As technology has progressed, humans have become ever more powerful. With this power comes great opportunity and great risk. Nowhere is this clearer than in the potential of artificial intelligence. But a new report from the RAND corporation suggests that our misconceptions about what the technology can do may be as dangerous as the technology itself. If you're a singularity believer, according to the RAND report, "Superintelligence would render the world unrecognizable and either save or destroy humanity in the process." A world with human-level AI could be unimaginably different to the world of today--and difficult to make predictions about.

As making money with drone photography gets tougher, pilots are flying into new uncharted territories. What goes up must come down. This rule applies to both flying drones, and now unfortunately, to making a buck off them. With more affordable models entering the mass market, any enthusiast with a few thousand ringgit to spare can try his hand at aerial photography. While the lower barrier to entry may be good news for newbies, the increased competition is driving down remuneration.

GREATER NOIDA: Artificial intelligence (AI) doesn't just have technological applications. Simulation of human intelligence processes has demonstrated that it can help farmers, artisans and fisherman to substantially eliminate the gap between the price they get for their produce and the market price, said Amitabh Kant, speaking at the AI Startup Conclave organised by leadingindia.ai "AI can help double their income with the same efforts and tools they are using today," said Kant, who was addressing scholars from prestigious institutions and other startup invitees. Leadingindia.ai, is an initiative being supported by NVIDIA, Amazon, edX, Newton-Bhabha Fund, Royal Academy of Engineering, UK, Brunel University and University College, London. Special teams from the government of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat attended the event.

In a Tokyo suburb, a forward-thinking Buddhist temple has been causing a stir with its funerals for a very special kind of'pet'. In some respects, the funerals are like any other in Japan, with incense smoke, chanting priests and prayers for a peaceful transition of the souls of the departed. The only difference is that the solemn ceremony is performed solely for owners to say goodbye to their robot dogs. Mourners, who have become deeply attached to their robot companions, attend the funerals because they believe their robots have a soul that needs to be put to rest. In a Tokyo suburb, a forward-thinking Buddhist temple has been causing a stir with its funerals for robot dogs.

If you work in an ad agency, a robot is probably going to take your job. If you drive a taxi, or work for a ride-hailing service like Uber, a robot is definitely going to take your job -- and will probably do so in the next couple of years. If robot autonomy doesn't take your job (but just an FYI, it probably will) you are going to get paid less because of a robot. We hear these facts on a near constant basis. New reports continually add to the list of the soon-jobless, saying that automation is going to steal work from lawyers, from writers, and even from the information technology experts developing and installing computer systems today.

According to Start-Up Nation Central data, Israeli cyber companies garnered around 18% of worldwide venture-backed financing in 2017. While not entirely monolithic, a big part of that industry has ties to 8200. Big name grads include Checkpoint founder and CEO Gil Shwed, who invented the firewall, and Microsoft Israel R&D head Assaf Rappaport, a young army hacker who sold his cyber startup Adallom to Microsoft in 2015. Members of 8200 EISP have even gone on a roadshow to the US. A recent academic paper specifically about its effect on the Israeli ecosystem said that companies founded by 8200 alumni "have a higher propensity for autonomy, risk-taking, and innovativeness than industry peers."

Scientists in China working on a 10-year-old project believe they can -- one day.

Source: Ucare.ai is using AI to make healthcare more efficient in Southeast Asia TechCrunch. AI is being applied across the board in many industries worldwide, and its scope of influence is only likely to continue to expand as Kaifu Lee, a noted AI expert who was formerly head of Google China, recently told TechCrunch. The main battle appears to be between companies in the U.S. and China, but this week a startup in Southeast Asia came out of stealth mode to show that innovation is present elsewhere in the world. Ucare.ai is focused on applying AI on the healthcare system to increase efficiencies and help patient coverage. It focuses on three distinct audiences: patients, health providers and those who pay the bills.

Scientists in China working on a 10-year-old project believe they can -- one day. The South China Morning Post reports that around 60,000 schools -- that's one in every four in the country -- are taking part in an extensive test that uses AI software to score student essays. The technology is designed to judge an essay according to its writing style and structure, as well as how well it sticks to a given topic. Researchers say it's meant to make grading fairer and more accurate. A government document claims the algorithm and a human grader gave the same score more than 90% of the time. But schools and teachers interviewed by the SCMP said there were many instances where an excellent essay was given a low score.

In 2016, after four years of running a health and fitness app that lets customers track their daily food and workout routines, health-tech startup HealthifyMe found that it was sitting on millions of data points about its users' lifestyle habits. The Bengaluru-based company's customers were using the app to not only log and track their health regimes, but also talk to nutritionists or fitness coaches. This meant that HealthifyMe had data on everything from users' food and workout logs to the questions they asked the nutritionists and the responses they received. So the company, which is backed by IDG Ventures India, Inventus Capital, and Blume Ventures, among others, decided to feed all this information to a machine-learning algorithm and help fitness coaches respond better to app users. That project has now developed into a customer-facing programme where an AI-driven bot talks to over 25,000 of HealthifyMe's paid subscribers, similar to how Google Assistant or Amazon's Alexa operate.