Africa
Humanitarian efforts benefit from drones as ethical debate continues
On March 12 2016, children in Malawi look on amazed in the community demonstration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones) flying in Lilongwe. The Ministry of Health and UNICEF launched the first six-mile auto programmed flight in a trial to speed up the testing and diagnosis of HIV in infants. It can take hours to travel even short distances along the ramshackle dirt roads of Malawi, an impoverished African country with high rates of HIV, a virus that has taken a particularly acute toll on children. With limited trips from remote towns and villages – where large swaths of the populace live – to one of country's sparsely scattered hospitals in the capital city of Lilongwe, where they get essential medical services, testing for the virus can be an arduous task. But a new experiment conducted this year by United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) shows the potential for drones to help change that scenario amid debates over ethical issues and at a time when developing countries around the world are increasingly turning to the aerial devices to assist with humanitarian efforts.
Investorideas.com - Investor Ideas Newswire Goes #AI and Joins the Grid Artificial Intelligence #Web Developer Revolution
Newswire) Investorideas.com, a global news source and investor resource covering actively traded sectors announces it has added new distribution for the Investor Ideas Newswire with a new site hosted on the Grid https://thegrid.io/, a newly launched artificial website building company. Investor Ideas was one of the founding members and beta testers of the personal AI web developer. The Grid has finalized beta testing and recently went live, add new features and tools. "The site is still a work in progress for us as we get to wrap our heads and hands around the artificial intelligence that it provides but we felt that we wanted to test first- hand how this new technology works " said founder D. Zant of Investor Ideas. This is not another do-it-yourself website builder.
IBM Watson: Not So Elementary
David Kenny took the helm of IBM's Watson Group ibm in February, after Big Blue acquired The Weather Company, where Kenny had served as CEO. In the months since then, the Watson business has grown dramatically, with well over 100,000 developers worldwide now working with more than three dozen Watson application program interfaces (APIs). Fortune Deputy Editor Clifton Leaf caught up with Kenny in mid-October, when IBM Watson's General Manager was in San Francisco, getting ready to open Watson West--the AI system's newest business outpost--and to launch the company's second World of Watson conference, a gathering of its burgeoning ecosystem of partners and users, in Las Vegas on Oct. 24. FORTUNE: We hear a lot of terms on the AI front these days--"artificial intelligence," "machine learning," "deep learning," "unsupervised learning," and the one IBM uses to describe Watson: "cognitive computing." KENNY: Deep learning is a subset of machine learning, which essentially is a set of algorithms. Deep-learning uses more advanced things like convolutional neural networks, which basically means you can look at things more deeply into more layers. Machine learning could work, for example, when it came to reading text. Deep learning was needed when we wanted to read an X-ray. And all of that has led to this concept of artificial intelligence--though at IBM, we tend to say, in many cases, that it's not artificial as much as it's augmented.
Stephen Hawking opens British artificial intelligence hub
CAMBRIDGE, UK: Professor Stephen Hawking on Wednesday opened a new artificial intelligence research centre at Britain's Cambridge University. Funded by a  10 million (11.2 million-euro, 12.3-million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the centre's express aim is to ensure AI is used to benefit humanity. Opening the new centre, Hawking said it was not possible to predict what might be achieved with AI. "Perhaps with the tools of this new technological revolution, we will be able to undo some of the damage done to the natural world by the last one - industrialisation. "And surely we will aim to finally eradicate disease and poverty. Every aspect of our lives will be transformed.
Victor Famubode: The political economy of technology and artificial intelligence in Africa - The ScoopNG
From driverless cars to online financial infrastructure payments, Artificial Intelligence obviously will be the heart of the next industrial revolution. The wave of globalisation and democracy cannot be overlooked regarding their contributions steering policy integration. Both concepts will play vital roles towards integrating the African continent under an umbrella perceived to end humanity (Artificial Intelligence). The rise of machines and robotics in high-income economies has been a contested discourse by philosophers, economists, tech geeks and policy makers. There is a rising belief it would steal jobs and render humanity useless and even economists seem not to be certain about the relevance of labour in this period. Immediately Japan was announced as the host of 2020 Olympics, what would strike one's mind is the presence of robotics during the famous sporting event.
US Army 'Will Have More Robot Soldiers Than Humans' By 2025, Says Former British Spy - Slashdot
John Bassett, a British spy who worked for the agency GCHQ for nearly two decades, has told Daily Express that the U.S. was considering plans to employ thousands of robots by 2025. At a meeting with police and counter-terrorism officials in London, he said: "At some point around 2025 or thereabouts the U.S. army will actually have more combat robots than it will have human soldiers. Many of those combat robots are trucks that can drive themselves, and they will get better at not falling off cliffs. But some of them are rather more exciting than trucks. So we will see in the West combat robots outnumber human soldiers."
