During the touchdown, which will last just a few seconds, the unmanned probe will use a projector device to shoot the "bullet" into the asteroid, blowing up material from beneath the surface. If all goes successfully, the craft will then collect samples that would eventually be sent back to Earth. Thursday's attempt is the first of three such touchdowns planned. The spacecraft is expected to touch down on the space rock around 6 p.m. ET. The brief landing will be challenging, given the uneven and boulder-covered surface.

Venture capital investment in the UK's artificial intelligence sector leapt almost six-fold from 2014 to 2018, according to figures released on Thursday. Research by market intelligence firm Dealroom found investment in UK AI startups reached a record £997m (£1.3bn) in 2018, continuing upward trends since 2014, when investment was just £153m. The research was carried out on behalf of startup accelerator Tech Nation and the UK's Digital Economy Council. READ MORE: The "Oracle of AI" – these four kinds of jobs will not be replaced by robots According to Dealroom's figures, the biggest surge in interest in AI came between 2016 and 2017, when venture capital funding for UK companies almost doubled from £500m to over £900m. Dealroom recorded 82 venture capital fundraisings across UK companies last year, compared with 70 the previous year.

Researchers have combined speech and facial recognition data to improve the emotion detection abilities of AIs. The ability to recognise emotions is a longstanding goal of AI researchers. Accurate recognition enables things such as detecting tiredness at the wheel, anger which could lead to a crime being committed, or perhaps even signs of sadness/depression at suicide hotspots. Nuances in how people speak and move their facial muscles to express moods have presented a challenge. Detailed in a paper (PDF) on Arxiv, researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei have made some progress.

Keeping abreast of tech-related trends across a wide swathe of industries can help business owners and innovators better position themselves to ride a rising tide or avoid potential pitfalls. In no particular order, we've put together a list of five tech trends to watch as the year unfolds. Automating routine tasks and deriving actionable insights from complex datasets are just two of the numerous benefits that artificial intelligence (AI) offers to businesses. The potential productivity gains from using AI in operations are tremendous, with the McKinsey Global Institute estimating that AI will contribute an additional US$13 trillion to the global economy by 2030. The latest International Data Corporation (IDC) spending guide also forecasts that worldwide expenditure on cognitive and AI systems will increase to US$52.2 billion in the years leading up to 2021, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 45 percent.

After 15 years of diligently exploring the surface of Mars, the Opportunity rover finally succumbed to the elements and went offline Feb. 13. As obituaries and tributes to "Oppy" surfaced, fans caught a glimpse into the robot's final moments: the last picture it sent, its last words, the last-ditch attempts to revive it. Scientists wept as they said their final farewells. As employees swayed and embraced, mission control sent one final transmission to Oppy: Billie Holiday's 1944 recording of "I'll Be Seeing You." The muted, intimate timbre of Holiday's voice helped millions say goodbye to "the little robot who could": I'll find you in the morning sun, I'll be looking at the moon, But I'll be seeing you.

Launched in December 2018, this fund invests in international equities. It is first thematic fund to invest in artificial intelligence, using artificial intelligence (AI) in its investment process. Nicolas Chaput, global CEO and co-CIO of ODDO BHF Asset Management, said: "This fund represents a breakthrough innovation in the asset management industry. We have built a unique investment process, artificial intelligence and many years of know-how in the asset management industry quantitative equity management. Our goal is to provide our customers with an innovative solution for long-term alpha generation.

The U.K. government is planning to fund thousands of postgraduate students that want to study a Masters or a PhD in artificial intelligence as it looks to keep pace with the U.S. and China. AI is poised to become the most significant technology for a generation but there are only so many people that know how to develop the technology, which could have a huge impact on industries such as healthcare, energy, and automotive. Business Secretary Greg Clark and Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright announced on Thursday that the government will commit up to £115 million towards training the next generation of AI talent. In a press release, the government said 1,000 students will receive funding to enable them to complete PhDs at 16 U.K. Research and Innovation AI Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs), located across the country. The full list of centres can be found at the end of this article.

Researchers in the U.S. and China have developed a system that uses artificial intelligence to diagnose common childhood conditions. Researchers in the U.S. and China have developed a system that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically diagnose common childhood conditions after considering patients' symptoms, history, laboratory results, and other clinical data. The researchers said during testing, the system was highly accurate, and could one day assist doctors in diagnosing complex or rare conditions. They trained the system on medical records from nearly 600,000 Chinese patients who had visited a pediatric hospital over an 18-month period. The system uses a neural network to recognize patterns in text, as well as in medical images.

The idea of chatbots has been around since the mid 1960s. ELIZA was the first of its kind, created in the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Since then, though, there has been a proliferation of chatbots. When they first began to become more widespread and available to the general public, in the late 1990s, they mainly served in customer service roles. It is for this reason that chatbot hackathons have grown in popularity.

HEALTHCARE providers across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region are building systems that are artificially intelligent, powered by data, and capture and analyze information in real time to produce actionable insights. There are also several technology companies in the healthcare space, creating data-driven solutions to support customers and improve their experience. It is therefore surprising that there are no laws to specifically regulate how all of these businesses manage data and use it to build their offering, usually with some degree of AI-built in. True, there are personal data protection laws in Singapore, Malaysia, and other countries in the APAC, but none are particularly sensitive to the complexities of data this sector. This is something that has suddenly become a question consumers and businesses are asking in light of the new announcement by the Department of Health and Social Care in the UK.