Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has constituted a Task Force chaired by V. Kamakoti of IIT Madras to explore possibilities to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) for development across various fields. The'task force on AI for India's Economic Transformation' will submit concrete and implementable recommendations for government, industry and research institutions, an official statement said. In addition to regular members, it will have official participation from NITI Aayog, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Department of Science & Technology, UIDAI and DRDO. The panel comprises experts, academics, researchers and industry leaders. The Minister said with rapid development in the fields of information technology and hardware, the world is about to witness a fourth industrial revolution.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new engine that is going to launch the fourth industrial revolution after loom, steam engine and assembly line, according to Malcolm Frank, Executive Vice-President, Strategy & Marketing, Cognizant Technology Solutions. In the process, countries that get it right will have strong GDP growth, he said at a session on'What to do when machines do everything!' organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Chennai in association with Nasscom. The top five global companies in terms of market value are digital companies, and either Apple or Amazon could be a $1 trillion company in next 12-18 months. "We are in the midst of an important economic period," he said. Three scenarios could emerge in future – machines will replace humans; enhance and make people better at what they are doing; or invent entirely new jobs, Frank said.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) keeps on exciting the world with its many uses and potentials. Through deep learning (also called deep neural networks), we now have computers and robots which are capable of thinking independently like humans. And this quality makes them even more efficient than us! Image recognition, natural language processing, and machine translation may not be perfect yet. But, when it comes to data analysis, we know that computers are way, way faster and more precise than we are.

Robots are taking our jobs. Almost everything you can learn in our current education system will be automated soon. Supply chains are in upheaval as production moves closer to the consumer and products are made by individual robots rather than rows of underpaid workers. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are threatening thousands of white-collar jobs. As manufacturing shifts away from the traditional Asian hubs, shipping lines now suffer from massive overcapacity that will probably stay for a long time. We are aware of all of these trends.

A reliable, accurate, and affordable positioning service is highly required in wireless networks. In this paper, the novel Message Passing Hybrid Localization (MPHL) algorithm is proposed to solve the problem of cooperative distributed localization using distance and direction estimates. This hybrid approach combines two sensing modalities to reduce the uncertainty in localizing the network nodes. A statistical model is formulated for the problem, and approximate minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimates of the node locations are computed. The proposed MPHL is a distributed algorithm based on belief propagation (BP) and Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling. It improves the identifiability of the localization problem and reduces its sensitivity to the anchor node geometry, compared to distance-only or direction-only localization techniques. For example, the unknown location of a node can be found if it has only a single neighbor; and a whole network can be localized using only a single anchor node. Numerical results are presented showing that the average localization error is significantly reduced in almost every simulation scenario, about 50% in most cases, compared to the competing algorithms.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, "chronic diseases and conditions are on the rise worldwide." When infectious diseases like SARS and Ebola emerged, there was a rapid, global spread. Given the significant increase in global mobility, outbreaks must be dealt with quickly to minimize the number of people who may be infected. Although there have been significant advances in the control of common communicable diseases, presently, some of the most common infections like tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV still do not have effective vaccines. On a positive note, the past few years has also seen major progress in the diagnosis, management and prevention of certain cancers like cervix and breast cancer and childhood leukemia.

A trio of reissues, all 4K restorations, highlight the Labor Day weekend film offerings: Steven Spielberg's 1977 mashed-potato-stacking sci-fi classic "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," with Richard Dreyfuss; Merchant-Ivory's 1983 India-set drama "Heat and Dust," starring Julie Christie; and Jacques Becker's 1960 crime drama "Le Trou." Other limited releases include French domestic drama "After Love" and the Czech-Slovak drama "The Teacher." After Love A couple chooses to separate after 15 years of marriage, but the husband remains in the apartment with his wife and daughters due to tight finances, leading to rising tensions. California Typewriter Documentary on a Berkeley repair shop, it's challenge to remain open and some of the collectors and enthusiasts who share a passion for the aging machines. Close Encounters of the Third Kind Steven Spielberg's 1977 science fiction classic stars Richard Dreyfuss as a man on a mission after a brush with a UFO.

What is the hottest topic in retail blogs for 2017? There is a fairly good reason for this, it's connected to the future of how consumers search, press buttons in apps to get stuff in the real world done and how we connect with services, goods, connected devices, fun experiences, and most of all with each other. Advances in computer vision and real-time NLP means AI is more actionable, and we are seeing this on the front lines of retail innovation. In 2017, even local merchants can upgrade their stores with exceptionally good foot traffic sensors, loyalty marketing retargeting that's basically automated and do ad-tech promos right at the POS basically for free. Perhaps as Tom Goodwin states, the future of retail pertains to everything being shoppable.

Gaming is an addiction but for cyber criminals, it is a lucrative business. IT security researchers at ESET have discovered a new malware targeting gamers around the world. Dubbed "Joao" by researchers; the malware exists in third party websites offering malicious setups for Aeria games. The malware works in such a way that once executed it can install other malicious codes on a targeted device. Furthermore, Joao takes advantage of "Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs)," a platform for role-playing video games and massively multiplayer online games where a large number of gamers get together to interact. The attackers behind Joao have developed the malware in such a way that when a victim executes the game launcher, it silently launches itself in the background and sends device information to the attackers including its operating system, name and what privileges a user has on that device.

Nuance Communications, Inc. said latest artificial intelligence (AI) framework could serve as a game changer for the UAE and GCC telecom industry. The Middle East region is now witnessing an accelerating technology migration to higher speed networks and smartphones, facilitated by operator investments to extend network coverage. Telecom operators need to transform their revenue opportunity thro-ugh data and voice services that are high quality, while managing capital allocation, and investing in new technologies and innovations. "By addressing customer needs in real time, innovative solutions will open new possibilities and increase value. Nuance Loop is specially designed to fit with the framework of UAE and GCC telecom operators as it engages mobile subscribers at virtually any touch point from voice to text to browser," said Rajesh Razdan, VP and GM, APAC, CSP Business, Nuance.