Today's factories are easy to envision as futuristic-seeming hives of automation, where industrial robots mimic the movements and, seemingly, the intentionality of human workers. Today's robots are not only working faster and more reliably than their human counterparts but also performing tasks beyond human capability altogether, such as microscopically precise assembly. But many of those robots are dumber than they look. That is, they may be more dexterous than humans, but they are programmed to perform a limited range of tasks. Many robots can't safely work in close proximity to humans and literally have to be caged or regulated in ways that safeguard human coworkers.

The Chinese government is building a $2 billion (£1.5 billion) artificial intelligence (AI) research park as it looks to become a world leader in the field by 2025, Reuters reports, citing local news agency Xinhua. The AI research park -- to be located in west Beijing -- will reportedly be able to accommodate 400 companies and that are expected to generate 50 billion yuan (£5.6 billion) each year. The park's developer, state-owned Zhongguancun Development Group, is hoping to partner with foreign universities and build a "national-level" AI lab in the area, according to Reuters. It will reportedly aim to attract companies working on big data, biometric identification, deep learning, and cloud computing. Russian president Vladimir Putin believes that in the future, the country that leads in AI could dominate the world, while tech billionaire Elon Musk thinks AI will be the most likely cause of WWIII (although his comments should be taken with a pinch of salt).

It's hard to ignore dystopian pronouncements about how Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to take over our lives, especially when they come from luminaries in tech. Entrepreneur Elon Musk, for instance, says "If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. And IT maven Erik Brnyojolfsson, at MIT, has quoted Vladimir Putin's claim that "The one who be-comes leader in this sphere will be ruler of the world." AI is chalking up victories over human intelligence at an alarming rate. In 2016 AlphaGo, training itself on millions of human moves, beat the world Go champion, Lee Sedol.

Abstract--We consider the problem of tracking an intruder using a network of wireless sensors. For tracking the intruder at each instant, the optimal number and the right configuration of sensors has to be powered. As powering the sensors consumes energy, there is a trade off between accurately tracking the position of the intruder at each instant and the energy consumption of sensors. This problem has been formulated in the framework of Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) [1]. Even for the simplest model considered in [1], the curse of dimensionality renders the problem intractable. We formulate this problem with a suitable state-action space in the framework of POMDP and develop a reinforcement learning algorithm utilizing the Upper Confidence Tree Search (UCT) method to mitigate the state-action space explosion. Through simulations, we illustrate that our algorithm yields good performance and scales well with the increasing state and action space. I. INTRODUCTION The problem of detecting an intruder (Intrusion Detection (ID) problem) using a network of sensors arises in various applications like tracking the movement of wild animals in the forest, house/shop surveillance for safety and security and so on. In this problem, the objective of the ID system is to track one or more intruders moving in the field of a wireless sensor network (WSN). Typically, WSNs operate on limited power supply.

Esperanto, a company run by The Case for RISC co-authors Dave Ditzel and Dave Patterson, has announced its first RISC-V products – including a 4,112-core processor aimed at high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Detailed in full on WikiChip Fuse, Esperanto's aim is to produce three intellectual property (IP) core families based on the open RISC-V architecture: ET-Maxion, a high-performance core designed as an alternative to Arm; ET-Minion, a high-efficiency core; and ET-Graphics, the first RISC-V-based graphics processor. Each will be implemented on Taiwan Semiconductor (TSMC)'s 7nm process node, the company has claimed, and will be available in hardware and licensable IP forms. Esperanto's first commercial product, though, combines the ET-Maxion and ET-Minion into a monster many-core processor aimed at the high-performance computing (HPC) market, with a view to accelerating deep-learning and other artificial intelligence (AI) workloads. According to details revealed by Dave Ditzel, the part will include 4,096 ET-Minion cores and 16 ET-Maxion cores for a total of 4,112 RISC-V cores on a single chip.

It is said – often by our mothers – that we are looking a bit'peaky' or under the weather even when we do not notice ourselves. Now researchers have discovered that humans have an ability to pick up the subtle signs that show someone is sick within minutes of them getting an infection. Some signs of sickness are obvious– such as a violent cough, or the spots on the face in measles. These are obvious enough to ensure the ill person gets a wide birth. But in an illustration of the amazing power of the human brain, a glance of a few seconds was enough for observers tell if people had just caught a nasty bug.

Every year, China's president Xi Jinping delivers a New Year's Eve address, outlining the country's plans for the months ahead. But Chinese netizens don't just pay attention to his words; they also scour the bookshelves behind Xi, analyzing the titles and authors found there to try and gain some insight into his mind. As reported by The Shanghaiist (and seen via Quartz), the books on AI were Pedro Domingos' The Master Algorithm and Brett King's Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane. Both deal with the potential impact of artificial intelligence on society, with King's book providing a futurist's slightly fantastical overview on this and other technologies, while Domingos' offers a more grounded and practical look at the rise of machine learning. Xi is said to be a voracious reader, and other books spotted on his shelf this year included a growing collection of Western classics (from War and Peace and The Old Man and the Sea to The Odyssey and Les Misérables), economic texts like Money Changes Everything by William N. Goetzmann and Michele Wucker's The Grey Rhino, and numerous titles on Chinese history and military strategy.

Alibaba recently demonstrated the difference it could make with record sales for this year's Single's Day in China. This marriage of fashion and AI signals possibilities for shoppers. The volume of sales for this year's Single's Day through Alibaba's sites amounted to $9.3 billion this year, compared to $5.9 billion last year. Technology use played a major role in that surge of sales, as nearly half the orders this year came through smartphones; over double the 2016 number. However, another form of technology was also involved: AI.

On the morning of December 13th, 1937, Japanese troops pounded on the door of Xia Shuqin's family home in Nanjing, China. Thirteen people had taken shelter under this particular roof: Eight-year-old Xia, her mother and father, two grandparents, four sisters (one, four, 13 and 15 years old), and four neighbors. The Japanese army had ridden into the city on horseback that morning and faced little resistance; the Chinese army had made a full, chaotic retreat the prior evening, December 12th. When Xia's father answered the door, the Japanese soldiers immediately shot and killed him. They bludgeoned and killed her one-year-old sister. They raped and killed her mother. They raped and killed her 13-year-old and 15-year-old sisters. Xia and her four-year-old sister were the only survivors of this onslaught.

Last 3 years have seen a massive upswing in the use of AI across different business verticals. And insurance, being one of the oldest industries, has multiple use-cases that can improve every aspect of business from underwriting to distribution to claim management. Insurers, in India and overseas, are aggressively investing in startups and small teams to unleash the power of AI in insurance. In this article, we will see how AI is and will be disrupting the insurance industry. Most people use AI in a very broad perspective.