Listen, you're kinda spooked about the rise of artificial intelligence, and I get that. It's a tremendously powerful technology that promises to transform the very nature of work, inevitably leading to the automation of certain white-collar jobs. But AI also promises to make human labor smarter and more efficient, even something as traditional as small-scale farming. To that end, researchers have developed a smartphone-based program that can automatically detect diseases in the cassava plant--the most widely grown root crop on Earth--with darn near 100 percent accuracy. The most impressive bit about the technology is that the neural network that powers it runs entirely on the smartphone, no cloud computing or hulking processors required, as the researchers detail in a preprint paper to be published in Frontiers in Plant Science.

This has been the life work of neuroscientist and entrepreneur Dr Vivienne Ming, who spoke at the SingularityU South Africa Summit, in Johannesburg last week. The summit focused on how exponential technologies can solve global challenges such as energy, security, prosperity and global health. Ming spoke about artificial intelligence (AI) and the future of human potential. She said while currently there is no AI that can think like a sentient human, it is not impossible that it will be created in the future. However, she noted it will not come from deep neural networks.

Airline passengers are suffering major disruption at airports around the world after a computer programme which handles passenger check in systems crashed. Queues formed at check-in desks worldwide this morning after the computer system used by more than 100 airlines crashed. Problems have been reported at London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports, as well as Charles de Gaulle Paris, Washington DC, Baltimore, Melbourne, Changi in Singapore, Johannesburg and Zurich. The check-in system which went down is run by Amadeus Altea, which services 64% of the Star Alliance flights, 75% of One World and 53% of the Sky Team, including BA, AirFrance, KLM and Lufthansa. The company behind the programme confirmed a'network issue' is causing the problems, but insisted'services are gradually being restored'.

Well then it looks like you might want to...pick up a copy of Assassin's Creed: Origins later this year. Last week at an Assassin's Creed: Origins preview event here in San Francisco, Ubisoft revealed that the latest in the globetrotting murder series will feature a brand new "Discovery Tour" mode. In the Discovery Tour, all combat and story will be stripped away, leaving Ubisoft's massive map of Egypt a sort of living museum. You'll be able to walk around the map and explore at your leisure, but more importantly you'll also be able to access the titular tours. For our demo, Ubisoft showcased a "Mummies" tour consisting of 30 nodes placed around the map.

Johannesburg - Medicine will look and be practised differently in the future. Already, digital health and, in particular, artificial intelligence are changing doctors' jobs. In the not-too-distant future, patients will be at the centre of the healthcare system, with care and management delivered on a "platform", rather than face to face. Digitisation in the medical realm is set to create a "patient-centric healthcare system", according to Ryan Noach, deputy CEO of Discovery Health medical scheme. Speaking at a two-day Digital Disruption and Innovation conference, hosted at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) in Johannesburg from September 12 to 13, Noach said innovation and change management were key factors in improved and digitised healthcare.

The report studies the markets for Artificial Intelligence And Cognitive Computing across different regions.

In episode nine of season three we chat about the difference between models and algorithms, take a listener question about summer schools and learning in person as opposed to learning digitally, and we chat with John Quinn of the United Nations Global Pulse lab in Kampala, Uganda and Makerere University's Artificial Intelligence Research group. See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

A pet owner was stunned after her parrot managed to shop online using Amazon's Alexa voice recognition software. Corienne Pretorius, 39, was baffled after a £10 order for gift boxes, which she had not ordered, arrived at her house. The mother-of-one questioned her husband Jan, 45, a civil engineer, and son Jaden, eight, but quickly realised the culprit was Buddy - their African Grey parrot. Ms Pretorius, from Greenwich, south east London, says the cheeky bird mimics her voice, and must have activated her smart Amazon Echo device to place the strange order. Pet owner Corienne Pretorius, of Greenwich, south-east London, was stunned after her parrot (pictured) managed to shop online using Amazon's Alexa voice recognition software She said: 'I couldn't believe it when I realised that it was Buddy who had used Alexa to make an Amazon order.

Kathy Gibson at Gartner Symposium, Cape Town -- Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more pervasive -- and it is starting to enable intelligent apps and things. This is among the trends that we can look forward to in 2018, according to Gartner's list of the top 10 technology trends. Brian Burke, vice-president and head of research at Gartner, refers to the intelligent digital mesh as the overarching concept. Intelligent refers to technology that is becoming more insightful and aware of context; digital is about technology that spans the digital and physical world, becoming immersive and more autonomous; and mesh talks to the enabling underlying technologies that are enabling these trends, while making them dynamic and secure. "Each of these -- intelligence, digital and mesh -- will have a different impact on your organisation -- you need to analyse how you can use them to increase your competitive advantage -- or how your competitors will use them to displace you. "These are not standalone technologies: the combinatorial effect will have the most impact on your business, your industry and the world overall." By 2020, 30% of CIOs will have AI as one of their top five investment priorities; while 40% of new development projects will have AI components delivered by joint teams of data scientists and programmers. "We think it will be a bit like electricity was 100 years ago: we will add it to just about everything that we do.

A large, now extinct frog called Beelzebufo that lived about 68 million years ago in Madagascar would have been capable of eating small dinosaurs, researchers have found. The discovery came after researchers measured the bite force of South American horned frogs, known as Pacman frogs because of their round shape and large mouth. The study found that these frogs have similar bite forces to those of mammalian predators, and the extinct frog may have had a bite as strong as that of a wolf or female tiger. A large, extinct frog called Beelzebufo that lived 68 million years ago would have been capable of eating small dinosaurs. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, analyzed the bite force of South American horned frogs from the living genus Ceratophrys, which are thought to be very similar to the extinct Beelzebufo frog.