AI assists organisations in reducing operational costs, boosting user experience, elevating efficiency and cultivating revenue. But it also creates a number of security challenges for personal data and forms many ethical dilemmas for organisations. Such challenges for information security professionals mean re-calibration of approaches to data security, data classification and privacy. For regulators, this is translated to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). AI's lifeline is data, and one source of data is the Internet of Things (IoT), which feeds by personal data.

More than 2,000 European AI experts have come together to collaborate on research and call for large-scale funding from the European Union to counter China and America's rapid progress in the field. "European artificial intelligence is at a crossroads given the huge investments in the technology in the United States and China," said the Confederation of Laboratories for Artificial Intelligence Research in Europe (Claire), which met for the first time in Brussels last week. The alliance urges the European Commission to implement an AI strategy for the EU as a whole along the lines of the US National AI Research and Development Plan that was released in late 2016, and China's Next Generation AI Development Plan that was issued the following year. Some 2,100 AI researchers from 29 countries across the continent have already signed up, according to Philipp Slusallek, scientific director of the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and one of Claire's three initiators. He said one of the main goals of the collaboration was to nurture AI talent and retain it in Europe.

Nintendo has begun charging Switch users to play games online under a new subscription initiative. Nintendo Switch Online is the company's answer to Microsoft's XBox Live and Sony's PS Plus, and allows gamers to compete against each other anywhere in the world via a wireless connection. Here's everything you need to know. The Switch, the Japanese consumer electronics giant's seventh major console, was first launched in March 2017. A "hybrid" device, it can be used like a tablet or docked to connect to a television.

I can't profess to fully understand all of the complexities of localizing services for various languages, nuances, accents and dialects where voice recognition is concerned. However, with Amazon's Alexa ambitions ramping up after its hardware event Thursday, it's worth questioning why the voice assistant's language support is so abysmal. Almost four years after launching, Alexa supports English, French, German and Japanese, with Italian and Spanish on the way. Compare that with Siri, which, within a year of launch, supported all of the above languages, along with Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese -- and some languages were tuned for local differences by that point, too. Apple's voice assistant is now available in 21 languages.

A Japanese space probe Friday released a pair of exploring rovers toward an egg-shaped asteroid to collect mineral samples that may shed light on the origin of the solar system. If the mission is successful, the rovers will conduct the world's first moving, robotic observation of an asteroid surface. Taking advantage of the asteroid's low gravity, they will jump around on the surface -- soaring as high as 15 meters (49 feet) and staying in the air for as long as 15 minutes -- to survey the asteroid's physical features with cameras and sensors. So far so good, but JAXA must wait for the Hayabusa2 probe to send data from the rovers to Earth in a day or two to assess whether the release has been a success, officials said. "We are very much hopeful. We don't have confirmation yet, but we are very, very hopeful," Yuichi Tsuda, JAXA project manager, told reporters.

Internet of Things Release 3 is published by oneM2M, the worldwide Internet of Things interoperability standards initiative. The third set of specifications deals with 3GPP interworking, especially as it relates to cellular IoT connectivity, among other features. The release is said to enable seamless interworking with narrowband IoT and LTE-M connectivity through the 3GPP Service Capability Exposure Function. More information is available here. FogHorn Systems says its Lightning Edge Industrial IoT platform received Industrial Software Competency status from Amazon Web Services, attesting that the software is capable of working in product design, production design, production, and operations.

Modern agriculture has come a long way over the last two decades. With many technological advancements, the practices in farming have evolved from traditional methods to digital tools. Now, advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence is being used in this field to ensure growing demands are met by optimising resources. The Indian government think tank NITI Aayog had recently unveiled a discussion paper which addressed the national strategy on AI and other emerging technologies to be focussed on five core sectors. Agriculture was one of the key sectors mentioned in the draft, because the use of new tech would enhance farmers' income, increase farm productivity and reduce wastage.

Studying philosophy may be about to pay off. Unlike the more utilitarian subjects like law or engineering, the conceptual world of Kant, Mills or even Nietzsche hasn't provided a route to riches for many to date. That may be about to change in the converging world of artificial intelligence, big data and biotech. For decades philosophy students have grappled with theories like the trolley problem – where a runaway trolley car may hit and kill two children or, with intervention from the person on board, its occupant. The advent of autonomous vehicles means this philosophical dilemma is front and centre for programmers.

In September last year, the young Silicon Valley entrepreneur Serge Faguet posted an article on the tech website Hacker Noon. It was headlined: "I'm 32 and spent $200k on biohacking. Significantly more intelligent, too, he added, with an increased sex drive that dovetailed nicely with his newfound ease at "picking up girls". These last two points especially grabbed the attention of the site's hundreds of thousands of mainly male readers. The comments section under Faguet's story is full of admiration for his data-driven, problem-solving approach. The article currently has 15,000 upvotes. His follow-up about increasingyour intelligence by having sex and micro-dosing MDMA is the site's second most read article of 2018. In his working life as CEO, or former CEO, of a string of international startups, Faguet is ruthlessly pragmatic. He applies the same approach to his sole hobby: extreme biohacking. Biohacking is a buzzword that unites the hi-tech, wellness, anti-ageing and science ...

SAPPORO – A Hokkaido newspaper company tested delivery by drone on Friday to determine whether the unmanned aircraft can be relied on to bring news to the public in times of disaster. Two weeks after a level 7 earthquake caused deadly landslides and a prefecture-wide blackout, a group comprising operators of the daily Hokkaido Shimbun's delivery shops successfully flew a drone carrying 10 copies of its newspaper 200 meters across a river in the city of Asahikawa under a hypothetical scenario in which a major quake damages a bridge and severs roads. The magnitude 6.7 quake on Sept. 6 triggered landslides that engulfed homes and shattered roads, while the blackout cut off access to information via TV, computers and mobile devices. "I'm glad we were able to deliver them successfully, as newspapers are an information infrastructure that is necessary when something drastic happens," Takuma Banno, 41-year-old head of the daily's distribution shop in Sapporo, said of the one-minute flight. The idea for the test was hatched in May and planned out before the quake struck.