Measuring the fetal brain is not an easy task and requires a significant amount of manual input from the sonographer. However, these images produced at the 20-week ultrasound exam are of particular interest, because severe brain problems may become visible at this stage in the pregnancy. Enter an AI tool that represents one of many emerging solutions proving the hype is real. The tool, created by GE Healthcare and called SonoCNS, automates the process of measuring the fetal brain by aligning the system automatically and can help reduce keystrokes by more than 75 percent.[1] While the operational achievement may seem less exciting than some of the moonshot promises about curing cancer or altering genomes, clinicians say this is actually where AI can make the most impact.

To be fair, new technologies must be questioned, probed, and "problematized" (to use one of their favourite buzzwords) -- and it is indeed a democratic prerogative. That said, there seems to be persistent confusion around the very basics of the discipline. No other example demonstrates this best than the conflation of objectives, algorithms and models. Simplifying a little, the life cycle in creating a machine learning model from scratch is the following. The first step is to set a high-level practical objective: What the model is supposed to do, such as recognising images or speech.

To seek the origins of Microsoft's interest in artificial intelligence, you need to go way back–well before Amazon, Facebook, and Google were in business, let alone titans of AI. Bill Gates founded Microsoft's research arm in 1991, and AI was an area of investigation from the start. Three years later, in a speech at the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, then-sales chief Steve Ballmer stressed Microsoft's belief in AI's potential and said he hoped that software would someday be smart enough to steer a vehicle. From the start, Microsoft Research (MSR for short) hired more than its fair share of computing's most visionary, accomplished scientists. For a long time, however, it had a reputation for struggling to turn their innovations into features and products that customers wanted. In the '90s, for instance, I recall being puzzled about why its ambitious work in areas such as speech recognition hadn't had a profound effect on Windows and Office. Five years into Satya Nadella's tenure as Microsoft CEO, that stigma is gone.

Popular iPhone apps like Spotify, Angry Birds and Pokemon Go are being pirated using technology developed by Apple, an investigation has revealed. By circumventing Apple's tightly controlled App Store, software pirates have been able to install versions of these apps that allow them to stream music and play games ad free, without having to pay a fee. Illicit software distributors such as TutuApp, Panda Helper, AppValley and TweakBox have found ways to use digital certificates to get access to a program Apple introduced to let corporations distribute business apps to their employees without going through the official app store. Using so-called enterprise developer certificates, these pirate operations are providing modified versions of popular apps to consumers, enabling them to stream music without ads and to circumvent fees and rules in games, depriving Apple and legitimate app makers of revenue. By doing so, the pirate app distributors are violating the rules of Apple's developer programs, which only allow apps to be distributed to the general public through the App Store.

As far as big tech companies go, Zoho is a bit different. Not only has it never taken any venture funding, it also offers more than 40 products that range from its online office suite to CRM and HR tools, email, workflow automation services, video conferencing, a bug tracker and everything in-between. You don't often hear about it, but the company has more than 45 million users worldwide and offices in the U.S., Netherlands, Singapore, Dubai, Yokohama and Beijing -- and it owns its data centers, too. Today, Zoho is launching a major update to its core office suite products: Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show and Notebooks. These tools are getting an infusion of AI -- under Zoho's "Zia" brand -- as well as new AppleTV and Android integrations and more.

The Pentagon on Tuesday unveiled a new artificial intelligence strategy aimed at keeping pace and competing with Russian and Chinese technological advancements. "Other nations, particularly China and Russia, are making significant investments in AI for military purposes," according to the strategy, titled "Harnessing AI to Advance Our Security and Prosperity. "These investments threaten to erode our technological and operational advantages and destabilize the free and open international order. The United States, together with its allies and partners, must adopt AI to maintain its strategic position, prevail on future battlefields, and safeguard this order." The strategy outlines how the Department of Defense (DoD) will develop and use AI – machines performing tasks usually done by humans -- "in ways that advance security, peace, and stability in the long run." The Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) will lead and coordinate AI pilot projects within DoD, including for operations, training, sustainment, force protection, recruitment, healthcare and defense against cyberattacks. The document and an adjoining Pentagon statement did not include a dollar amount associated with the strategy. JAIC Director Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, told reporters Tuesday that the AI budget for the Pentagon for the current fiscal year is $90 million. He said there will be a request for more AI dollars in the administration's upcoming fiscal year 2020 budget request. "We know that China is ahead of us, but I'd like to look at other areas where China and where Russia are ahead of us.

The new regime has been accused of forcing companies to "ban memes" as it transforms the way people are able to share information online. Companies such as Google have intensely criticised the rules – with YouTube suggesting it could even have to ban Europeans from uplodaing videos entirely. Now the final wording has been agreed by the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the Commission, meaning that the regulations are soon likely to be passed. Among the changes would be new licencing rules making online platforms responsible for content uploaded. According to lead critic, German MEP Julia Reda, this would mean commercial sites and apps will have to preemptively buy licences for anything a user uploads, a move she describes as "an impossible feat".

Apple is selling older iPhones in Germany again, amid an ongoing dispute with chipmaker Qualcomm. For now, all of the iPhone 7 and 8 models that are returning to sale will use the chipmaker's components to get around a patent dispute and allow them to be bought again in Germany, Apple said. But it remained committed to fighting the argument that led to the ban, it said, and continued to attack Qualcomm over the patent dispute that has blighted both companies. "Qualcomm is attempting to use injunctions against our products to try to get Apple to succumb to their extortionist demands. In many cases they are using patents they purchased or that have nothing to do with their cellular technology to harass Apple and other industry players," an Apple spokesperson said.

The evolution of India's insurance sector holds great promise for customers and the entities that operate within the industry. This is the third article in a weeklong series on insurtech. Insurance, one of the oldest industries of modern civilization, is witnessing a tech revolution at breakneck speed. In the days of old, the industry wasn't structured the way we have seen it in the last 100 years, but the need to hedge risks, protect assets and insure them against any kind of loss was prevalent even back then. In India, too, the insurance industry has undergone many structural changes, from being completely government-controlled, to being FDI-friendly to now welcoming new-age tech--artificial intelligence/machine learning (ML), bots, the Internet of Things and analytics.

China is moving forward in the global "race to 5G," as state-owned carrier China Mobile has announced (via Xinhua) that it's already building the first 5G smart highway -- a city-scale system of roads capable of supporting cellular network-coordinated transportation services. The infrastructure is currently under construction in Wuhan, the capital of China's centrally located Hubei Province. As the country's largest telecommunications company, China Mobile plans to roll out a collection of 5G services on the highway, beginning with "smart toll stations" that could do away with current toll transponders and human operators. The carrier also plans to gather real-time traffic information and make AI-assisted predictions using the data, as well as supporting autonomous cars. While China Mobile isn't the world's first carrier to either announce 5G highway plans or begin limited deployments, it may wind up being the first to offer actual commercial and coordinated transportation services on live highways -- depending on progress made by rivals in other countries.