From robotic process automation to machine learning algorithms, many of today's most influential companies are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to drive business results. While most decision makers are aware of the business opportunities that emerging technologies present, many are unprepared simply because they fail to understand them. AI includes a variety of technologies and tools, some that have been around for a long time and others that are relatively new. Nevertheless, one thing is clear: businesses are thinking harder about how to prioritize AI in 2018. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence will jump from $8.0 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020.

Have you ever stopped to ask this introspective question on how Artificial Intelligence might impact your career or organisation? I try to do this often because I have come to realise that a number of businesses will become extinct either because AI will affect them negatively or they fail to proactively anticipate the future. A McKinsey report after analysing some cases states, "Artificial intelligence impact will most likely be substantial in marketing and sales as well as supply-chain management and manufacturing." The same report states that "AI has the potential to create trillions of dollars of value across the economy, if business leaders work to understand what it can and cannot do." Looking at this critically, one would wonder how Nigeria's manufacturing industries would be able to compete with their counterparts abroad who are massively adding AI-powered tools and solutions to their production lines.

We propose a new algorithm to learn a one-hidden-layer convolutional neural network where both the convolutional weights and the outputs weights are parameters to be learned. Our algorithm works for a general class of (potentially overlapping) patches, including commonly used structures for computer vision tasks. Our algorithm draws ideas from (1) isotonic regression for learning neural networks and (2) landscape analysis of non-convex matrix factorization problems. We believe these findings may inspire further development in designing provable algorithms for learning neural networks and other complex models.

Artificial intelligence owes a lot of its smarts to Judea Pearl. In the 1980s he led efforts that allowed machines to reason probabilistically. In his latest book, The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect, he argues that artificial intelligence has been handicapped by an incomplete understanding of what intelligence really is. Three decades ago, a prime challenge in artificial-intelligence research was to program machines to associate a potential cause to a set of observable conditions. Pearl figured out how to do that using a scheme called Bayesian networks. Bayesian networks made it practical for machines to say that, given a patient who returned from Africa with a fever and body aches, the most likely explanation was malaria.

A drone footage of the Niger ambush that killed four U.S. and five Nigerian soldiers that surfaced recently shows the service personnel desperately trying to escape and fighting for their lives after friendly Nigerien forces mistook them for the enemy. The video shows the harrowing hours of troops holding off their enemy and waiting for rescue. It shows how the soldiers set up a defensive location on the edge of a marsh and wrote letters to their loved ones thinking they were going to die. Pentagon released the video with explanatory narration and it contains more than 10 minutes of drone footage, animation and file tape that was not made public last week when the military released a portion of the final report on the October attack, the Guardian reported. In a failed attempt to target a local ISIS leader, 46 U.S. and Nigerien troops were involved in the initial mission in the West African nation.

Zeger Vercouteren, VP Government Affairs and Policy for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Johnson & Johnson, explains how artificial intelligence and machine learning could bring better and faster treatments to more patients. What if artificial intelligence (AI) could one day diagnose your illness before you even had symptoms? Or dramatically speed up drug discovery through machine learning? What if robots could learn to support surgeons to make surgical procedures more precise and effective? All of this is what we are already working to develop, and more.

Such deaths are preventable, but one of the hurdles to stopping them is accurately identifying those in need. Normally, making the necessary measurements requires bulky equipment and trained specialists. Soon that could all be replaced by a mobile phone. The idea comes from Kenya-based non-profit Kimetrica. They've been working on a system that uses artificial intelligence to detect a child's level of malnutrition from a single photo.

This story was originally published by Grist and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In an era of increasingly extreme hurricanes, floods, and drought, the people in charge of preparing for disasters depend on meteorologists to anticipate where the next catastrophe might strike. Here's some good news: Meteorologists are coming through, with unprecedented accuracy. In fact, weather forecasting technology has improved so dramatically that humanitarian organizations can now fund disaster relief before disaster hits. It's a revolutionary change that could save countless lives.

An Information Communication Technology (ICT) expert, Mr Adede Williams, says the introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) will ease the difficulty involved in doing businesses in the country. Williams, who is President of Association of Telecommunications Professionals of Nigeria (APTN), stated this in an interview with on Thursday in Abuja. He spoke at the backdrop of the 2018 World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, with "Enabling the Positive Use of Artificial Intelligence for All'' as theme. Artificial Intelligence is an aspect of Computer Science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react, like humans. Williams said that the theme for the year was apt and carefully selected by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), adding that the positive use of AI was a powerful message to the public. He said that AI could be used in all sectors of the economy as it made the job easier and effective. "When you look at what is happening these days, artificial intelligence is what is actually taking care of a lot of things.

There were 46 U.S. and Nigerien troops out on the initial mission in the west African nation, going after but failing to find a high-value militant, then collecting intelligence at a site where the insurgent had been. The team was heading home when it was attacked by more than 100 militants just outside the village of Tongo Tongo. During the firefight, a number of the Nigeriens escaped by truck, but four U.S. and four Nigerien troops were gunned down.