With frequent suicide bombings and assaults on Somalia's hotels and military targets, the armed group al-Shabab continues to threaten stability in the war-ravaged country. The emergence of fighters pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group can only make things worse. After vowing to target "radical Islamic terrorism", US President Donald Trump's administration plans to pursue wider military involvement in Somalia as current strategies, including drone attacks, are not enough, security experts say. Recommendations by the Pentagon sent to the White House would allow US special forces to increase assistance to the Somali National Army and give the US military greater flexibility to launch more preemptive air strikes. "The concern in Washington has been mounting for some time now. The Trump administration is simply reiterating what has been policy, with slight variations," said Rashid Abdi, a Horn of Africa analyst with the International Crisis Group.

Tristan Fletcher, co-founder of London artificial intelligence startup Informed Actions, describes how evolving quantitative approaches are going well beyond finance to advance humanitarian goals in health care. The approaches are being used to improve ambulance services in South Africa and tackle pollution in China. Fletcher was speaking at Newsweek's Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in Capital Markets conference, in London, March 2.

In a feat reminiscent of the controversial victory by supercomputer'Deep Blue' over world chess champion Garry Kasparov, a computer program has managed to beat a string of professional poker players at the game. DeepStack, as it was called, defeated 10 out of 11 players who took part in a total of 3,000 games as part of a scientific study into artificial intelligence. The 11th player also lost, but by a margin that the researchers decided was not large enough to be statistically significant. This is not the first time a computer has won at poker. Libratus, a program developed by Carnegie Mellon University academics, won $1.76m (£1.4m) from professionals in January, for example.

A pair of psychologists have spoken up to defend violent video games such as Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, claiming that they can have a positive social impact. In a new book, titled'Moral Combat', psychology experts Dr Patrick Markey and Dr Christopher Ferguson claim that'the war on violent video games is wrong.' They suggest that countries where video games are popular are some of the safest in the world. In a new book, titled'Moral Combat', psychology experts Dr Patrick Markey and Dr Christopher Ferguson claim that'the war on violent video games is wrong'. One of the most successful game franchises of all time, Grand Theft Auto has also been one of the most controversial.

The IBM CEO has been at Big Blue for more than three decades, we wanted to know how she keeps engaged, about IBM's future with artificial intelligence and what career tips she might have for young women interested in technology. These are questions she answered via email, just prior to the opening of HIMSS17, where she delivered the keynote. Q: You've been at IBM since 1981. How do you keep it fresh? A: As IBM has done throughout its 105-year history, we remain dedicated to leading the world into a more prosperous and progressive future.

With the growing popularity of chatbots, Facebook (FB) has set out on a bot search mission. The company is calling on IT (information technology) developers in the Middle East and Africa to participate in a challenge that would develop bots for its Messenger app (application). The company has lined up monetary and mentorship rewards for winners and finalists in the bot challenge, which begins later this year. Chatbots are particularly popular among Millennials and Generation Xers. According to Business Insider, 59.0% and 60.0% of US Millennials and Generation Xers, respectively, had tried chatbots as of late 2016.

A question that would have been thought of as ridiculous 25 years ago, has now become an actual worry for many workers across the world. The AI revolution is well underway and soon it will not only be the simplest tasks done by machines, but professions such as banking, law and medicine also under threat from superior machine intelligence. When it comes to the automated workforce, people are mainly worried that robots will take their job (a 31 per cent chunk to be exact). The next big worry about the future implications of AI is humans will end up relying on robots (selected by 23 per cent) which could end in disasters that used to be confined to dystopian sci-fi films – Think The Terminator series. Additionally, 20 per cent of those surveyed said they were anxious that robots will play a bigger role in the military.

While many firms are looking to the moon for mining opportunities, one Australian firm believes there could be precious metals a lot nearer to home. Deep-sea robots will be sent to mine mineral deposits in the deep ocean in 2019 in a test for a controversial new scheme. As land-based mineral stores are becoming depleted, the ocean floor is becoming a more attractive mining prospect, containing gold, copper and other precious metal deposits used to make electronics, renewable energy tools and even medical imaging machines. But deep-sea excavation may have a negative impact on deep ocean marine life, as robot mining may destroy their homes and disturb these sensitive species. The Canadian mining company Nautilus Minerals plans to send robots to mine deposits rich in copper and gold in the waters of Papua New Guinea.

Join NewVoiceMedia and Call Centre Helper as they discuss the effects of Artificial Intelligence on the contact centre. Artificial Intelligence has been threatening to transform the Contact Centre. But, how much of this talk is hype? And, how much is likely to happen? Could this lead to the decline of contact centres as we know it?

Recent American news events range from horrifying to dystopian, but reading the applications of our fast.ai I was blown away by how many bright, creative, resourceful folks from all over the world are applying deep learning to tackle a variety of meaningful and interesting problems. Their passions range from ending illegal logging, diagnosing malaria in rural Uganda, translating Japanese manga, reducing farmer suicides in India via better loans, making Nigerian fashion recommendations, monitoring patients with Parkinson's disease, and more. Our mission at fast.ai is to make deep learning accessible to people from varied backgrounds outside of elite institutions, who are tackling problems in meaningful but low-resource areas, far from mainstream deep learning research. Our group of selected fellows for Deep Learning Part 2 includes people from Nigeria, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Singapore, Israel, Canada, Spain, Germany, France, Poland, Russia, and Turkey.