Sleep: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia
Sleep is a naturally recurring state of mind and body characterized by altered consciousness, relatively inhibited sensory activity, inhibition of nearly all voluntary muscles, and reduced interactions with surroundings.[1] It is distinguished from wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, but is more easily reversed than the state of hibernation or of being comatose. Mammalian sleep occurs in repeating periods, in which the body alternates between two highly distinct modes known as non-REM and REM sleep. REM stands for "rapid eye movement" but involves many other aspects including virtual paralysis of the body. During sleep, most systems in an animal are in an anabolic state, building up the immune, nervous, skeletal, and muscular systems. Sleep in non-human animals is observed in mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and some fish, and, in some form, in insects and even in simpler animals such as nematodes. The internal circadian clock promotes sleep daily at night in diurnal organisms (such as humans) and in the day in nocturnal organisms (such as rodents). However, sleep patterns vary among individual humans and even more widely among other species. In the last century, artificial light has in many areas of the world substantially altered sleep timing among both humans and many other species.[2] The diverse purposes and mechanisms of sleep are the subject of substantial ongoing research.[3] Sleep seems to assist animals with improvements in the body and mind. A well-known feature of sleep in humans is the dream, an experience typically recounted in narrative form, which resembles waking life while in progress, but which usually can later be distinguished as fantasy. Sleep is sometimes confused with unconsciousness, but is quite different in terms of thought process. Humans may suffer from a number of sleep disorders. These include dyssomnias (such as insomnia, hypersomnia, and sleep apnea), parasomnias (such as sleepwalking and REM behavior disorder), bruxism, and the circadian rhythm sleep disorders. In mammals and birds, sleep is divided into two broad types: rapid eye movement (REM sleep) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM or non-REM sleep). Each type has a distinct set of physiological and neurological features associated with it. REM sleep is associated with dreaming, desynchronized and faster brain waves, loss of muscle tone,[4] and suspension of homeostasis[citation needed]. REM and non-REM sleep are so different that physiologists classify them as distinct behavioral states. In this view, REM, non-REM, and waking represent the three major modes of consciousness, neural activity, and physiological regulation.[5] According to the Hobson & McCarley activation-synthesis hypothesis, proposed in 1975–1977, the alternation between REM and non-REM can be explained in terms of cycling, reciprocally influential neurotransmitter systems.[6]
The Future of Information: OpenText Release 16 Introduces Cognitive Systems - OpenText Blogs
We're infusing our EIM platform with cognitive technologies to provide our customers with deeper levels of insight and understanding into their enterprise information. We've accomplished this using analytics technologies like semantics and reasoning analysis in our Analytics Suite. In OpenText Release 16, the machines are waking up, and they're talking to each other. As illustrated in the following applications, when analytics are applied to unstructured information in a secure EIM repository, the information becomes much more valuable and insightful. Election Tracker '16 is a lightweight information-based app that provides deep insights into candidate information, revealing much more than traditional polling data can.
Deep Learning–AI that Recognizes Attitude & Intention–From RTB House
RTB House, a technology company specializing in retargeting scenarios, has come up with a brand new model that relies on deep learning (currently the most promising subfield of AI-oriented research) to craft digital features that recognize the attitude, intention and intent of internet users. It allows for accurate estimation of the conversion probability, which in turn makes personalized retargeting more efficient than before. The model can even be applied to users who haven't clicked ads, a long-sought after feature of digital marketers. Users take hundreds of small steps when visiting advertiser's website. The model developed by RTB House uses deep learning to identify every one of these footprints, in order to find patterns in decision-making.
Stephen Hawking has a terrifying warning about Artificial Intelligence and the future of humanity
Stephen Hawking has warned artificial intelligence could be the greatest disaster in human history if it is not properly managed. The world famous physicist said AI could bring about serious peril in the creation of powerful autonomous weapons and novel ways for those in power to oppress and control the masses. Hawking suggested AI could be the last event in the history of our civilisation if humanity did not learn to cope with the risks it posed. But the cosmologist and professor also said AI could have great benefits and potentially erase poverty and disease. Actress Gemma Arterton attends'Their Finest' Mayor's Centrepiece Gala screening during the 60th BFI London Film Festival at Odeon Leicester Square Actress Nicole Kidman attends the'Lion' American Express Gala screening during the 60th BFI London Film Festival at Odeon Leicester Square A woman holds up a Prince symbol during the Prince Official Tribute concert at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota Chaka Khan perform during the'Official Prince Tribute-A Celebration of Life and Music' concert at Xcel Energy Center in St Paul, Minnesota Jessie J performs during the'Official Prince Tribute-A Celebration of Life and Music,' concert Nicole Scherzinger, former lead singer for the Pussycat Dolls, performs during a tribute to late musician Prince, at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sits with Ellen DeGeneres of the Ellen Show in Burbank, Los Angeles, California Writer/film subject Jonas Mekas takes part in a Q&A following the'I Had Nowhere To Go' screening Writer/film subject Jonas Mekas and film critic Amy Taubin take part in a Q&A following the'I Had Nowhere To Go' screening during the 54th New York Film Festival at The Film Society of Lincoln Center Gina Miller arriving at the High Court in London, where she is leading a legal challenge over Theresa May's right to trigger article 50 without a vote in Parliament Director Paolo Sorrentino and Jude Law walk the red carpet at'The Young Pope' premiere at The Space Cinema Actress Michelle Williams attends the'Manchester By The Sea' International Premiere screening during the 60th BFI London Film Festival at Odeon Leicester Square Ellie Goulding joins'Nike Training Club' at Nike Sydney in Sydney, Australia Bono and Larry Mullen Jr. of U2 perform during the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital benefit concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, California "We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let's face it, is mostly the history of stupidity. So it's a welcome change that people are studying instead the future of intelligence," Hawking said at the opening of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) at Cambridge University on Wednesday.