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New Delhi: ABB India and Niti Aayog on Wednesday inked a pact to help the country reap the benefits of latest technologies including robotics and artificial intelligence. The two institutions signed a statement of intent (SoI) to work together in preparing key sectors of the economy for digitalisation, artificial intelligence (AI) robotics, and industrial automation, an ABB India statement said. The initiative also covers the fast growing segment of electric mobility. Niti Aayog and ABB will work with government ministries, solicit feedback for areas critical to them and discuss solutions using industrial automation, and digitalisation technologies. "ABB's more than a hundred years' presence in India and our pioneering technology leadership in industrial digitalisation position us well to support India in its ambitions for the next phase of its transformation," ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer said.

Think that AI will help put a stop to fake news? The Department of Defense is funding a project that will try to determine whether the increasingly real-looking fake video and audio generated by artificial intelligence might soon be impossible to distinguish from the real thing--even for another AI system. This summer, under a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the world's leading digital forensics experts will gather for an AI fakery contest. They will compete to generate the most convincing AI-generated fake video, imagery, and audio--and they will also try to develop tools that can catch these counterfeits automatically. The contest will include so-called "deepfakes," videos in which one person's face is stitched onto another person's body. Rather predictably, the technology has already been used to generate a number of counterfeit celebrity porn videos.

The image of the angry man holding a little girl in one arm while violently abusing Yiannis Boutaris, the 75-year-old mayor of Thessaloniki with the other, shocked Greeks. Boutaris was attacked by a crowd at a Sunday commemoration of what is known as the genocide of the Pontians, a Christian ethnic group from the highlands of the southern Black Sea speaking a dialect of Greek, who escaped Ottoman Turkish persecution and emigrated to the newly-formed Greek nation-state. It is the latest in a series of violent attacks on Greek politicians by a public expressing outrage and impotence at collapsing living standards. But Boutaris, the tattooed septuagenarian ecologist and scion of a Vlach winemaking family, is not a typical representative of the establishment politicians Greeks blame for imposing increasing levels of austerity on a fractured society. The twice-elected mayor of Thessaloniki is a resolute cosmopolitan who worked to collapse the walls between Greece and Turkey, free his city from the segregating Greek creation myth, and make its troubled past more inclusive of former resident minorities, including Jews and Turks.

YVERDON-LES-BAINS, Switzerland/CHICAGO (Reuters) - In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles. Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot is one of new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the $100 billion pesticides and seeds industry by reducing the need for universal herbicides and the genetically modified (GM) crops that tolerate them. Dominated by companies such as Bayer, DowDuPont, BASF and Syngenta, the industry is bracing for the impact of digital agricultural technology and some firms are already adapting their business models. Herbicide sales are worth $26 billion a year and account for 46 percent of pesticides revenue overall while 90 percent of GM seeds have some herbicide tolerance built in, according to market researcher Phillips McDougall. "Some of the profit pools that are now in the hands of the big agrochemical companies will shift, partly to the farmer and partly to the equipment manufacturers," said Cedric Lecamp, who runs the $1 billion Pictet-Nutrition fund that invests in companies along the food supply chain.

AI, blockchain, and just an overall rise in technologies across the planet are changing the way traditional industries are doing business. The wide world of auto insurance is no exception, with disruptive technology from insurtech propelling the industry forward. From apps that allow agents to quickly process applications on the go, to AI being used to navigate the vast amount data involved in insurance forms, budding technologies are at the forefront of changing how consumers interact with the services that protect them against disasters and other life-changing events. It's happening, Join 15k digital minds to shape what's next for your business In an industry that is built on data, it is surprising to see how long it is taking AI to find its way into the field. Regardless of using it for anything big, AI can just help with the tedious parts surrounding the paperwork and claims verification process.

Articles about technology and the future of transportation rarely used to get far without mentioning jetpacks: a staple of science fiction from the 1920s onwards, the jetpack became a reality in the 1960s in the shape of devices such as the Bell Rocket Belt. But despite many similar efforts, the skies over our cities remain stubbornly free of jetpack-toting commuters. For a novel form of transport to make a material difference to our lives, several key requirements must be satisfied. Obviously the new technology must work safely, and operate within an appropriate regulatory framework. But public acceptance and solid business models are also vital if a new idea is to move from R&D lab to testbed to early adoption, and eventually into mainstream usage.

StoreDot, which raised $60 million from Daimler in September and another $20 million from BP on Tuesday, developed a super-fast charger for cellphones before switching to automotives. The company, valued at $750 million according to startup marketplace Funderbeam, says its batteries can fully charge an electric vehicle in five minutes.

Betterplace Safety Solutions Pvt Ltd, a platform that manages the semi-formal workforce, has raised $3 million (Rs 20.4 crore) in a Series A round of funding from a new investor 3one4 Capital, a top executive told VCCircle. Existing investors Venture Highway and Unitus Ventures also participated in the round, said Pravin Agarwala, co-founder and chief executive, BetterPlace. The fresh funding will help the company expand its solutions into skilling, compliance and fintech services as it aims to consolidate its position as a single platform for the semi-formal workforce in the country. "A significant part of the funds will be utilised to strengthen the existing ecosystem using frictionless solutions powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning," added Agarwala. The Bangalore-based company had initially raised $970,000 (Rs 6.6 crore) in seed funding from India-focused early-stage investor Unitus Ventures in February 2016.

When people think of the automotive Factory of the Future, the first word that comes to mind is automation. They think of the "lights-out" factory that General Motors Chief Executive Roger Smith fantasized about in 1982 and Elon Musk talks about building today--plants so dominated by robots and machines that they don't need lights to work. There's no doubt that the auto industry will continue to vigorously pursue automation solutions to lower the cost of producing cars. But the reality is that any major leap forward on cost and efficiency will no longer be possible through automation alone, since most of the tasks that can be automated in an automotive factory have already been tackled. When a real Factory of the Future arrives, it will not look different because we have automated the processes we use today.