for the care team.”

“When it comes to clinical decision support, content is king. Nearly nine out of 10 physicians in the US currently implement electronic health record technology³” said Todd Nolen, General Manager, IBM Micromedex Solutions, IBM Watson Health. “We believe DynaMed and Micromedex with Watson can deliver value and innovation to healthcare organizations, to help enable rapid access to high-quality medical evidence that is essential for clinicians as they work to provide safe and effective patient care within their clinical workflow.”

DynaMed and Micromedex with Watson is expected to be available for general adoption in April, 2020.⁴ IBM Watson Health and EBSCO Information Services will also continue to sell the IBM Micromedex with Watson and DynaMed solution suites separately in order to offer flexible options to help meet customers’ needs.

Promare and IBM engineers develop new class of marine AI to advance $90BN autonomous shipping market

IBM Edge, AI technologies and over a million images at core of ship’s ability to sense, think and act autonomously at sea

PLYMOUTH, England, March 5, 2020 — IBM and marine research organization Promare, have announced that a new ‘AI Captain’, which will enable the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) to self-navigate across the Atlantic later this year, is to go to sea this month for testing. The trial, which will take place on a manned research vessel off the coast of Plymouth in the UK, will evaluate how the AI Captain uses cameras, AI and edge computing systems to safely navigate around ships, buoys and other ocean hazards that it is expected to meet during its transatlantic voyage in September 2020.

MAS will trace the route of the original 1620 Mayflower to commemorate the 400^th anniversary of the famous voyage. Sailing from Plymouth, UK to Plymouth, Massachusetts with no human captain or onboard crew, it will become one of the first full-sized, fully autonomous vessels to cross the Atlantic. The mission will further the development of commercial autonomous ships and help transform the future of marine research.

“While the autonomous shipping market is set to grow from $90BN today to over $130BN by 2030*, many of today’s autonomous ships are really just automated – robots which do not dynamically adapt to new situations and rely heavily on operator override,” said Don Scott, CTO of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship.  “Using an integrated set of IBM’s AI, cloud, and edge technologies, we are aiming to give the Mayflower the ability to operate independently in some of the most challenging circumstances on the planet.”

The trial begins
MAS will rely on IBM’s advanced AI and edge computing systems to sense, think and make decisions at sea, even with no human intervention. With the three hulls of the trimaran MAS currently reaching the final phase of construction in Gdansk, Poland, a prototype of the AI Captain will first take to the water on a manned vessel – the Plymouth Quest – a research ship owned and operated by the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the UK. The March sea trials, which will be conducted in waters of Smart Sound Plymouth, under the watchful eye of the Plymouth Quest’s human crew, will help determine how the Mayflower’s AI Captain performs in real-world maritime scenarios, and provide valuable feedback to help refine the ship’s machine learning models.

Two years of training and a million nautical images
Over the past two years, the Mayflower team has been training the ship’s AI models using over a million nautical images collected from cameras in the Plymouth Sound in the UK as well as open source databases. To meet the processing demands of machine learning, the team used an IBM Power AC922 fuelled by IBM Power9 CPUs and NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs, the same technologies behind the world’s smartest AI supercomputers. Now, using IBM’s computer vision technology, the Mayflower’s AI Captain should be able to independently detect and classify ships, buoys and other hazards such as land, breakwaters and debris.

Keeping things local
As the Mayflower will not have access to high-bandwidth connectivity throughout its transatlantic voyage, it will use a fully autonomous IBM edge computing system powered by several onboard NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier devices. While at sea, the Mayflower will process data locally on NVIDIA Jetson, increasing the speed of decision making and reducing the amount of data flow and storage on the ship.

“Edge computing is critical to making an autonomous ship like the Mayflower possible. The Mayflower needs to sense its environment, make smart decisions about its situation and then act on these insights in the minimum amount of time – even in the presence of intermittent connectivity, and all while keeping data secure from cyber threats,” said Rob High, VP and CTO for Edge Computing, IBM. “IBM’s edge computing solutions are designed to support mission-critical workloads like the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, extending the power of the cloud and the security and flexibility of Red Hat Enterprise Linux all the way out to the edge of the network, even in the middle of the ocean.”

Getting there (safely)
As well as following the overall mission objectives to reach Plymouth, Massachusetts in the shortest amount of time, the AI Captain will draw on IBM’s rule management system (Operational Decision Manager – ODM) to follow the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) as well as recommendations from the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). Used widely across the financial services industry, ODM is particularly suited to the Mayflower project as it provides a completely transparent record of its decision-making process, avoiding ‘black box’ scenarios.

As the weather is one of the most significant factors impacting the success of the voyage, the AI Captain will use forecast data from The Weather Company to help make navigation decisions. A Safety Manager function (running on RHEL) will review all of the AI Captain’s decisions to ensure they are safe – for the Mayflower, and for other vessels in its vicinity.

A real-world scenario – how the Mayflower senses, thinks and acts at sea
For example, let’s assume that the Mayflower is in the open ocean, approaching Cape Cod, with no current satellite connectivity. In its path ahead is a cargo ship which has had a collision with a fishing vessel and spilt some of its load. In this hypothetical scenario, the Mayflower’s AI Captain will use the following technologies and processes to independently assess the situation, and decide what action to take:

Senses (assesses current environment & identifies hazards)

• Radar detects multiple hazards in MAS’s path, 2.5 nautical miles ahead
• Onboard cameras provide visual input to IBM computer vision system which identifies hazards as: a cargo ship, a fishing vessel and three partially submerged shipping containers floating in the water
• Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides specific information about the cargo ship’s class, weight, speed, cargo, etc.
• GPS Navigation System – provides MAS’s current location, heading, speed and course
• MAS’s nautical chart server provides geospatial information about its chosen route
• Weather data provided by The Weather Company
• Attitude Sensors – assess local sea state (how MAS pitches and rolls due to waves)
• Fathometer – provides water depth measurements
• Vehicle Management System – provides operational data such as MAS’s battery charge level, power consumption, communications, science payloads etc.

