Artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things are already transforming modern life, from voice-activated personal assistants, to self-parking cars, to self-configuring conference rooms, to systems that help doctors diagnose disease. As more things become interconnected and AI-enabled, our world becomes smarter, more convenient and more productive. But it also becomes more vulnerable. As the number of connected devices grows--not just smart ones, but also single-purpose sensors capturing the data that fuels AI, like sound, temperature and movement--we vastly increase our exposure to attack. Last October, the Mirai botnet took advantage of hacked IoT devices to take high profile websites such as Twitter, Reddit, Netflix, Airbnb--and, it was rumored (incorrectly), the entire nation of Liberia.

There's just one male northern white rhino left in the world, and he's now on the Tinder dating app as wildlife experts try to keep his species alive. The rhino, named Sudan, will appear as an ad on Tinder as you're swiping through potential suitors – and despite the burden of having to save his species from extinction, he has'no problems performing under pressure.' It's hoped that the'Most Eligible Bachelor in the World' campaign launched by Ol Pejeta Conservancy and Tinder will help raise $9 million towards breeding methods before it's too late. The rhino, named Sudan, will appear as an ad on Tinder as you're swiping through potential suitors – and despite the burden of having to save his species from extinction, he has'no problems performing under pressure' While swiping through Tinder, Sudan will eventually appear. If you swipe right on his profile, it will be a'match.'

I woke up one morning and realised that my whole world had changed. The dawn of the new digital era was upon us as we shifted overnight into a new trajectory. It meant that old rules didn't apply anymore and a new course of action had to be considered and applied. The future used to be more of the same, but now we can expect something different every day. And then it hit me: we are not equipped for this change. While online advertising has become smarter, intuitive and more personal, many brands are lagging behind, quite oblivious to this visible modification.

We describe a constraint-based automated planner named Transition Constraints for Parallel Planning (TCPP). TCPP constructs its constraint model from a redefined version of the domain transition graphs (DTG) of a given planning problem. TCPP encodes state transitions in the redefined DTGs by using table constraints with cells containing don't cares or wild cards. TCPP uses Minion the constraint solver to solve the constraint model and returns a parallel plan. We empirically compare TCPP with the other state-of-the-art constraint-based parallel planner PaP2. PaP2 encodes action successions in the finite state automata (FSA) as table constraints with cells containing sets of values. PaP2 uses SICStus Prolog as its constraint solver. We also improve PaP2 by using dont cares and mutex constraints. Our experiments on a number of standard classical planning benchmark domains demonstrate TCPP's efficiency over the original PaP2 running on SICStus Prolog and our reconstructed and enhanced versions of PaP2 running on Minion.

A retired police detective has claimed that Madeleine McCann could be found using facial recognition technology on Facebook. Madeleine vanished from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal on May 3, 2007, when she was three years old – with her mother Kate saying the 10th anniversary is a'horrible marker of time, stolen time'. Former Scotland Yard detective chief inspector Mick Neville has revealed that the site's cutting-edge software could help find Maddie, who would now be 14 years old. Mr Neville, a forensics expert, believes the state of the art technology could be used to trace Maddie because of a distinctive blemish in her right eye. He told The Sun: 'If she was still alive -- and there is no proof she is not -- then by using a combined tactic of technology and people with advanced facial recognition skills you could potentially find where Madeleine is today.'

Artificial intelligence models may be the new tool to help screen and evaluate efforts in tuberculosis-prevalent areas that often are plagued by limited access to radiologists. In TB-prone areas, there is a lack of trained radiologists qualified to screen and diagnose TB, which can be done using chest imaging techniques. However, the researchers used deep learning, a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to complete tasks based on existing relationships of data. They modeled a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) after brain structure to employ multiple hidden layers and patterns to classify images. "There is a tremendous interest in artificial intelligence, both inside and outside the field of medicine," Dr. Paras Lakhani, study co-author and assistant professor of Radiology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (TJUH) in Philadelphia, said in a statement.

Tuesday is World Malaria Day. The global health community and a coalition of public-private initiatives has successfully begun taming the scourge, with a 21% decrease in its global incidence between 2010 and 2015; still, there were 212 million malaria cases worldwide and the mortality rate from the disease was 29% in 2015, according to the latest World Health Organization (WHO) figures. One key tactic for fighting infectious diseases like malaria is to pinpoint exactly where they're spreading in order to stop them in their tracks. This way, preventive measures like mosquito control and the deployment of treatment resources can be better targeted. Google, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) have banded together with academic and public health partners with this very goal in mind--and are harnessing machine learning through the Google Earth Engine to accomplish it. The organizations are taking part in a Malaria Elimination Initiative effort called project DiSARM which will be piloted in Swaziland and Zimbabwe and uses the Google Earth Engine to map malaria.

FILE In this Monday Dec. 21, 2009 file photo, Sudan, a northern white rhino, arrives at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. There's just one male northern white rhino left in the world, and he's getting some help from the Tinder dating app. A Kenyan wildlife conservancy is teaming up with Tinder for a campaign called "The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World," focusing on the rhino named Sudan. They are raising money for research to save the species from extinction. Sudan and his last two female companions are unable to breed naturally because of issues that include old age.

Meet Dave: an AI dressed up in a bearsuit that's just launched to save you from the evils of expensive overdraft fees. Hand Dave access to your checking account and the app's machine learning algorithms will get busy crunching your spending data so the bear can warn you about pending transactions -- like a monthly subscription for Netflix or your typical Saturday night Uber bill -- which might push you into the red and incur an expensive bank penalty. The US-only app predicts a user's "7 Day Low", aka the lowest it thinks your bank balance will drop in the next seven days, in order to encourage and support better money management. The ultimate aim being to help people avoid having to fall back on their overdraft as "an expensive form of credit", says co-founder Jason Wilk, describing it as a sort of "weather forecast" for money management. Dave also includes a payday loan facility -- so users who face the inevitability of having to dip into a negative balance can opt to borrow up to $250 ahead of their next paycheck to see them through.

Digital All Stars is a series of articles which aims to celebrate the best of South African digital. The articles, which will appear on Memeburn and Ventureburn, recognise and celebrate South Africa's best digital entrepreneurs, business people, advertisers, and media professionals among others. In this piece we take a look at some interesting African startups involved in developing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. South African startup DataProphet last year received a significant investment of an undisclosed amount from Yellowwoods Capital Holdings to expand its international offering. As part of the deal, DataProphet will act as the advanced analytics partner for the group.