CAIRO – A vessel with an underwater robot arrived in Egypt on Thursday and is set to begin searching the Mediterranean for the wreck of the EgyptAir plane that crashed last month, authorities said. The John Lethbridge research vessel, which Egypt has hired from the Deep Ocean Search company, would begin combing the seabed on Friday in the crash zone between the Greek island of Crete and Egypt. What caused the Airbus A320 operating Flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo to go down on May 19, killing all 66 people on board, remains a mystery. The vessel, whose equipment can locate and retrieve black boxes from the seabed, arrived in Alexandria on Thursday, said Egypt's civil aviation authority. "The aircraft accident investigation committee for MS804 was at the port upon the arrival of the vessel," the authority said in a statement.

A vial of blood is small, fragile, and vital. In the days and weeks following an earthquake, or in the early stages of an epidemic, a sample of blood, properly tested, can save lives. That of the patient and, if a disease is noticed and handled before it spreads, that of many others. Drones, from ship to shore and then shore back to ship, may be the answer. Later this month, drone delivery service Flirtey, in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine pathologist Dr. Timothy Amukele, plans to test ship-to-shore drone delivery in Cape May, New Jersey, on June 23rd.

The Egypt Air disaster may have dropped out of the news briefly, but the investigation continues apace to find out why flight MS804 crashed. French investigators think they have heard locator-beacon signals from at least one of the "black box" flight recorders, and now salvage experts are heading to the site to take a closer look. Hearing the beacons is one thing, but they won't know for sure what they have found until they send down a robotic submarine armed with bright lights and cameras. "Black boxes" are, in fact, bright orange and have reflective strips, so they show up pretty well when you shine lights on them. The robotic submarine is on a special salvage ship, called the John Lethbridge.

When IBM's deep blue beat Gary Kasparov in chess in 1997, researchers thought it would take computers decades to beat humans at Go: a 2000 year old board game and even as early as last year, researchers thought we were at least 10 years away. But in early 2016, Google's DeepMind, using advances in Deep Learning, beat Lee Sedol the world champion of Go. In addition to games, Deep Learning is opening new business opportunities in various areas which were simply not possible a few years back. Come listen to leaders from Nervana Systems, Natural Selection, Mtell, and Netradyne who will be sharing their personal experiences of starting an AI company, opportunities that exist for starting AI based businesses and lessons learned throughout their career. Alex has a decade of experience in large-scale machine learning and the industrial IoT.

The newest weapon in the fight against wildlife poaching and illegal logging doesn't rely solely on boots or bullets, but on a computer software application driven by artificial intelligence. Called Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security, or PAWS, the app uses algorithms – similar to the mathematical models used to power computer games – to devise strategies for defeating those who seek to destroy nature. Thousands of animals are illegally slaughtered each year for their ivory, skin and bones for use in traditional medicines and feeding black market demand, while others meet their death at the hands of illicit trophy hunters, in what the World Wildlife Fund refers to as "a global poaching crisis." Last year alone, around 30,000 elephants and a record 1,338 rhinos were killed in Africa, while tens of thousands of other animals were poached and trafficked, "feeding an illegal wildlife trade that is increasingly being driven by international organized crime," the international conservation group said in a recent statement. Developed in 2013 and still in the test phase, the PAWS software analyzes data on terrain, topography, routes most frequently used by animals and paths traveled by poachers, said Milind Tambe, a computer scientist and professor of industrial systems engineering at USC who developed the technology with his doctoral students, including Fei Fang and Thanh Nguyen.

I'm hanging out with my 4-year-old daughter in the early evening, trying to keep her entertained and pull dinner together, when my phone buzzes. Normally I'd feel guilty for checking it immediately, and distracted even if I didn't. It's a timely suggestion from an app called Muse. Here's what it says: "Try playing'Simon Says' with L,. using directional words like: behind, around, between. 'Simon Says stand between the chairs.')" I can even call out the commands while chopping vegetables.

