In October 2016, while working in Rwanda, a biologist named Jordi Galbany heard about a new online game on one of his favorite podcasts, a Catalan-language radio show called "Versió Rac 1." Playing was simple, he learned: All you did was frantically press 1's and 0's as randomly as possible. Between days of fieldwork, where he would enter the Rwandan forest to measure the growth of wild mountain gorillas, he logged on to his computer to play the game for an hour. "I put it in my agenda," Galbany says. "I really wanted to do it." In the next month--mostly on November 30--about 100,000 people around the world would play the simplistic keyboard-mashing game in response to a publicity campaign run by physicists.

Reported today (8 May) in PLOS Genetics, the machine learning tool could be useful for flagging dangerous bacteria before they cause an outbreak, from hospital wards to a global scale. As the cost of genomic sequencing falls, scientists around the world are using genetics to better understand the bacteria causing infections, how diseases spread, how bacteria gain resistance to drugs, and which strains of bacteria may cause outbreaks. However, current methods to identify the genetic adaptations in emerging strains of bacteria behind an outbreak are time-consuming and often involve manually comparing the new strain to an older reference collection. The group of bacteria known as Salmonella includes many different types that vary in the severity of the disease they cause. Some types cause food poisoning, known as gastrointestinal Salmonella, whereas others cause severe disease by spreading beyond the gut, for example Salmonella Typhi which causes typhoid fever.

Two of the opening keynotes at the Artificial Intelligence Conference, hosted by O'Reilly Media, highlighted the corporate efforts by a couple of well-established technology companies to use artificial intelligence for social good. The SAS Institute's Mary Beth Ainsworth talked about how the analytics company is partnering with a nonprofit organization to study cheetah populations in southwest Africa by using computer vision. And Microsoft Corp.'s Jennifer Marsman talked about the company's efforts to use machine learning, the internet of things and new networking ideas to reduce world hunger. They are part of a growing collection of tech companies investing in projects that use artificial intelligence for social good. The list includes IBM and its IBM Watson AI XPrize, as well as Amazon and its "artificial intelligence for good manager."

The promise of oceanic discovery has intrigued scientists and explorers, whether to study underwater ecology and climate change, or to uncover natural resources and historic secrets buried deep at archaeological sites. To meet the challenge of accessing oceanic depths, Stanford University, working with KAUST's Red Sea Research Center and MEKA Robotics, developed Ocean One, a bimanual force-controlled humanoid robot that affords immediate and intuitive haptic interaction in oceanic environments.

A new machine learning tool that can detect whether emerging strains of the bacterium, Salmonella are more likely to cause dangerous bloodstream infections rather than food poisoning has been developed. The tool, created by a scientist at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and her collaborators at the University of Otago, New Zealand and the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research, a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Germany, greatly speeds up the process for identifying the genetic changes underlying new invasive types of Salmonella that are of public health concern. Reported today (8 May) in PLOS Genetics, the machine learning tool could be useful for flagging dangerous bacteria before they cause an outbreak, from hospital wards to a global scale. As the cost of genomic sequencing falls, scientists around the world are using genetics to better understand the bacteria causing infections, how diseases spread, how bacteria gain resistance to drugs, and which strains of bacteria may cause outbreaks. However, current methods to identify the genetic adaptations in emerging strains of bacteria behind an outbreak are time-consuming and often involve manually comparing the new strain to an older reference collection.

Would you trust a machine to manage your wealth, or do you feel more comfortable with a person? After all, it is a fact that last year, BlackRock – the world's largest asset manager with around $5.7 trillion under management – announced that it was moving away from having humans selecting and selling its stocks, at least in part, and was turning to automated systems for certain of its stock picks. Datacentrix is fostering discussions on the possibilities that the digital age brings to South Africa, and how disruptive technologies are reshaping traditional business models. Dr. Dennis Mwansa, an expert with both local and international experience in the field of stock traders and their related technologies, has contributed to the theme, "Trading billions in nanoseconds – how artificial intelligence is used to achieve this". Mwansa is the chairman of Dot Com Zambia, and holds the position of Technology Strategist and Head of Technology Research & Development at one of the largest exchanges in Africa.

The list of tech failures in development is long. Whether it be drone pilots getting in the way of emergency relief in Nepal, or computers gathering dust in Indian schools because teachers don't know how to use them, the outcome is rarely positive when techies fall in love with their preferred solutions rather than taking time to understand real problems faced by real people. The best example of a technology that has driven great development gains in recent years is of course the mobile phone. But mobile's extraordinary impact in Africa did not flow from some grand design. Instead, it was the result of African citizens innovating their way around information and money transfer problems in the absence of banking systems and other infrastructure.

Tech solutions are improving learning outcomes across the developed world, but Africa is being left out from the opportunity due to a lack of solutions delivered via basic mobile technology – a gap Kenyan edtech startup M-Shule is determined to address. The developed world is seeing advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have a great impact on improving the effectiveness of education, as these new solutions lend themselves to a more personalised learning process. However, the majority of edtech innovation is premised on reliable internet connectivity, and assumes users have access to smart devices. "This leaves out the mass majority of students in Sub-Saharan Africa," says Claire Mongeau, chief executive officer (CEO) of M-Shule. The idea for M-Shule was born in late 2016, when co-founders Mongeau and chief technology officer (CTO) Julie Otieno decided to create a mobile platform capable of bringing the benefits of AI-powered personalised learning to any and every student through SMS. "I worked in education for about six years in India, the US, and Kenya, where I realised that everywhere parents and students were investing so much time and energy into education, but there just weren't always the best tools available to them," Mongeau says.

Kenya sees itself as a technology giant in Africa and has embraced the nickname "Silicon Savannah" - now it has set up a special team to look into how to take advantage of the latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and blockchain. "We missed the internet wave, caught up with mobile technology... blockchain is the next wave - and we must be part of it," the team's chairman, Bitange Ndemo, told the BBC. A blockchain is a shared database with a provable, auditable and verifiable record of all changes. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the use of computer systems to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence. Information Minister Joseph Mucheru, the man who the team will report to, says that, among other uses, blockchain could help organise land records stored by the government, which are a constant source of frustration for people who want to buy, sell or verify information about land.

With plans for brand new megacities, allowing women to drive and foreign-run cinemas, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is on a charm offensive trying to promote his country as an international investment destination. The strategy aims at luring foreign money to help the world's biggest oil exporter create a new economy away from oil dependency in order to prevent future instability. On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Riyadh's break-even oil price for 2018 is likely to be around $88 a barrel. North Sea Brent is currently trading down around $74 a barrel. And although the oil price is up considerably from 2014, the director of the IMF's Middle East department Jihad Azour said the focus in Saudi needs to remain on economic and social reforms.