IN JULY 2011 Sebastian Thrun, who among other things is a professor at Stanford, posted a short video on YouTube, announcing that he and a colleague, Peter Norvig, were making their "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence" course available free online. By the time the course began in October, 160,000 people in 190 countries had signed up for it. At the same time Andrew Ng, also a Stanford professor, made one of his courses, on machine learning, available free online, for which 100,000 people enrolled. Both courses ran for ten weeks. Such online courses, with short video lectures, discussion boards for students and systems to grade their coursework automatically, became known as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

ARM has unveiled a set of new processors to provide the brainpower for our mobile devices to cope with advanced artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies. On Monday, the British semiconductor giant said the new Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 processors, alongside the new Mali-G72 graphics processor, have been designed to "address the changing nature of computers driven by AI and other more human-like experiences." "Distributed intelligence" is at the heart of this trend, which includes connecting AI and the cloud, on-device learning, enhanced security and privacy, and the use of 4K, HDR, and 5G for more "human-like" interfaces. ARM says that by providing low-power, efficient and powerful processors, device vendors will be able to explore the possibilities of distributed intelligence, and the new Cortex-A architecture enables system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture designers to scale up to eight cores in a single cluster. The Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 have been designed with this concept in mind.

We are aware of the devastating effect HIV can have on the immune system, but a new studysuggests the virus may also adversely affect brain development. In groundbreaking research, scientists have found young HIV positive patients with limited or no treatment for their condition had significant disruptions in brain structure, poorer strength and efficiency of connections, and lessened cognitive performance, when compared to their peers without the virus. A new study published online in Brain Connectivity found that limited-treated or untreated HIV infections in young adults may affect their brain connections, which in turn compromises their cognitive abilities. The study found that, in addition to having visible structural and connectivity differences from uninfected peers, HIV positive young adults performed worse on cognitive tests involving tasks such as learning and recalling information. "The most interesting aspect of this study was that it was performed in young adults with limited or no history of HIV treatment."

In a recent post about Deep Learning applications, platforms, limitations and quantum computing we have announced a panel discussion on "How Artificial Intelligence is disrupting Industries" which took place on 25 May 2017 in Cape Town. This event was hosted by Far Ventures, a start-up studio and incubator that aims to foster technology entrepreneurship in Africa by founding and growing start-ups that can positively impact people's lives through technology. It was also supported by the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa (MIIA), an innovative community and accelerator for Machine Intelligence and Data Science Research and Applications to help transform Africa. This post includes the links to the introductory presentation as well as the video of the panel discussion. Photos of the MIIA event can be found here. Photos of the MIIA event can be found here.

In the wake of the recent Manchester terrorist attacks, in which 22 people--mostly parents, teenagers, and children as young as eight years old--were murdered by a suicide bomber, the question that lingered on so many people's minds is, "how?" How could he, the bomber, do it? It's a question that many people have found themselves asking too often, not just after highly publicized attacks in the U.S., but also in countries like Kenya and Nigeria where terror attacks by militant groups such as Boko Haram and al-Shabaab attract less global attention but are no less deadly, or heart-wrenchingly awful. And yet, despite behaviors that many would label immoral, terrorists often couch their activities in moral terms--invoking concepts such as "social cleansing" and "moral purification," attacking people and symbols that they believe are representative of moral failings. But how can people allegedly motivated by morality engage in behaviors that, from the outside, appear to be so clearly immoral? Agustín Ibáñez, a cognitive science researcher at Argentina's Ineco Foundation at Favaloro University, and Adolfo Garcia, a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), took an interesting tact towards understanding how the mind of a terrorist differs from the mind of, well, people who don't commit acts of terror.

A herd of elephants walks in front of Mount Kilimanjaro in Amboseli National Park. A centuries-old problem that has affected nearly every region on Earth is about to get a high-tech solution. Artificial intelligence company Neurala is using machine learning coupled with cameras and drones to put a stop to the poaching crisis in Africa. Focusing on the rhino population (which, for just black rhinos, has dwindled by 97.6 percent since 1960) and African elephants (35,000 of which were killed last year), the company is enhancing the Lindbergh Foundation's effort to track and predict the paths of both at-risk animals and the poachers who are hunting them. "We believe that Neurala is the first to have AI software that can identify wildlife and poachers," Neurala CEO Massimiliano Versace told the Observer.

The Middle East and North Africa's youthful, fast-urbanizing population are perfectly placed to embrace technology and reap the rewards of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Much has been written already about the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and the opportunity that the convergence of its new technologies offers in terms of building value into production systems and economies around the world. In one sense, the playing field could be levelled out. Localized production is being made more feasible for many small producers, setting developing communities on a path towards self-sufficiency, while falling costs could enable factories of all sizes to boost their productivity levels. However, on the opposite side of the equation, news headlines have been dominated by predictions that human workers will be substituted by robots, leading to widespread job losses and heightened societal challenges. Additionally, doubt has been shed on the ability of regions that are less industrialized, or those with fractured economies and infrastructure, to be able to respond to these disruptions and compete effectively in the future.

New and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cognitive computing – underpinned by Big Data and advanced data analytics – could completely transform the shopping experience as we know it. While still in its infancy in South Africa, a handful of retailers are testing some pretty cool technologies in an attempt to improve the shopping experience and better serve their customers. World Wide Worx found that online shopping in South Africa is expected to reach just 1% of overall retail spend in 2016, constrained by challenges such as high data costs, a lack of trust in e-commerce and a large unbanked population who do not have the means to transact online. The adage that online is killing the brick-and-mortar store might be true for more developed markets, but, for now, South Africans still flock to the more than 2 000 shopping malls across the country, limiting their online activities to window shopping and price comparison. If this trend continues, then South Africans could be in for a real treat when these new technologies make it to our shores.

"Artificial intelligence company Neurala is using machine learning coupled with cameras and drones to put a stop to the poaching crisis in Africa" writes Business Editor Writing for observer.com. And while the current effort is focused on elephants and rhinos, Versace said this technology could be used to save other animals from poaching as well.We have heard of a company using AI to predict the paths that poachers might take, but that is not working directly with the animals." Neurala's AI will assist human analysts by automatically sifting through terabytes of video taken by drones in real time.

Drones have the potential to play a big role in protecting endangered species, with a number of trials being conducted to investigate how small aerial surveillance aircraft can be used to combat poaching. The latest effort involves the use of artificial intelligence software to quickly identify poachers and animals in drone footage, in an attempt to better protect elephants and rhinos. Developed by Neurala, the software will be used by the Lindbergh Foundation in its efforts to combat poaching. It's designed to keep an eye on video as it's streamed back to researchers from drones in the field and identify animals, vehicles and poachers in real time without any human input. The software can analyze regular or infrared footage, so works with video taken day or night.