JOHANNESBURG – A group that monitors extremist organizations says the Islamic State group has posted what is thought to be the first video from IS-affiliated fighters in Somalia. The video posted online Monday calls on supporters to "hunt down" what it calls nonbelievers and attack churches and markets. The SITE Intelligence Group says the video urges supporters to take advantage of people's "drunkenness" over the holiday season to attack. The United States last month launched its first drone strikes against Islamic State group-affiliated fighters in Somalia. The Horn of Africa nation has a small but growing presence of the fighters, many of them defectors from the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group.

The United States last month launched its first drone strikes against Islamic State group-affiliated fighters in Somalia. The Horn of Africa nation has a small but growing presence of the fighters, many of them defectors from the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group.

In the next stage of artificial intelligence adoption, banks will use AI to help understand the intentions and emotions of customers and enable better interactions, according to a new report from Accenture (NYSE: ACN). A new report from Accenture has revealed that banks are set to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand customers' intentions and emotions, with the aim of enabling better interactions. The report, Accenture Banking Technology Vision 2017, draws on the analysis of an advisory board of more than two dozen individuals, interviews with technology luminaries and industry experts, and results of a survey of 579 bank executives in 31 countries across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and South America. The goal of the survey was to identify the key issues and priorities for technology adoption and investment. According to the report, more than three-quarters (78%) of bankers believe that AI will enable simpler user interfaces that will help banks create a more human-like customer experience.

With 5.5 Billion transistors, this is one of the most advanced ARM Processors for smartphones in the world, included in the Huawei Mate 10, Huawei Mate 10 Pro, with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A73, quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, Mali-G72MP12 GPU, featuring the built-in neural network processing.

One of the greatest benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) to humankind is its influence on the medical field. "Powered by some of the most sophisticated technology, AI is assisting in improving medical diagnosis," says Anton Jacobs, managing director at African value-added technology distributor, Networks Unlimited. From an AI doctor and chatbot to AI's powerful applications, machine learning and deep learning, a world that used to be all about coding, is transitioning into using computer programming to assist in life-changing health issues such as early cancer detection. A massive advantage is that AI has the power to pool knowledge from the best specialists worldwide and provide it to patients anywhere geographically. "Imagine what this could mean to patients living in rural areas. They'd finally have the same access to knowledge as patients in top medical facilities," adds Jacobsz.

JOHANNESBURG - When the news broke last week of alleged accounting irregularities involving retail giant Steinhoff, its share price plummeted amid a flurry of investor fear and panic selling. According to Stuart Reid, the chief engineer at NMRQL Research, the warning signs were there but were ignored by many fund managers because of their inherent cognitive biases, highlighting the benefits of machine-learning-powered investing. "Most stock crashes are preceded by warning signals, but fund managers' inherent cognitive biases prevent them from seeing the wood for the trees," says Reid. This is why the algorithms behind the NMRQL SCI Balanced Fund, South Africa's first machine-learning-powered unit trust, administered by the Sanlam Collective Investments platform, were not invested in Steinhoff. "Our algorithms stopped picking Steinhoff in 2016," says Reid.

I was invited as a keynote speaker in Khartoum – Sudan on November 27 and November 28 2017 by Lutfi Self Development Centre (Lutfi SDC Sudan) It was big event in Khartoum and opening speech was done by Sudan central bank officials. It was amazing experience and lot of learning came out. The event was attended by MTN, Oracle, GSMA and many big names of the industry. I presented my topic of AI in FinTech focused on my area of advocacy on how AI is reinventing FinTech by disrupting and non disrupting methodologies. Bringing Artificial intelligence to make FinTech better, demystified and simple.

One of the greatest benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) to humankind is its influence on the medical field. "Powered by some of the most sophisticated technology, AI is assisting in improving medical diagnosis," says Anton Jacobs, managing director at African value-added technology distributor, Networks Unlimited. From an AI doctor and chatbot to AI's powerful applications, machine learning and deep learning, a world that used to be all about coding, is transitioning into using computer programming to assist in life changing health issues such as early cancer detection. A massive advantage is that AI has the power to pool knowledge from the best specialists worldwide and provide it to patients anywhere geographically. "Imagine what this could mean to patients living in rural areas. They'd finally have the same access to knowledge as patients in top medical facilities," adds Jacobsz.

If 2017 left you breathless, exhausted by unexpected headlines, then brace yourself. The coming year may bring even more turbulent change, according to the CEOs, academics, economists and other bold thinkers we consulted for our annual peek at the year ahead.

Compared with the planet's other large tracts of tropical forests, the forests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have remained relatively intact -- although that soon may be changing. Driven by factors such as shifting cultivation (slash-and-burn agriculture), fuelwood demand, logging, mining, infrastructure development, population growth and migration, rates of forest loss in the African country have doubled over the past 15 years. Based on an application of machine learning, the study focuses on a specific set of the DRC's most intact forested areas identified as containing critical biodiversity habitat; it predicts that without intervention, at least 820,884 acres of these critical forests could be lost by 2025. The collective size of this predicted forest loss -- an area the size of Luxembourg within a country the size of Western Europe -- may be small, yet millions of people rely on these forests for food, shelter and medicine. This underscores an urgent need to use this study to inform smart land-use decisions in the DRC. Within the DRC, our research focuses on the landscapes prioritized by the Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment (CARPE), a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded program implemented by WRI and other partners.