How do you study the world's more widespread predator? When a team of researchers set out to see how prevalent industrial fishing was around the world--who was fishing where and when--they were met with a dearth of information. They lacked access to vessel monitoring systems closely held by regional fishery managers, says Juan Mayorga, a marine data scientist from National Geographic's Pristine Seas project. And that information would have shown only pieces of the puzzle. To circumvent this obstacle, Mayorga and a team of researchers took a step back--way back--and tracked marine vessels from space, using satellites to learn where industrial fishing vessels fished and when.

YOKOHAMA – Nissan Motor Co. and mobile game-maker DeNA Co. said Friday that they will launch an autonomous-driving taxi service for a two-week experiment in Yokohama next month, with the participation of 300 groups of people who will be asked to give feedback after using the ride-hailing app. The companies aim to officially launch a full service in the early 2020s. The world has yet to see a hailing service for a self-driving taxi, so "we are going to learn about some of the things that maybe we can't foresee without actual testing," said Ogi Redzic, senior vice president of the existing alliance among Nissan, Renault SA of France and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., during a news conference in Yokohama. The field experiment for the self-driving taxi service, which will be named Easy Ride, will take participants on a 4.5 kilometer electric vehicle tour around Nissan's headquarters in the Minato Mirai area of Yokohama between March 5 and March 18. The route is fixed, but the users will go through the full process of hailing the car via an app and then setting a destination.

We are all familiar with the major themes of the day: China's continued rise; the shifting of trading relationships following political changes in the United States and Europe; and technology's encroachment upon nearly every industry, from finance to medicine to marketing. So, what technological advances in the recruitment industry can we expect in 2018? How will companies like DaXtra help recruiters and candidates navigate the labour market in today's rapidly evolving digital economy? Given that this is intended to be a digestible summary of the year ahead, let me break the discussion down into three, easily identifiable topic categories: (1) technological innovation, (2) demographics and (3) regulation. On the innovation side we can expect a deeper commitment to improve recruitment technology – or, RecTech – AI, especially in the area of matching technology and big data analysis for a range of Asian languages.

Tokio Marine Life Insurance Singapore introduced a new functionality to their TOMI chatbot. The update will enable users to conveniently find suitable TMLS panel clinics within their designated search area. With filters such as doctor specialisation and clinic location, consumers can identify clinics based on their various needs and schedules, reducing any pre-appointment administrative hassle. Previously, advisers and consumers needed to scan through an extensive list of 539 panel clinics online. While they could filter results with a location search, the previous interface may not have been immediately intuitive for most users.

Chinese companies won nearly half of all funding for AI startups last year, vaulting past the U.S. and firmly establishing the country as a global leader in the field. Artificial intelligence startups worldwide raised a record $15.2 billion in 2017, according to American research firm CB Insights. Chinese businesses accounted for 48% of the total, up from just 11.6% in 2016. The U.S. placed second with 38%. Chinese startups are plowing much of this funding into facial recognition technology -- an area Beijing supports as a matter of national policy -- and AI chips, for which global demand is growing.

Globally, several countries have already committed millions of dollars to developing AI programmes. The US leads the pack, thanks to decades of public and private investment. Over the last five years, San Francisco's Bay Area, in It helps that the US is home to institutes that champion AI research. It helps that the US is home to institutes that champion AI research such as Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the world's biggest tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Google.

The Boston Consulting Group report has projected that digital payments in India will reach $500 billion by 2020 and more than 50% of all internet users will be actively using digital payments. Another area that is slated to see just as rapid growth is Artificial Intelligence. In fact, Ray Kurzweil from Google has also predicted that AI will overtake human intelligence by 2019. So, is there a coming together of these two technology-driven trends that we can look forward to? Sure enough, there are already signs that the payments industry in India is trying to make the most of technologies such as AI by utilizing them in providing innovative solutions.

According to Thomas Kuhn's old, but still useful, epistemological model, every change of the scientific paradigm – rather than the emergence of new material discoveries – radically changes the visions of the world and hence strategic equilibria. Hence, first of all, what is Artificial Intelligence? It consists of a series of mathematical tools, but also of psychology, electronic technology, information technology and computer science tools, through which a machine is taught to think as if it were a human being, but with the speed and security of a computer. The automatic machine must representman's knowledge, namely show it, thus enabling an external operator to change the process and understand its results within the natural language. In practice, AI machines imitate the perceptual vision, the recognition and the reprocessing of language -and even of decision-making – but only when all the data necessary to perform it are available.

IT solutions provider NIIT Technologies Ltd and AI firm Arago have decided to deepen their partnership to optimise the IT operations of Global In-House Centres (GICs) using artificial intelligence. "As global MNCs in India drive innovation through their GICs, there is a need for them to build deeper partnerships with IT service providers to innovate with intelligent automation," said Arvind Mehrotra, president, Infrastructure Management Services. Umamaheshwar Mudigonda, vice-president, Service Provider Business, of Arago, said that the company had high hopes. "We aim to enable the GICs use cutting-edge AI technologies and implement practical solutions, said a press release.

Asian enterprises, especially those in India and China, are fast adopting Artificial Intelligence ( AI) to reinvent their business models and perceive AI as a complete disruptive force, a new Forrester research said on Wednesday. Led by China (from 31 per cent to 61 per cent) and India (from 29 per cent to 69 per cent), the investment and adoption in Asia has jumped significantly between 2016 and 2017. "Indian systems integrators are also actively participating in AI consortiums such as OpenAI," the research added. Government-backed AI is fuelling innovation in existing tech firms, startups and academic communities. On February 18, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that with AI, bots and robots, productivity will increase, urging that AI should be "Made in India " and "Made to Work for India ".