It's 1492 and the printing press is starting to gain traction. This bothers a very select group of people very much. Monks, who had for hundreds of years been painstakingly copying out the scriptures word for word, are about to be replaced. A monk named Johannes Trithemius goes as far as writing an essay espousing the moral superiority of handwriting, claiming that handwritten books would last far longer than their printed counterparts. But nothing can stop the march of progress, and the printing press goes on to revolutionise the way we share information.

Evans Morris Gachiri, a fifth year Mechatronics Engineering student at Dedan Kimathi University of Technology, Kenya, demonstrates how a robotic coffee machine works: Artificial intelligence is no longer science fiction. London, March 22, 2018: Chatbots, autonomous vehicles, and connected machines in digital factories foreshadow what the future will look like: The widespread implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications brings many advantages for businesses such as increased efficiencies, fewer repetitive tasks and better customer experiences. Vulnerability to malicious cyber-attacks or technical failure will increase, as will the potential for larger-scale disruptions and extraordinary financial losses as societies and economies become increasingly interconnected. Companies will also face new liability scenarios as responsibility for decision-making shifts from human to machine and manufacturer. In the new report "The Rise of Artificial Intelligence: Future Outlook and Emerging Risks", insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS) identifies both the benefits and emerging risk concerns around the growing implementation of AI in society and industry, including in the insurance sector.

In science news around the world, South Sudan announces it has eliminated Guinea worm disease despite the civil war that is ravaging the country. Uber suspends its research on autonomous vehicles (AVs) after a pedestrian is struck by one of its AVs and dies; a person was sitting behind the AV's steering wheel, but the car was said to be in self-driving mode. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change establishes a task force to consider ways to improve gender equity within the organization, such as recruiting more female scientists to serve as authors of its authoritative reports on climate science. U.K. researchers develop the first wearable magnetoencephalography brain scanner, which can detect the weak magnetic fields emitted by communicating neurons in real time, offering an alternative to large, bulky scanning machines that require research subjects to lie inside and remain still.

South Africa is joining global non-profit organisation, City.AI, which organises gatherings of artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners on a quarterly basis across over 40 cities to share challenges and lessons in applied AI. SA is the newest member of the organisation and Cape Town will host its first City.AI event on 27 March. City.AI also plans to announce events in Lagos, Nigeria and Accra, Ghana soon. City.AI's goal is to make AI better by proactively tackling the issue of application of AI with the right people in cities across the globe using local ambassadors to grow and advance the AI community. "Our goal is to multiply the AI talent pool and allow for better application of AI globally," City.AI says on its Web site.

For WordPress users, there are lots of related post plugins to choose from. Unfortunately, in today's online environment, information overload and the conflicting mission of advertisers can lead to distraction and irrelevant content suggestions. This can lead to a negative user experience and a high bounce rate from your site. A relatively new player on the scene, Related Posts by Bibblio, aims to change that and separate itself from the pack through artificial intelligence that learns from content analysis and user behavior. Bibblio--a company based in London, New York, and Cape Town--have a mission to deliver relevant and engaging content recommendations to WordPress users.

A disgruntled Minecraft gamer is believed to be behind a bomb hoax email sent to more than 400 schools and colleges. Some students were evacuated from school and college buildings across the country on Monday after an email threatening to detonate a bomb if they refused to hand over cash was sent out. The email appeared to come from gaming network VeltPvP – a server which allows users to compete in the game Minecraft – but the US company said that the account had been "spoofed". Carson Kallen, the US firm's 17-year-old CEO, told the BBC he suspected the hoax emails had been sent by a disgruntled Minecraft player in a bid to damage VeltPvP's reputation. He said: "Everyone who plays it is between the ages of eight and 18 years old - it's all kids playing. "Every now and then we have a little rebel who will try to do something bad like this.

Artificial intelligence is a fascinating but not particularly accessible technology. Project DataREACH, currently in trial mode in Cameroon, wants to change that by giving doctors in all corners of the globe access to advanced AI to help diagnose illnesses and spot troubling health trends. "Our goal is to bridge the gap between the medical data now being gathered on the ground in developing nations, and the cutting-edge [AI] research and application...from the West," Project DataREACH founder and CEO Vikash Singh told PCMag. Singh's app allows clinicians to collect patient data like height, weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, family history, and location. That data is then analyzed via machine learning to assist physicians in evaluating the risk of noncommunicable diseases, including diabetes and cardiovascular issues.

Diamond Bank has leveraged technology to reach more customers with an enhanced service in Nigeria by launching an Artificial Intelligence Chatbot. According to the bank in a statement, the Chatbot named'Ada' uses the AI technology to provide a human-like interaction and personalised experience for its customers. It said Ada would be able to learn from past interactions, enabling it to offer more relevant and timely solutions to new and existing customers on Facebook Messenger and other messaging platforms in the coming months. The banks said Ada, which would enable transactions such as airtime purchase, bill payments, stock trading, and money transfers via a social network platform, was a response to preferences for mobile and digitally delivered services. The Chief Executive Officer, Diamond Bank, Uzoma Dozie, said, "I believe data and technology have the power to transform Nigeria's economy. So, I am excited to announce the launch of Diamond's Artificial Intelligence-powered Chatbot named Ada. "Ada will allow us to further digitalise the mobile banking process and create an increasingly customised mobile banking experience for our millions of customers, Ada also presents another opportunity to deepen financial literacy and build trust and transparency in our ecosystem." He also said, "I am passionate about how Diamond can leverage technology to tap into Nigeria's huge market, whereby a large segment of the population is under-banked or unbanked.

IBM today unveiled a new cloud offering called Cloud Private Data that's designed to help organizations utilize data science and machine learning techniques to generate insight from data, and then engineer AI products that put those insights into use. Separately, Big Blue announced the creation of a new consulting group dubbed the Data Science Elite Team. IBM describes its new Cloud Private for Data offering as an "integrated data science, data engineering, and app building platform" that will eventually be available across all clouds. The offering is designed to help users with a broad swath of data science activities, from collecting, cleaning, and cataloging data, to using machine learning algorithms to build models, and finally to putting them into production. The Cloud Private for Data borrows technology from various other IBM products, most prominently Data Science Experience, the Apache-Spark-based offering it launched in 2016 that allows data scientists to develop and iterate on models using R, Python, and Scale within a Jupyter notebook environment.

Because nothing says "fun for kids" like barbed wire and hypodermic needles, here's an interactive real-world game that everyone can enjoy. Think of it as a kinder, gentler version of Robot Wars, where the object of the game is to pop the balloon on the other player's robot before yours get popped. Sounds simple, but the simple games are often the most engaging, and that sure seems to be the case here. The current incarnation of "Bubble Blast" stems from a project [Niklas Roy] undertook for a festival in Tunisia in 2017. That first version used heavily hacked toy RC cars controlled with arcade joysticks.