The use of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive intelligence is being used to transform cyber security and aid security analysts' identity threats more accurately. This is word from global firm IBM, which released results this week from an online survey of 150 federal IT managers familiar with their department's current cyber security capabilities and future strategies. Titled "The Federal Cyber AI IQ Test," the survey found that federal IT managers see cyber security as the single biggest opportunity for AI in the federal government. "Only 21% say they are'very comfortable' with the idea of using AI for cyber security today. Feds are roughly split regarding the ideal adoption pace for AI - 46% want to be first, 48% are afraid to take the risk. "Meanwhile 90% of Feds say AI could help prepare agencies for real-world cyber-attack scenarios and 87% say it would improve the efficiency of the federal cyber security workforce.

Samsung Electronics has acquired a 100% stake in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Kngine, the company announced today. The San Francisco based startup specialises in an AI search engine that understands, answers questions and perform actions. This is the second AI startup acquisition by Samsung in the last four months. In late November 2017, the company had acquired Korean AI startup Fluenty, which also specialises in conversational AI. Set up in 2013 in Egypt, Kngine is an intelligent engine that can be used to automate customer service, power voice interfaces and drive enterprise search.

Talking fast and dreaming big, William Elong shows off the first "made in Cameroon" drone at his sixth-floor workshop in downtown Douala, minutes from the economic capital's Atlantic seafront. The 25-year-old, known as a high-flyer after being named one of Forbes' most promising young Africans under 30, is enthusing about his new unmanned aerial drones and keen to promote his company and Africa as a place where IT and new tech can flourish. We must "get out of the Afro-centric vision of business" to "understand that when one has a global vision, worldwide, this includes Africa," Elong says in a discussion of future technologies. Elong has no degree in IT or robotics but studied strategy and competitive intelligence in France, becoming the youngest-ever graduate from Paris' Economic Warfare School. He founded his startup Will & Brothers in 2015 with a main project called Drone Africa, which aims to provide drones for civil purposes to businesses, the state in Cameroon and elsewhere.

The machine-learned smarts that enable Microsoft's Skype Translator, Bing and Cortana to accomplish tasks such as translating conversations, compiling knowledge and understanding the intent of spoken words are increasingly finding their way into third-party applications that people use every day. These advances in the democratization of artificial intelligence are coming in part from Microsoft Cognitive Services, a collection of 25 tools that allow developers to add features such as emotion and sentiment detection, vision and speech recognition, and language understanding to their applications with zero expertise in machine learning. "Cognitive Services is about taking all of the machine learning and AI smarts that we have in this company and exposing them to developers through easy-to-use APIs, so that they don't have to invent the technology themselves," said Mike Seltzer, a principal researcher in the Speech and Dialog Research Group at Microsoft's research lab in Redmond, Washington. "In most cases, it takes a ton of time, a ton of data, a ton of expertise, and a ton of compute to build a state-of-the-art machine-learned model," he explained. Take one of the tools that deals with speech recognition, for example.

For many countries, the prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) are thrilling. They conjure up the kinds of innovations we see in science fiction. In Africa, however, the dawn of AI carries with it a fear of falling further behind more-developed economies, rather than the eager anticipation of new technology--the World Economic Forum predicts a net loss of five million jobs to AI worldwide by 2020. But Africa need not dread the age of robotics and automation. Across the continent, from Ghana to Zimbabwe, this technology has the potential to bring myriad positive changes in sectors such as health care and finance, bridging the gap between physical infrastructure inadequacies and consumer demands, while freeing up more time for skilled labor and increased labor productivity.

There isn't much that scares a fully grown African elephant. It turns out that what really scares elephants is something much smaller, although it can fly in large swarms: honeybees. And it makes sense, because an elephant's bulk doesn't do much to protect it from bees, which can find all kinds of unpleasant nooks and crannies to sting. Elephants reliably flee from bees, which has led some communities to create fences made of beehives to keep elephants from raiding their crops. A few years ago, researchers from Duke University brought a quadcopter to Wonga Wongue National Park in Gabon, in West Africa, to develop a system for monitoring African forest elephants. The elephants did not appreciate being monitored by a drone one bit, and would run away from it or even throw dirt at it with their trunks.

Hosting over 1.2 million refugees from South Sudan, Uganda has one of the most favorable refugee protection environments in the world, providing refugees with freedom of movement, the right to work, and access to social services through a generous asylum policy (the Refugee Act of 2006 and the Refugee Regulations of 2010). " […] Uganda embraces children […] Uganda allows us to go to school," says Hindiyo Abdulkadir, a young representative of refugees speaking at the Uganda Solidarity Summit on Refugees. The country is experiencing the fastest growing refugee community in the world that has a far-reaching economic and social impact. Most settlements for South Sudanese refugees are based in the north of Uganda where an average of 2,000 refugees arrive every day. The mass influx to this poor area of the country is putting a strain on resources like land, firewood and water.

Remark Holdings, Inc. (MARK), a global technology company focused on artificial intelligence, and CP ALL Public Company Limited (CPALL.BK) today announced that they are partnering to deploy Remark's KanKan data intelligence and AI technologies in approximately 11,000 7-Eleven stores that CP ALL operates throughout Thailand. Remark and CP ALL will hold a press conference (the details of which appear below) on March 6, 2018, in Bangkok to launch the partnership. The Remark/CP ALL partnership will utilize KanKan's AI-based facial recognition and behavior analysis technologies to provide enhanced customer support, business analysis, employee management and security in CP ALL's 7-Eleven stores in Thailand, which generate more than $14 billion in revenue. KanKan's technologies can monitor product levels on store shelves, suggest products and services to customers, provide real-time operations performance and competitor analysis, check in and check out employees, identify unauthorized personnel, and assess crowd size and crowd flow for safety, among myriad other services. Approximately 10 million people pass through 7-Eleven stores in Thailand each day.

A recent survey of more than 300 marketers by Resulticks found that almost half thought artificial intelligence was an overhyped industry buzzword and 40% felt skeptical when they saw or heard the term. The survey also found that 47% of marketers believed AI was more fantasy than reality. Artificial intelligence has certainly become the buzzword of 2018 as brands and retailers increasingly explore how it will impact their business this year and beyond. Speaking at an event recently hosted by StoryStream on the hype behind AI in marketing, it became apparent that whilst AI is in its infancy today, many brands and retailers are already actively using AI for the likes of content creation, content management, customer insights, personalization and customer acquisition. Brands including Aston Martin, Shiseido and Mars are already actively embracing AI experimentation in marketing and some have been at it for some time.

DOUALA, CAMEROON – Talking fast and dreaming big, William Elong shows off the first "made in Cameroon" drone at his sixth-floor workshop in downtown Douala, minutes from the economic capital's Atlantic seafront. The 25-year-old, known as a high-flyer after being named one of Forbes' most promising young Africans under 30, is enthusing about his new unmanned aerial drones and keen to promote his company and Africa as a place where IT and new tech can flourish. We must "get out of the Afro-centric vision of business" to "understand that when one has a global vision, worldwide, this includes Africa," Elong said in a discussion of future technologies. Elong has no degree in IT or robotics but studied strategy and competitive intelligence in France, becoming the youngest-ever graduate from Paris' Economic Warfare School. He founded his startup Will & Brothers in 2015 with a main project called Drone Africa, which aims to provide drones for civil purposes to businesses, the state in Cameroon and elsewhere.