We consider discrete dynamical systems of "ant-like" agents engaged in a sequence of pursuits on a graph environment. The agents emerge one by one at equal time intervals from a source vertex $s$ and pursue each other by greedily attempting to close the distance to their immediate predecessor, the agent that emerged just before them from $s$, until they arrive at the destination point $t$. Such pursuits have been investigated before in the continuous setting and in discrete time when the underlying environment is a regular grid. In both these settings the agents' walks provably converge to a shortest path from $s$ to $t$. Furthermore, assuming a certain natural probability distribution over the move choices of the agents on the grid (in case there are multiple shortest paths between an agent and its predecessor), the walks converge to the uniform distribution over all shortest paths from $s$ to $t$. We study the evolution of agent walks over a general finite graph environment $G$. Our model is a natural generalization of the pursuit rule proposed for the case of the grid. The main results are as follows. We show that "convergence" to the shortest paths in the sense of previous work extends to all pseudo-modular graphs (i.e. graphs in which every three pairwise intersecting disks have a nonempty intersection), and also to environments obtained by taking graph products, generalizing previous results in two different ways. We show that convergence to the shortest paths is also obtained by chordal graphs, and discuss some further positive and negative results for planar graphs. In the most general case, convergence to the shortest paths is not guaranteed, and the agents may get stuck on sets of recurrent, non-optimal walks from $s$ to $t$. However, we show that the limiting distributions of the agents' walks will always be uniform distributions over some set of walks of equal length.

By applying deep-learning techniques to a set of phase-contrast microscopy images, Japanese researchers have been able to identify the nature and origin of different cancer cells with 96% accuracy. This approach could lead to better cancer treatments (Cancer Res. The researchers, from Osaka University, used a convolutional neural network (CNN), a common scheme used in deep learning, to analyse the images. CNNs work by applying to the input image a set of connected filters and mathematical functions that, similarly to neurons, can be trained to extract specific features. In medical imaging, CNNs are modelled on the human visual system, with low layers that capture fine details such as edges, and higher levels that capture complex features reflecting the whole image.

Drug companies spend billions developing and protecting their trademark pharmaceuticals. Could artificial intelligence be about to shake things up? In a breakthrough development, researchers have demonstrated an A.I. which can find new methods for producing existing drugs in a way that doesn't infringe on existing patents. Called Chematica, the software platform does something called "retrosynthesis," similar to the kind of reverse engineering that takes place when an engineer dissects an existing product to see how it works. In the case of Chematica, this process is based on a deep knowledge of how chemical interactions take place.

Analytics India Magazine's online hackathon platform, MachineHack is adding one more dimension to the kind of hackathons it brings to the data enthusiasts. MachineHack today launched a new visualisation hackathon named, "Visualisation is Beautiful: Data Science Salary...

Zhavoronkov says AI can speed up and reduce costs for drug development which – involving several phases of clinical trials, government approval and licensing – can last more than a decade. "Moving to Hong Kong [which is a special administrative region of China] is the first step for us to go to China. The future for AI is in China as AI is about data and China has more data than any other country. The [Chinese] government also supports AI more than any other country," he says. "Hong Kong also has a great banking system and a great airport for you to fly pretty much everywhere in the world."

CNET and CBS News Senior Producer Dan Patterson sat down with the Future Today Institute founder and quantitative futurist Amy Webb to discuss what artificial intelligence and data actually are, and how they work. The following is an edited transcript of the interview. I say AI because that's the thing that is on everybody's tongue right now. Although you'll also say that it's quantum, and we'll get there as well. Amy Webb: Should we talk about what AI is?

Apple will cut the price of some of its flagship iPhones for just the second ever time, as interest in buying them falls. The company is going to reduce the phones to the cheaper prices it used to charge in countries outside the US, instead of taking into acount the rising US dollar, it said. Apple has recently experimented with charging considerably higher prices for iPhones, especially in some countries around the world. With the iPhone X, it increased the cost of the flagship model considerably, and recent currency fluctuations meant that this year's phones were even more expensive. But now it will look to drop those prices so they are in line with last year's prices.

Samsung has unveiled the world's first one terabyte of storage in its smartphones, opening up the possibility that it could feature in two of its forthcoming smartphones: the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy X. Both phones are expected to be released in the coming months, with a slew of recent leaks suggesting both will feature improved specs and a range of new features. The South Korean electronics giant announced that the chip powering the storage has entered mass production, though no official word was given on when it will be introduced. The 1TB of embedded Universal Flash Storage (eUFS) doubles the capacity of Samsung's most advanced 512GB version and will allow users to store 260 10-minute 4K videos, bringing smartphone storage capacity in line with high-end laptops. "The 1TB eUFS is expected to play a critical role in bringing a more notebook-like user experience to the next generation of mobile devices," said Cheol Choi, an executive vice president at Samsung Electronics.

Now, this illiberal government is directly challenging the United States in the arms' race for Artificial Intelligence.