When Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was released this year, it gained a lot of attention - not because it is the latest instalment for a popular franchise, it stood out for another reason. The game was set in India, had two lead women, and one of them, Nadine Ross, is a black South African. Other big releases this year include Assassins Creed Origins, which is set in Egypt with an African protagonist, while Star Wars Battlefront II used the likeness and voice of Janina Gavankar, an actress with part-Indian heritage. But speaking to BBC Asian Network, Jo Twist, chief executive for Ukie, the trading body for the UK's games industry, said there was still a long way to go before video games could be truly representative of the gaming audience. She says there are not enough game designers from black or Asian backgrounds working and that this is reflected in what we are playing.

Scientists in Boston have developed an automated artificial intelligence (AI)-guided microscopy system that can help diagnose serious bloodstream infections (BSIs) quickly and accurately. The technology, which uses a trained convolutional neural network (CNN) to recognize the different shapes and distribution of pathogenic bacteria, could help to speed diagnosis and potentially save patient lives, as well as address the current lack of trained microbiology technologists, suggest its developers at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). "This marks the first demonstration of machine learning in the diagnostic area," comments James Kirby, M.D., director of the Clinical Microbiology Laboratory at BIDMC, and associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School. "With further development, we believe this technology could form the basis of a future diagnostic platform that augments the capabilities of clinical laboratories, ultimately speeding the delivery of patient care." The researchers report on the technology in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, in a paper entitled "Automated Interpretation of Blood Culture Gram Stains using a Deep Convolutional Neural Network."

Tesla just announced it's newest, largest supercharger stations in the US. LOUISVILLE -- UPS Inc. is making a big investment in all-electric big rigs by placing an order for 125 of the sleek new semi trucks from Tesla. Published reports put the cost of the trucks at between $150,000 and $200,000 each and that the UPS order is the largest to date for a vehicle unveiled in November. That could set the package and freight delivery company with its main air hub in Louisville back as much as $25 million. Tesla expects to begin producing the vehicles in 2019.

Fuelled by successes in Computer Go, Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) has achieved widespread adoption within the games community. Its links to traditional reinforcement learning (RL) methods have been outlined in the past; however, the use of RL techniques within tree search has not been thoroughly studied yet. In this paper we re-examine in depth this close relation between the two fields; our goal is to improve the cross-awareness between the two communities. We show that a straightforward adaptation of RL semantics within tree search can lead to a wealth of new algorithms, for which the traditional MCTS is only one of the variants. We confirm that planning methods inspired by RL in conjunction with online search demonstrate encouraging results on several classic board games and in arcade video game competitions, where our algorithm recently ranked first. Our study promotes a unified view of learning, planning, and search.

Most existing fingerprints-based indoor localization approaches are based on some single fingerprints, such as received signal strength (RSS), channel impulse response (CIR), and signal subspace. However, the localization accuracy obtained by the single fingerprint approach is rather susceptible to the changing environment, multi-path, and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation. Furthermore, building the fingerprints is a very time consuming process. In this paper, we propose a novel localization framework by Fusing A Group Of fingerprinTs (FAGOT) via multiple antennas for the indoor environment. We first build a GrOup Of Fingerprints (GOOF), which includes five different fingerprints, namely, RSS, covariance matrix, signal subspace, fractional low order moment, and fourth-order cumulant, which are obtained by different transformations of the received signals from multiple antennas in the offline stage. Then, we design a parallel GOOF multiple classifiers based on AdaBoost (GOOF-AdaBoost) to train each of these fingerprints in parallel as five strong multiple classifiers. In the online stage, we input the corresponding transformations of the real measurements into these strong classifiers to obtain independent decisions. Finally, we propose an efficient combination fusion algorithm, namely, MUltiple Classifiers mUltiple Samples (MUCUS) fusion algorithm to improve the accuracy of localization by combining the predictions of multiple classifiers with different samples. As compared with the single fingerprint approaches, the prediction probability of our proposed approach is improved significantly. The process for building fingerprints can also be reduced drastically. We demonstrate the feasibility and performance of the proposed algorithm through extensive simulations as well as via real experimental data using a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) platform with four antennas.

AI-enabled cameras will soon scan you on the streets, and will detect and identify you if you break any law on the road. A Brazilian security company, Polsec, is bringing security cameras based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology to the streets of Delhi, Mumbai and Agra, starting next month. The company will keep on adding more cameras as necessary and new features will be installed on all cameras as they are available. Smart Eyes is AI-enabled security cameras system which can detect any unusual movements, breaking of traffic rules, unauthorised parking of any vehicle in violation areas in addition to many more features. These cameras are designed to make it easier for the authorities to catch the law-breakers within a short span of time.

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI), it pays to be ahead of the game. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently quipped that the nation that wins the AI war will be the ruler of the world, and his statement seems somewhat prophetic. As the nascent AI technology begins to take root in a variety of industries, early adopters are already well ahead of the curve in taking advantage of what promises to be the next major technology to revamp the face of the technical world. One of the most crucial areas for getting ahead of the game in the AI revolution is investing. When it comes to investment calculations and planning, analysts already use complex algorithms to seek to predict where markets will move. By adding AI to data source analysis, Mirocana, a state of the art investment platform, will move investors one step ahead of the game.

FRANKFURT, GERMANY – Can performing Beethoven symphonies together help employees team up on projects at work, too? Some companies -- above all in Germany and Asia -- seem to think so. A conspicuous number of big German corporate names -- along with a handful in Japan and South Korea -- have their own company-linked symphony orchestra. That means 60 or so accountants, engineers, sales reps and computer specialists bring violins, cellos, oboes and trombones and gather in their spare time to rehearse and perform lengthy, complex pieces of classical music. The orchestras serve as public relations tools, playing charity concerts and livening up corporate events.

BANGALORE, INDIA – Among the five teams competing in the world's first international lunar probe contest, one of them, India's TeamIndus, is unique in its beginning and breadth of cooperation with a rival team. The Bangalore-based startup firm is the only Indian team in the Google Lunar XPRIZE contest, in which five privately funded finalists are competing to land their spacecraft on the moon and deploy robotic rovers on its surface. TeamIndus has partnered with the Japanese team to transport the latter's rover as well as its own to the moon using its own spacecraft, which is to be launched aboard an Indian rocket in March. It is the first collaboration between two of the contest's private enterprise competitors. "It's a privilege that we have the Japanese team flying with us to the moon surface," said Rahul Narayan, founder of TeamIndus.

China is opening up its roads to self-driving cars. The Beijing Municipal Transport Commission released a statement today saying that on certain roads and under certain conditions, companies registered in China will be able to test their autonomous vehicles. Last year, Chinese authorities banned self-driving vehicles from the country's highways until new regulations could be created and approved. But those have been slow to arrive, which is why Chinese company Baidu and its CEO Robin Li came under fire this summer for conducting an apparently illegal demonstration of its driverless technology. The new regulations will allow companies to apply for temporary permission to test their autonomous vehicles on a yet-to-be-determined group of approved roads.