New Delhi: French multinational oil and gas company Total announced it has signed an agreement with Google Cloud to jointly develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions for subsurface data analysis for oil and gas exploration and production. "Total is convinced that applying artificial intelligence in the oil and gas industry is a promising avenue to be explored for optimizing our performance, particularly in subsurface data interpretation. We are excited to work with Google Cloud towards this goal. This builds on the strategy being developed at Total, where A.I. is already used, for example, in predictive maintenance at facilities," said Marie-Noëlle Semeria, Senior Vice President, Group CTO at Total. The agreement will focus on the development of AI programs which will make it possible to interpret subsurface images, notably from seismic studies (using Computer Vision technology) and automate the analysis of technical documents (using Natural Language Processing technology), the company said.

The night before the mission, Kenji Matsuzaki could not sleep. For more than a year, Matsuzaki and a team of engineers had been developing their little robot--a bread-loaf-sized, red and white machine equipped with five propellers, a transparent dome, front and rear video cameras, and an array of lights and sensors. Nicknamed Little Sunfish, it was engineered to operate underwater, in total darkness, amid intense radiation. And after three months of testing, training, and fine-tuning, it was deemed ready to fulfill its mission: to find and photograph the melted-down radioactive fuel that had gone missing inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. More than six years had passed since an earthquake and tsunami hammered northeastern Japan and reduced the Fukushima facility to radioactive ruin.

Japanese companies are turning to robots to help build their skyscrapers. No workers: The country has a labor shortage problem, and it's only getting worse, especially in the booming construction industry. So firms are turning to automation technologies, including AI and drones, to map and control construction sites. Bring in the robots: Shimizu Corporation, for example, is looking to offload a small amount of labor onto bots. Its automatons will weld beams, move supplies, and install ceiling panels, taking over about 1 percent of the total labor involved in a typical high-rise project.

The United Kingdom is planning a big investment in artificial intelligence technologies in a deal worth nearly £1 billion, or about $1.3 billion. The U.K. government said Thursday that part of its multi-year AI investment–about £300 million, or more than $400 million–would come from U.K.-based corporations and investment firms and those located outside the country. Some of the U.S.-based companies involved with the U.K.'s AI deal include Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, McKinsey, and Pfizer, but the U.K. did not say how much each firm was planning to individually invest. A few of these U.S. companies helped consult on an earlier independent review on developing AI in the U.K. that the government is using as a template for its new initiative. Antony Phillipson, the United Kingdom's trade commissioner for North America, said that the investments are part of a broader set of initiatives the U.K. government is undertaking to address several areas U.K. lawmakers believe will soon affect the country's economy and society.

The candidate will also work for the company's future growth and ensure profitability of each of the new product groups.

A SoftBank Group Corp. subsidiary and two other firms have developed a prototype of a two-seat humanoid robot that can transform into a car for use in amusement parks, the companies said Thursday. Invoking the heroes from the "Transformers" movies, the experimental J-deite Ride can go from humanoid mode to vehicle mode in about a minute. The 3.7-meter, 1.6-ton robot can lumber on two legs at an agonizingly slow pace of 100 meters per hour but go 60 kph in vehicle mode. The electric car can be driven both manually and by remote control, according to a press release from the companies. The robot was developed by SoftBank's software subsidiary Asratec Corp., Tokyo-based start-up Brave Robotics Inc. and Sansei Technologies Inc., an Osaka-based game machine maker.

A robotics group involving researchers from the University of Tokyo and Kyushu Institute of Technology has developed an autonomous maritime robot that can find samples of seafloor life and collect them. Seafloor life is usually collected by manned submersibles that require large mother ships because deep-sea video images cannot be obtained in real time via current wireless communications technology. The new robot, however, is small enough to be carried on a small ship. "The time may come when scientists can use such a robot anytime at low cost," Kyushu Institute of Technology professor Tamaki Ura said Tuesday. The box-shaped robot, called Tuna-Sand 2, is 1.4 meters long, weighs 380 kg and can dive to 2,000 meters.

Most people are not very familiar with the concept of artificial intelligence (AI). As an illustration, when 1,500 senior business leaders in the United States in 2017 were asked about AI, only 17 percent said they were familiar with it.1 A number of them were not sure what it was or how it would affect their particular companies. They understood there was considerable potential for altering business processes, but were not clear how AI could be deployed within their own organizations. Despite its widespread lack of familiarity, AI is a technology that is transforming every walk of life. It is a wide-ranging tool that enables people to rethink how we integrate information, analyze data, and use the resulting insights to improve decisionmaking. Our hope through this comprehensive overview is to explain AI to an audience of policymakers, opinion leaders, and interested observers, and demonstrate how AI already is altering the world and raising important questions for society, the economy, and governance. In this paper, we discuss novel applications in finance, national security, health care, criminal justice, transportation, and smart cities, and address issues such as data access problems, algorithmic bias, AI ethics and transparency, and legal liability for AI decisions. We contrast the regulatory approaches of the U.S. and European Union, and close by making a number of recommendations for getting the most out of AI while still protecting important human values.2 Although there is no uniformly agreed upon definition, AI generally is thought to refer to "machines that respond to stimulation consistent with traditional responses from humans, given the human capacity for contemplation, judgment and intention."3 According to researchers Shubhendu and Vijay, these software systems "make decisions which normally require [a] human level of expertise" and help people anticipate problems or deal with issues as they come up.4 As such, they operate in an intentional, intelligent, and adaptive manner. Artificial intelligence algorithms are designed to make decisions, often using real-time data. They are unlike passive machines that are capable only of mechanical or predetermined responses. Using sensors, digital data, or remote inputs, they combine information from a variety of different sources, analyze the material instantly, and act on the insights derived from those data. With massive improvements in storage systems, processing speeds, and analytic techniques, they are capable of tremendous sophistication in analysis and decisionmaking.

Brussels has called for a €20bn (£14bn) cash injection for artificial intelligence research, while pouring cold water over controversial plans to give robots human rights. The European commission wants governments and private companies to boost research and innovation spending on AI, amid rising concern that Europe is losing ground to the US and China, where most leading AI firms are based. Health, transport and agriculture are among the areas the commission would like researchers to prioritise. But the commission distanced itself from proposals to give the most advanced robots the legal status of personhood. "I don't think it will happen," Andrus Ansip, a commission vice-president in charge of digital single-market policy told journalists.

Killer robots, tanks, planes, and ships could theoretically fight wars for states, without any human intervention. They will be "weapons of terror, used by terrorists and rogue states against civilian populations" and will follow any orders however evil," according to Toby Walsh, a professor from the University of New South Wales, Australia. He added: "These will be weapons of mass destruction. One programmer and a 3D printer can do what previously took an army of people. "They will industrialise war, changing the speed and duration of how we can fight. They will be able to kill 24-7 and they will kill faster than humans can act to defend themselves."