Thinks (evaluates options)

• IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) evaluates COLREGs with respect to the other vessels in the vicinity and generates a risk map indicating an “unsafe” situation ahead
• MAS’s AI Captain ingests the ODM recommendation, computer vision input, current and forecasted weather and assesses several options to avoid hazard

Acts (chooses best actions and instructs vessel)

• AI Captain determines the best action for MAS, in this hypothetical scenario, is to steer to starboard to avoid the unexpected navigation hazard
• MAS’s Safety Manager verifies the decision as safe
• AI Captain instructs MAS’s Vehicle Management system to change course and speed.

As the ocean is an ever-changing dynamic environment, the AI Captain will constantly re-evaluate the situation and update the course of the Mayflower as situations evolve.

The March sea trials will take place for approximately two months on the Plymouth Quest with the ship’s human captain and crew at the helm. In the first stage if testing, the Mayflower AI Captain’s inference engine will receive input from the Quest’s radar, AIS, GPS and navigation system, as well as data about visibility. Cameras, computer vision, edge and autonomy capabilities will be added in the next phase of testing from April.

Two thirds of government employees surveyed concerned about cyberattacks on their workplace, threats against elections among top concerns in 2020

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 27, 2020 — IBM Security today released the results of a new poll of U.S. city and state employees which examines their preparedness for dealing with cyberattacks. The study found that 73% of government employees surveyed are concerned about impending ransomware threats to cities across the country, and more employees fear of cyberattacks to their community than natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

More than 100 cities across the United States were hit with ransomware in 2019, according to research from Emsisoft. Data in the new Harris Poll, sponsored by IBM Security, found ransomware attacks might be even more widespread, with 1 in 6 respondents disclosing their department was impacted by a ransomware attack. Despite the growth of these attacks, half of the employees surveyed have not seen any change in preparedness from their employers, with only 38% receiving general ransomware prevention training. Also, budgets for managing cyberattacks have remained stagnant according to 52% of state and local government IT/Security professionals polled.

“The emerging ransomware epidemic in our cities highlights the need for cities to better prepare for cyberattacks just as frequently as they prepare for natural disasters,” said Wendi Whitmore, VP of Threat Intelligence, IBM Security. “The data in this new study suggests local and state employees recognize the threat but demonstrate over confidence in their ability to react to and manage it. Meanwhile, cities and states across the country remain a ripe target for cybercriminals.”

2020 Elections Concerns
With the impending 2020 election in the U.S, it’s no surprise election security is top of mind for government employees. In fact, the new IBM Harris Poll study found 63% of respondents are concerned that a cyberattack could disrupt the upcoming elections, with the majority of government employees placing their local Board of Elections among the top three most vulnerable systems in their communities.

While concerns of attacks against election systems and voting machines continue to make headlines, cyberattacks can also be used as a form of distraction or a way to weaken confidence in systems for voters, or even impede them from casting ballots. The Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has warned that ransomware attacks, in particular, pose a heightened risk to the elections. According to the study, the fear of ransomware attacks feels real to the vast majority of responding government employees, with 73% expressing concerns about threats to U.S. cities.

Public Education
Public schools have emerged as a growing target for cybercriminals in 2019, ranking as the 7th most targeted industry according to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index (moving up from 9th the year prior). Ransomware impacted school districts in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Louisiana and other states last year.

The IBM Harris Poll study found that education respondents had the lowest amount of cybersecurity training compared to other surveyed state and local professionals. In general, 44% of those from the public education sector said they hadn’t received basic cybersecurity training, and 70% said they hadn’t received adequate training specifically on how to respond to a cyberattack. With low training numbers, the majority of education respondents aren’t overly confident in their ability to recognize and prevent a ransomware attack – confidence is nearly 20% lower than other state and local employees surveyed.

Calling on the Federal Government
With ransomware attacks against cities likely to continue in 2020, both U.S. government employees and taxpayers believe the federal government should step in to assist. The survey shows 78% of government employees believe the federal government should provide assistance to communities in responding to cyberattacks, echoing sentiments from IBM’s 2019 study where 50% of U.S. taxpayers said it’s the federal government’s responsibility to protect cities from ransomware. The majority (76%) of state and local employees also believe cyberattacks warrant emergency support, similar to those used for natural disasters.

Positive Progress and the Path Forward for Cities
While the study details where work needs to be done in preparing cities for cyberattacks, the results also showed some improvements made since last year. When asked whether they had seen any increases in preparedness and concern for cybersecurity in their departments, government employees surveyed claimed they had seen more improvements than not, and nearly 70% think their employers are currently taking the threat of cyberattacks seriously. City and state employees ranked ransomware #3 among the threats they were most familiar with – demonstrating that well publicized attacks are increasing awareness.

To expand on these improvements, IBM Security is encouraging U.S. cities to strengthen their preparedness through collaboration and threat sharing, creating and implementing incident response plans, and regularly testing their preparedness via threat simulations. IBM X-Force IRIS has been closely working with dozens of city experts and law enforcement agencies to encourage local governments across the U.S. to get a jump start on their cybersecurity preparedness and become better equipped to handle impending threats.