Cities are some of the clearest and well-used examples of a complex system, and whilst we are certainly better than we have been at managing their growth, they are, to a large extent, unmanageable. A recent study by a team of Spanish researchers at the Universidade da Coruna highlights how AI can be used to better understand how cities grow and evolve, at least in a vertical sense. The researchers use an evolutionary algorithm that's trained on historical and economic data of an urban area to predict how the skyline could look in a few years time. The method was successfully deployed in the Minato Ward, in Tokyo. The team believes that cities grow in a similar way to self-organized biological systems.

The world is evolving faster than ever thanks to the proliferation of technology brought about by an increasingly connected global market. And while the changes in education system was slow a few decades ago, the course curriculum was not required to be updated frequently. However, with today's fast pace changes in market needs, new curriculum is required almost every few months. This is primarily due to the fact that while technology, knowledge, and the job market can and do change almost overnight, the education system is rigid, often bureaucratic, and in many cases even resistant to change. This ever expanding gap between academia and the real world has resulted in a whole generation of students who while undoubtedly talented, intelligent, and hardworking simply do not have the skillsets required for employment.

Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, has set up a new artificial intelligence company in California's Silicon Valley to improve its AI-based industrial internet capabilities. The new company hopes to hire about 100 AI professionals from the area. "The Bay Area has been a high-tech innovation hub. It is the home to the best AI and data science talent in America," Chairman Terry Gou said in opening remarks for a talk on AI-enabled manufacturing at Stanford University on Friday. Gou has been traveling in the U.S. after breaking ground on a manufacturing complex in the state of Wisconsin on June 28.

SINGAPORE -With Singapore's emergency dispatch phone operators receiving almost 200,000 calls for assistance a year, every minute is vital. In an effort to ease their workload, the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) and four other Government agencies are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and have developed a speech recognition system that can transcribe and log each call received in real time - even if it is in Singlish. For now the system is programmed to recognise English and Mandarin with some Hokkien and Malay, though it could be customised to incorporate others. AI Singapore (AISG), a programme under the National Research Foundation, is investing $1.25 million to set up the AI Speech Lab which developed the system. The lab claims to have created the first code-switch - or mixed-lingual - speech recognition engine.

The thing is, if you put the word "super" in the title, people are likely to have high expectations. But super is a word which, up until now, TalkTalk has regularly attached to its routers. Does it indicate that TalkTalk no longer thinks its router is super? More importantly, does it imply you won't think so either? Well, I've tested this new model, keeping the same word in mind because, after all, TalkTalk is saying this is its most sophisticated router ever.

Facial recognition AI could help police to spot'potentially dangerous' criminals before they've even broken the law, according to one expert. Dr Michal Kosinski - who last year invented a controversial AI he claimed could detect your sexuality - said such face-reading technology may one day help CCTV cameras monitor public spaces for people predisposed to violent behaviour. While the concept raises privacy issues, it has the potential to save lives, the Stanford University academic claims. Dr Kosinski is currently working on computer programmes that detect everything from your political beliefs to your IQ by looking at a single photograph. Stanford researcher Dr Michal Kosinski hit headlines last year after publishing research (pictured) suggesting AI can tell whether someone is straight or gay based on photos.

Baidu has updated its AI platform to make its tools, including facial recognition and natural language processing, more accessible to developers as part of a series of launches announced at its Create 2018 developer conference in Beijing, SiliconANGLE reports. Developers and individuals without coding skills can use APIs from the new Baidu Brain 3.0 platform to drag-and-drop elements to build applications using 110 AI capabilities, according to DIGITIMES. "The demand for AI and machine learning is increasing rapidly, but the lack of infrastructure and technology know-how is preventing smaller businesses from adopting AI," said Baidu Artificial Intelligence Group Head and Senior Vice President Haifeng Wang. "By opening up our resources in algorithms, computing and big data, Baidu is gradually breaking this barrier down to allow everyone to access AI in the most convenient and equitable way." Baidu is also launching a pair of chips, which it says are the first cloud-to-edge AI chips developed in China, to support intensive workloads like AI voice recognition applications.

Since the 1990s, the UN General Assembly has served as a platform for states to debate these issues. For example, a series of groups of governmental experts agreed on the applicability of international law to cyberspace, recommended norms on state use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), and helped build trust and cooperative measures to reduce the risk of conflict arising from their misuse. Despite facing setbacks, these processes generated important results and can serve as a framework for global stability. Meanwhile, efforts should be redoubled to address the challenges posed by autonomous lethal weapons and emerging risks associated with advances in biotechnology. Of course, geo-strategic calculations will frame states' decisions on whether to cooperate or compete.

These are some of the startup names one would not easily recall from the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem but such B2B companies are the potential game-changers with investors also shifting their focus on to them. The numbers are also doing the talking. The investment in startups across segments such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Fintech, Logistics and Software as a Service (SaaS), which typically falls in the B2B category, touched $6.1 billion, with investment in 575 firms since 2016 till now, according to data provided by YS Research. Among these segments, fintech topped the chart in terms of funding with $4.4 billion, followed by logistics at $838 million, reveals YS Research. The recently-unveiled'The India Startup Report – 2018' by YourStory says: "Significant transformations are occurring in the organisational world and business ecosystem, which open up opportunities for startups in the B2B (business to business), B2E (business to employee) and B2B2C (business to business to customers/consumers) products. SMAC technologies (social, mobile, analytics, cloud), AI, and ML are disrupting big businesses and are enabling agile strategies for a new generation of enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses, though these are early days for block chain."

Under the theme of "AI technology, toward better life," the 2018 Artificial Intelligence Expo Korea kicked off Monday with some 100 exhibitors setting up booths at Coex in Samseong-dong, southern Seoul. Information sessions introducing AI technologies -- machine learning, speech recognition and image recognition -- networking sessions and experiential tours are part of the three-day event. Attendees can explore various AI applications and services including, but not limited to, autonomous driving, AI service robots and smart home solutions. Experts in the field will also lead discussions on the future of artificial intelligence and its application in the health care sector during the AI User Conference, which allows free admission. Other AI seminars and conferences, however, require registration and payment in advance.