With an injection of $11 million in Series A financing, a start-up called nference is hoping to shake up the life-sciences industry through its artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Founded in 2013, the company aims to "synthesize the exponentially growing biomedical knowledge," using neural networks to glean insights from scientific literature, genomics, and real-world evidence, according to the announcement. To date, nference has raised $14 million in funding in pursuit of that goal, according to the start-up tracker Crunchbase. "Natural language is the connective fabric across all therapeutic areas and support functions of large pharmaceutical companies," Venky Soundararajan, PhD, the organization's founder and chief scientific officer, said in a statement, adding that nference's goals would change life sciences. "This presents a paradigm shift toward hypothesis-free scientific research and AI-augmented [research and development] R&D decision making."

During a live debate in San Francisco this evening, an AI program made a surprisingly cogent argument that space exploration should be subsidized. When a human disagreed, the program offered a rebuttal. The debate, between an IBM computer program called Project Debater and several human participants, is the latest proof that artificially intelligent machines are making progress at skills that previously were reserved for people--in this case, arguing. During the event, the program and a human participant took turns making an argument on a specific topic, making a rebuttal, and adding a closing argument. In a second debate, the program argued for the increased use of telemedicine, while the human participant argued against it.

The first Stakeholder Summit on Artificial Intelligence, organised by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the European Commission, stressed that the EU must ensure that artificial intelligence is safe, unbiased and in line with European values. The event, which aimed to discuss the next steps to advance the EU strategy on artificial intelligence, took place on 18 June in Brussels. The key EU policy-makers on artificial intelligence and European stakeholders who gathered for the first stakeholder summit agreed that artificial intelligence held great promise in terms of addressing societal issues, but also raised a number of challenges with regard to privacy, security, labour, education and ethics. "Artificial intelligence is a technology which does not have to overcome and overwhelm us," said Catelijne Muller, President of the EESC Thematic Study Group on Artificial Intelligence, adding that humans should stay in command of artificial intelligence and be able to determine "if, when and how we want to use these technologies in our daily lives." Artificial intelligence is one of the main political priorities of the EESC's current presidency.

While it's a common refrain that PUBG is now likely to be playing second fiddle to Fortnite for the foreseeable future, it's easy to forget just how well the original ("original") battle royale game has done for itself. If that math seems a bit funny, that's because it's also including figures from the free-to-play PUBG mobile, which has done huge business especially in places in like China, to which PUBG owes a lot of its success. That 50 million copies sold figure is what I find the most impressive, especially considering it hasn't tapped the 80 million PS4s on the market yet at all. Yes, it's true that PUBG is not a full price game, usually selling at around $30 when not on sale, and yet I still think we need to acknowledge that technically, it's now the fifth best-selling video game ever. And there are a lot of caveats in that list as well.

Have you always wanted to argue with a computer over who was better, Messi or Ronaldo? Of course not, but now you can do it anyway, thanks to IBM and its latest invention! The media are buzzing over IBM's Project Debater, essentially a talking pillar that will most likely beat you in a debate on whether it's easier to carry three watermelons or a hundred oranges. The pillar is 1.5 metres tall and has a computer inside it, that's powered by artificial intelligence (AI). The AI is designed to debate with humans on different topics, and it does so by pulling data from a huge database of journalistic articles and similar documents.

Every time the World Cup rolls around, there is always a random animal that can mysteriously predict the entire tournament. Previously we've seen the likes of Paul the Octopus, the physic turtle and this year we have'Mystic Marcus' the micro pig. Should we really be trusting an animal with our World Cup betting, though? Surely we should instead put all our faith in the things that now control our lives: technology. Technische Universitat Dortmund, Ghent University and the Technical University of Munich have developed an AI system that has analysed 100,000 simulations for this summer's tournament in Russia.

Over the years, TouchPal has remained one of the most popular Android keyboards with its generous bundle of features, including gesture typing, neural network-powered prediction, multilingual support, GIF search, themes and more; though some of these have also become standard on other keyboards, such as Google's very own Gboard. As an attempt to stay on top of the game, the company has finally pushed its new TouchPal Keyboard Pro out of beta to debut "Talia," its AI personal assistant. Talia is designed in such a way that it delivers quick suggestions in a bubble as you type, but also in a way that doesn't overburden you. These include simple offerings like one-tap paste aka "Swift Paste," very basic calculations (with no more than two numbers for convenience's sake) and currency conversion, as well as something a little more advanced like smart replies, GIF predictions, weather forecast and dining recommendations -- part of this relies on Yelp, so availability depends on your region. I've been using TouchPal Keyboard Pro over the last few days, and overall, these features do make my life easier by saving me a few taps.

The appeal of artificial intelligence across many industries is impossible to deny. But it may come as a surprise to hear that the insurance industry -- typically perceived by outsiders to be one of the more decidedly unsexy industries today -- outspends 12 other major industries when it comes to investing in AI. According to the Global Trends Study 2017, insurance invests an average of $124 million per company in this alluring technology. That's $54 million more than the average across all industries surveyed. Global insurance giant QBE, for one, invested earlier this year in a machine learning company called HyperScience -- and that's not even the first AI investment it's made.

Our society is transforming at an unbelievable pace today as the industries are being influenced by new-age technologies like machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We saw tech giant Microsoft unveil Xiaoice, an AI-bot that can place voice calls just like humans, gaming leader NVIDIA joining hands with Nuance to create an AI Marketplace for Diagnostic Imaging, and other big players leveraging the powerful and versatile technology that AI is. However, there are many innovative startups in the AI domain that the disrupting the industries too. Riminder is taking the recruitment process to a whole new level by simplifying and accelerating the hiring process to help recruitment companies find the right candidates easily. Riminder uses deep learning to rank millions of candidates who apply for jobs by comparing their resumes with employees that are currently working as well as others from different parts of the world that fit the job description.

The insurance industry is one of the oldest and most critical industries in the world. 'Trust' is the most important currency in this industry and hence insurance was always a people-intensive industry. Whether it is an agent who sells policies or surveyor who assesses claims, insurance companies always had to rely on people to build customer trust. A large part of claim assessment is to monitor'fraud claims' – and until recently, the only way to assess claims was to manually investigate on a case by case basis. With the advent of technology, there is a big disruption coming to the insurance industry.