SINGAPORE - Outpatients could soon get to bypass snaking queues when they turn up for a clinic appointment, by simply peering into a camera. A new facial recognition tool notifies medical personnel when high-risk patients arrive so they can then decide whether the patients can be given prioritised care. The technology was showcased on Friday (July 6) at the National University Health System (NUHS) building at Singapore's first ever public Healthcare AI datathon and Expo. The event encourages tech experts and healthcare professionals to come together to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and smart tools to tackle challenges in the healthcare sector such as limited manpower. The six-day event, which runs till Sunday (July 8), has been organised jointly by NUHS, the National University of Singapore, AI Singapore - a programme set up to enhance artificial intelligence capabilities in Singapore, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Self-driving vehicles, dating apps able to give relationship advice, humanoid robots that crack jokes and get upset... With a market expected to reach $35,870 million by 2025 globally from its direct revenue sources, artificial intelligence (AI) is not just the subject of science fiction books but a very real possibility for everyday life. In the ASEAN region, AI adoption rates are currently on the rise and growth has almost doubled in comparison to last year, according to a study carried out by IDC. Top AI uses in Southeast Asia include algorithmic market forecasting and automated asset and infrastructure management. Indonesia and Thailand are the undisputed regional leaders at the time of adopting AI.

IF you ask people whether they think artificial intelligence (AI) will have an impact on their daily lives, many won't admit to having playbacks of science fiction films in their minds. While pop culture might have influenced how we imagine futuristic technologies might look like, what most of us don't realise is that technologies like AI are already here and look set to stay. According to Seagate Technology's latest survey of IT professionals across the Asia-Pacific, AI adoption in Singapore is already so robust that at least six in 10 organisations have already implemented AI in one form or another within areas such as information technology (60 per cent), supply chain and logistics (48 per cent), customer support (49 per cent) as well as research and development (41 per cent). And organisations are hungry for more - nine in 10 have said they are planning to implement AI in the next 12 months. Data is the most fundamental building block that drives AI technology, enabling the likes of Siri, Cortana and Alexa to exist.

Misaki Harada wants to quit her job as a receptionist at a restaurant management company in Tokyo and move into marketing for an apparel-maker. But the 24-year-old said she wanted more than just a bigger paycheck. Her next employer would need to improve her quality of life. "If you ask me whether I prefer more money or more flexible working hours, I would choose more flexible working hours," she said. "I want to get married soon and start a family. I want to make sure I have time to take care of my children."

The huge V&A exhibit, sprawling across four exhibition spaces, opens with a look at the design process, featuring game prototypes, sketches used to create characters and the painting "Le Blanc Seing" (1965), an optical illusion involving a horse and rider by the Belgian surrealist René Magritte. The painting, meaning "The Blank Signature," inspired the designers of "Kentucky Route Zero," an atmospheric adventure game of 2013. The organizers of the five-month exhibition, which opens Sept. 8, are trying to appeal to two very different audiences. One group, says the museum's Marie Foulston, a videogames specialist and lead curator of the show, consists of serious gamers on the prowl for behind-the-scenes details about their favorites. These visitors will find a range of game designers opening up about their methods and sources.

The Japan House in Los Angeles has commissioned a series of art installations solely focused on artificial intelligence, robotics, and 3D printing for August 2018. The exhibits feature clocks with arms that hug you when you walk by, robots with fully formed spin-like vertebrae seamlessly crawling towards the future and wooden archer dolls, engineered to pluck arrows out of a quiver and shoot which was crafted by a ninth-generation Japanese master craftsman. From Aug. 17 to October 10, 2018 design engineer and professor at the University of Tokyo, Dr. Shunji Yamanaka will give a demonstration of Halluc, a robotic vehicle with eight wheels and legs designed to drive or walk over a wide range of obstacles as part of the exhibit Prototyping In Tokyo: A Visual Story of Design-Led Innovation. This is the first time his work has been on exhibit in the US. Yamanaka has designed industrial products ranging from wristwatches for Issey Miyake, to railway cars for the East Japan Railway.

Traditional drug discovery is a very long and very expensive process involving many tests to determine the safely and efficacy of each new drug candidate. AI is making the hunt for new drugs quicker, cheaper and more effective. Drug companies are already conducting clinical trials for drugs developed using AI. Although no AI for Drug Discovery companies have brought a blockbuster drug to market yet, since many drugs are currently in clinical trials, we could see the arrival of the AI industry's first blockbuster drug as early as 2020. A drug discovered using AI will be tangible scientific validation of the AI approach and will cause a massive increase of investments and capitalization of this industry.

Really good science fiction movies help us imagine a more exciting future, where giant robots engage in combat for our viewing pleasure or there's a cure for baldness. These films also remind us just how far those fantastic visions are from our more mundane reality. By now we should all own flying cars and be able to control machines with our minds. At the very least, we hoped by now to have artificially intelligent robots catering to our every whim. It turns out we're not far off from that particular future, at least when it comes to buying stuff.

Earlier this year, autonomous retail store Amazon Go opened to much fanfare, which just goes to show you how much we love buying isht. Every organization on the planet--even the 24-hour Elon Musk show known as Futurism--covered the event as if it were a visit by the pope. Headlines declared that the store of the future is here--and then promptly chased after the next squirrel. We've been watching the evolution of retail automation for a while now, so as the store went live in Seattle, we wrote about 11 Examples of Grocery Store Technology that will enable the grocery stores of the future. While Amazon Go is probably the most advanced convenience store on the planet, it's far from being the only one ushering in the era of retail automation – where self-checkout is replaced by no checkout at all.

This article is part of Demystifying AI, a series of posts that (try to) disambiguate the jargon and myths surrounding AI. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece that detailed how companies that provide email-based services scan the inboxes of millions of Gmail users. Their service agreements make it clear that they require access to your email so that their artificial intelligence algorithms can provide you with smart features such as price comparisons, automated calendar scheduling and more. What they don't tell you is that in some cases, their employees read your emails too, because their AI just can't perform as promised and it needs humans to fill the gap where it falls short. One of the companies presented in the Wall Street Journal article uses AI to add a "smart reply" feature to your email, which can make a big difference if you're managing your account from a mobile device.