Recent advancements in deep learning have led to the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in applications such as computer vision and natural language processing. As neural networks become deeper and larger, AI modeling demands outstrip the capabilities of conventional chip architectures. Memory bandwidth falls behind processing power. Energy consumption comes to dominate the total cost of ownership. Currently, memory capacity is insufficient to support the most advanced NLP models.

Researchers at Facebook AI recently introduced and open-sourced a new framework for self-supervised learning of representations from raw audio data known as wav2vec 2.0. The company claims that this framework can enable automatic speech recognition models with just 10 minutes of transcribed speech data. Neural network models have gained much traction over the last few years due to its applications across various sectors. The models work with the help of vast quantities of labelled training data. However, most of the time, it is challenging to gather labelled data than unlabelled data.

The COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest global healthcare crisis of our generation, presenting enormous challenges to medical research, including clinical trials. Advances in machine learning are providing an opportunity to adapt clinical trials and lay the groundwork for smarter, faster and more flexible clinical trials in the future. In an article published in Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research, an international collaboration of data scientists and pharmaceutical industry experts--led by the Director of the Cambridge Center for AI in Medicine, Professor Mihaela van der Schaar of the University of Cambridge--describes the impact that COVID-19 is having on clinical trials, and reveals how the latest machine learning (ML) approaches can help to overcome challenges that the pandemic presents. The paper covers three areas of clinical trials in which ML can make contributions: in trials for repurposing drugs to treat COVID-19, trials for new drugs to treat COVID-19, and ongoing clinical trials for drugs unrelated to COVID-19. The team, which includes scientists from pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis, notes that "the pandemic provides an opportunity to apply novel approaches that can be used in this challenging situation."

More than 3 million acres of California have burned this year, and 18,000 firefighters are still battling 27 major wildfires across the sooty state sometimes called golden. And every day, high above the smoke, a military drone with a wingspan roughly 10 times that of LeBron James feeds infrared video of the flames back to March Air Reserve Base, east of Los Angeles, to help map the destruction and assist firefighters. These MQ-9 "Reaper" drones don't usually fly domestic--they're on standby in case the Air Force needs them for overseas reconnaissance. But climate change has helped make crisscrossing California gathering video a new fall tradition for the 163rd Attack Wing. Its drones have helped map wildfires every year since 2017, thanks to special permission from the secretary of defense.

Did you know Mariarosaria Taddeo, the Deputy Director of the Oxford Internet Institute's Digital Ethics Lab, is speaking at TNW2020 this year? Check out her session on'Shaping the future of AI: International policy outlook' here. Artificial intelligence is increasingly affecting our everyday lives. The field has the potential to make the world a healthier, wealthier, and more efficient place. But it also poses vast safety and security risks.

Scientists at Cornell University have created a tiny micro-robot that "walks" using four legs. Invisible to the naked eye, 10 of the computer chip bots could fit within the full stop at the end of this sentence. Their legs can be independently triggered to bend using laser light. It would take less than a week to make a swarm of a million robots, which Itai Cohen and Paul McEuen Labs hope could be adapted to become a medical tool. They are small enough to be injected into the body and Prof Cohen hopes that eventually robots like these could be designed to hunt down and destroy cancer cells.

Now activities and communal meals have vanished. Aside from one quick visit in the lobby, she has not seen her daughter in person in six months; they communicate through 15-minute video calls when staff members can arrange them. "She's more isolated in her room now," Dr. Spangler said. "And she misses having a dog." Knowing that her mother couldn't manage pet care, even if the residence had permitted animals, Dr. Spangler looked online for the robotic pets she had heard about.

A robot equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) can excel at the Olympic sport of curling -- and even beat top-level human teams. Success requires precision and strategy, but the game is less complex than other real-world applications of robotics. That makes curling a useful test case for AI technologies, which often perform well in simulations but falter in real-world scenarios with changing conditions. Using a method called adaptive deep reinforcement learning, Seong-Whan Lee and his colleagues at Korea University in Seoul created an algorithm that learns through trial and error to adjust a robot's throws to account for changing conditions, such as the ice surface and the positions of stones. The team's robot, nicknamed Curly, needed a few test throws to calibrate itself to the curling rink where it was to compete.

Tiny robots that can transport individual neurons and connect them to form active neural circuits could help us study brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. The robots, which were developed by Hongsoo Choi at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea and his colleagues, are 300 micrometres long and 95 micrometre wide. They are made from a polymer coated with nickel and titanium and their movement can be controlled with external magnetic fields.

The ORCA Hub is led by the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics, a partnership between Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh. The consortium also includes Imperial College London, Oxford and Liverpool universities.