This CH-4 drone is carrying two satellite guided bombs on its inner pylons, and two Blue Arrow 7/9 anti-tank missiles on the outer pylons. The CH-4's electro-optical sensor turret is retracted in flight, under the fuselage, to reduce drag. Chinese drones such as the CH-3 and CH-4 have become a key part of the proliferation of the technology, joining China's air force as well as being sold to a wide range of foreign partners, from Myanmar to Saudi Arabia. They have even recently used in battlefields that range from Nigeria to Iraq. However some have argued that the significance of these systems is overblown, as unlike their satellite link equipped American counterparts, Chinese made armed drones could not truly conduct what is known as a "remote split operation."

The history of artificial intelligence (AI) began in antiquity, with myths, stories and rumors of artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen; as Pamela McCorduck writes, AI began with "an ancient wish to forge the gods."[1] The seeds of modern AI were planted by classical philosophers who attempted to describe the process of human thinking as the mechanical manipulation of symbols. This work culminated in the invention of the programmable digital computer in the 1940s, a machine based on the abstract essence of mathematical reasoning. This device and the ideas behind it inspired a handful of scientists to begin seriously discussing the possibility of building an electronic brain. The Turing test was proposed by British mathematician Alan Turing in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" The term'Artificial Intelligence' was created at a conference held at Dartmouth College in 1956.[2] Allen Newell, J. C. Shaw, and Herbert A. Simon pioneered the newly created artificial intelligence field with the Logic Theory Machine (1956), and the General Problem Solver in 1957.[3] In 1958, John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky started the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab with 50,000.[4] John McCarthy also created LISP in the summer of 1958, a programming language still important in artificial intelligence research.[5] In 1973, in response to the criticism of James Lighthill and ongoing pressure from congress, the U.S. and British Governments stopped funding undirected research into artificial intelligence. Seven years later, a visionary initiative by the Japanese Government inspired governments and industry to provide AI with billions of dollars, but by the late 80s the investors became disillusioned and withdrew funding again. McCorduck (2004) writes "artificial intelligence in one form or another is an idea that has pervaded Western intellectual history, a dream in urgent need of being realized," expressed in humanity's myths, legends, stories, speculation and clockwork automatons.[6] Mechanical men and artificial beings appear in Greek myths, such as the golden robots of Hephaestus and Pygmalion's Galatea.[7] In the Middle Ages, there were rumors of secret mystical or alchemical means of placing mind into matter, such as J?bir ibn Hayy?n's Takwin, Paracelsus' homunculus and Rabbi Judah Loew's Golem.[8] By the 19th century, ideas about artificial men and thinking machines were developed in fiction, as in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or Karel?apek's

Two decades on from artificial intelligence beating chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, AI is proving it can do some conventionally human jobs. One UK-based health app now hopes its AI can take over some tasks that would usually only be trusted to a doctor or nurse. In a swish new office in London's Chelsea on Tuesday, health technology firm Babylon pitted its app against a junior doctor and a nurse with 20 years of accident and emergency experience. The machine and the medical professionals were tasked with deciding the priority of treatment for an ailment, a process known in the medical profession as triage. Irwin Nazareth, professor of primary care and population sciences at UCL and a committee chairman at Health Education England, moderated the challenge and ruled the artificial intelligence was as accurate as the nurse and doctor in its assessments.

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – When U.S. drones obliterated a car carrying Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last month, it was the kind of targeted killing that unmanned aircraft are best known for. But 15 years after a drone first fired missiles in combat, the U.S. military's drone program has expanded far beyond specific strikes to become an everyday part of the war machine. Now, from control booths in the United States and bases around the Middle East, Afghanistan and parts of Africa, drone crews are flying surveillance missions and providing close air support for troops on the ground. "In the wars we fight, this is the future," said drone pilot Lieutenant Shaw, as he stood in a hangar at the air force's drone base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. Crews spoke to Reuters on condition that only their first names and rank be used to identify them.