Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) imagery based on microwaves reflected off ground targets is becoming increasingly important in remote sensing for ground movement estimation. However, the reflections are contaminated by noise, which distorts the signal's wrapped phase. Demarcation of image regions based on degree of contamination ("coherence") is an important component of the InSAR processing pipeline. We introduce Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to this problem domain and show their effectiveness in improving coherence-based demarcation and reducing misclassifications in completely incoherent regions through intelligent preprocessing of training data. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons prove superiority of proposed method over three established methods.

We present a method for learning options from segmented demonstration trajectories. The trajectories are first segmented into skills using nonparametric Bayesian clustering and a reward function for each segment is then learned using inverse reinforcement learning. From this, a set of inferred trajectories for the demonstration are generated. Option initiation sets and termination conditions are learned from these trajectories using the one-class support vector machine clustering algorithm. We demonstrate our method in the four rooms domain, where an agent is able to autonomously discover usable options from human demonstration. Our results show that these inferred options can then be used to improve learning and planning.

As of December 2019, there are more than 400 unicorns worldwide - that's according to the aptly named Global Unicorn Club report from CB Insights. A significant number of those, private companies valued at more than $1bn for the uninitiated, are firmly entrenched in the financial services sector. One such company is Lemonade. The New York-based business uses artificial intelligence, chatbots and other innovative technologies to disrupt the home and rental insurance sectors. It recently appeared in FinTech magazine's Top 10 Unicorns list, which provided a comprehensive snapshot of those most innovative companies to achieve this coveted status.

SOMEBODY LESS driven than Tom Siebel would have long since thrown in the towel. In 2006 the entrepreneur, then 53 years old, sold his first firm, Siebel Systems, which made computer programs to track customer relations, to Oracle, a giant of business software. That left him a billionaire--but a restless one. In 2009, a few months after Mr Siebel had launched a new startup, he was trampled by an elephant while on safari in Tanzania. When, a dozen surgeries later, he could work again, the enterprise almost went bankrupt.

NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Countries are rapidly developing "killer robots" - machines with artificial intelligence (AI) that independently kill - but are moving at a snail's pace on agreeing global rules over their use in future wars, warn technology and human rights experts. From drones and missiles to tanks and submarines, semi-autonomous weapons systems have been used for decades to eliminate targets in modern day warfare - but they all have human supervision. Nations such as the United States, Russia and Israel are now investing in developing lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) which can identify, target, and kill a person all on their own - but to date there are no international laws governing their use. "Some kind of human control is necessary ... Only humans can make context-specific judgements of distinction, proportionality and precautions in combat," said Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

In this article you will be guided step-by-step on how you can use Google Maps to actually create online business for yourself. This is a strategy that we love and have been using here at GeoAppsmith over the years. The good news is that this method will also work for you, whether you live in San Francisco, USA or even in Moroto village in Uganda. And you don't need any special skills, experience or capital to start doing this. Anyone can earn online income with this great method, anywhere in the world, provided that one has access to a computer and some internet connection.

For emerging and developing nations, lower rates of Internet access further widens the digital skills divide. For example, a 2013 Pew Research Center study demonstrated that while 84% of the adult population uses the internet in the United States, only 8% of adults do so in Pakistan and 26% in Ghana. This geographic divide affects developed countries as well, where refugees and migrants from developing countries are especially vulnerable. In Germany, only 45 percent of Syrian refugees have a school-leaving certificate, and only 23% hold a college degree. These refugees lag behind Germans in terms of skills and education background, factors that make upward mobility difficult, as only 8% are hired as skilled workers.

We partnered with Driven Data and the World Bank to develop the Open Cities AI Challenge. This competition asks contestants to build semantic segmentation models that identify buildings in aerial imagery from several African cities. In other words, the goal is to automatically extract building footprints from each image. Contestants will be judged on the quality of their predictions and will be competing for a share of a combined $15,000 cash prize. Disaster relief efforts rely on accurate and up-to-date infrastructure maps.

Newark Venture Partners hosted a full house at its biannual Demo Day, for its 7th NVP Labs class, at the Audible Innovation Cathedral. The event featured presentations from founders of the graduating companies, Botmock, Brahmin Solutions, Galaxy.AI, MindRight Health, omniX, Speak2 Software and SpeechKit. Other featured speakers included Don Katz, Founder and Executive Chairman of Audible, Newark Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin, and Wole Coaxum, Founder and CEO of MoCaFi (an NVP portfolio company) who paid tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. Don Katz, Founder and Executive Chairman of Audible said, "Everyone loves a comeback story and Newark has a great one, including Newark Venture Partners, which is an internationally acknowledged phenomenon that has exceeded all of my founder expectations. When I recently visited NVP labs I was dazzled by one impassioned founder, team, and company after another. Now it is time to double down on NVP's measurable success."

Artificial intelligence is our shiny new toy. We're dazzled by its potential to help us make our lives more efficient, more productive…just…better. Already, AI systems seem to be getting closer to making better decisions than a human can, which is a relatively new development. Until now, while even the most advanced machine learning systems have been very good at sorting massive amounts of data and contextualising it to make sense of it, they haven't been better than us at deciding what to do with their findings. AI changes all this through one distinguishing quality: its ability to adapt its own behaviour, often in milliseconds – instead of days, weeks or years, as is the case with the average human. These AI breakthroughs are moving at such a rate that people like SingularityNet founder Ben Goertzel give us between 5 and 30 years before machines are smarter than us.