DNN-based cross-modal retrieval has become a research hotspot, by which users can search results across various modalities like image and text. However, existing methods mainly focus on the pairwise correlation and reconstruction error of labeled data. They ignore the semantically similar and dissimilar constraints between different modalities, and cannot take advantage of unlabeled data. This paper proposes Cross-modal Deep Metric Learning with Multi-task Regularization (CDMLMR), which integrates quadruplet ranking loss and semi-supervised contrastive loss for modeling cross-modal semantic similarity in a unified multi-task learning architecture. The quadruplet ranking loss can model the semantically similar and dissimilar constraints to preserve cross-modal relative similarity ranking information. The semi-supervised contrastive loss is able to maximize the semantic similarity on both labeled and unlabeled data. Compared to the existing methods, CDMLMR exploits not only the similarity ranking information but also unlabeled cross-modal data, and thus boosts cross-modal retrieval accuracy.

The coming era of artificial intelligence and automation will drastically change the workplace, and new laws need to exist to keep up with impending changes, an international group of lawyers said Tuesday. The Global Employment Institute of the International Bar Association released a 120-page report Tuesday, titled "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and Their Impact on the Workplace." In the report, the legal group warned technological change is outpacing our ability to pass new legislation and install legal frameworks, which means our laws won't reflect the workforce realities they govern if countries don't move quickly to keep up. "The AI phenomenon is on an exponential curve, while legislation is doing its best on an incremental basis," Gerlind Wisskirchen, one of the report's authors, said in a statement. "New labor and employment legislation is urgently needed to keep pace with increased automation."

There are around 55 million visually impaired people in India, up to 80% of whom could be helped by everyday procedures like Lasik. Medical and surgical resources, however, are limited. In April 2015, nonprofit L V Prasad Eye Institute, in Hyderabad, India, teamed up with Microsoft India to create Connected Eyes, a cloud-based machine-learning research project that uses data from tens of thousands of eye patients to identify the likelihood of success for new surgery, plus a probable regression rate, so that doctors can deploy those resources most effectively. Last December, Connected Eyes linked up with institutions in Brazil, Australia, and the United States to create the Microsoft Intelligent Network for Eyecare, which will build a universally available service that offers eye doctors immediate predictions for their patients. "This will be a global pool of knowledge that everyone can benefit from," says Anil Bhansali, managing director of Microsoft India R&D.

For years, Japan has hosted the ROBO-ONE competitive fighting tournament for biped robots. It's always a huge amount of fun to watch (even on video), with creative hardware designs, skilled pilots, and the sorts of moves that are physically impossible for humans to pull off. Brand new this year is an autonomous fighting competition, with robots squaring off against each other while their human masters can do nothing but sit back helplessly and watch. It goes pretty much as you might expect, with a lot of not much interspersed with some truly epic moments. This is a challenging sort of competition for autonomous robots: There aren't any walls, fiducial markings, or even a line around the edge of the combat platform.

WhatsApp is going to start testing a peer-to-peer payment system this year, according to a new report. The messaging app is expected to roll the feature out to users in India in the next six months, as that's its biggest market. WhatsApp hasn't confirmed or denied the reports, which come shortly after co-founder Brian Acton hinted that such functionality was in development. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

For those of you who live in China, recent news about the departure of the Chief artificial intelligence (AI) scientist at Baidu, Andrew Ng, was rather a surprise (for our lovely American readers, Baidu is often dubbed the Google equivalent in China). Mr. Ng was the founder of Google Brain and a leading expert in deep learning, so news that he had jumped ship was alarming because in the world of AI investing, China is up there right behind the U.S. according to a recent article in the South China Morning Post. While China's investment in AI pales in comparison to the U.S., it's still so meaningful that "experts are warning" AI is on the verge of becoming a bubble in China which corresponds with our recent article on "investing in AI stocks". With China's AI market expected to reach $9 billion by 2020, it seems like we're hearing some conflicting messages from over there. Fortunately for our readers, we have some foreign correspondents living in those parts so we thought we would go through the China Money Network list of the top-10 AI companies in China to see what's happening.

The New York Times bestseller, from leading innovation expert Alec Ross, a "fascinating vision" (Forbes) of what's next for the world and how to navigate the changes the future will bring. While Alec Ross was working as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the Secretary of State, he traveled to forty-one countries, exploring the latest advances coming out of every continent. From startup hubs in Kenya to R&D labs in South Korea, Ross has seen what the future holds. In The Industries of the Future, Ross provides a "lucid and informed guide" (Financial Times) to the changes coming in the next ten years. He examines the fields that will most shape our economic future, including robotics and artificial intelligence, cybercrime and cybersecurity, the commercialization of genomics, the next step for big data, and the impact of digital technology on money and markets.

Greater protections are needed to stop robots stealing your job, according to a renowned organisation of international lawyers. Legal experts are concerned that the pace of developments in artificial intelligence are outstripping the ability of global governments to make laws to deal with the consequences. And they are worried that this is leading to is gap between current legislation and new laws - including'human job quotas' - that they feel are necessary to protect people from being replaced by machines. The International Bar Association has issued a report detailing the threats posed to people's jobs by artificial intelligence. The International Bar Association has warned that up to a third of graduate jobs around the world could be made obsolete by artificial intelligence.

An extremely sophisticated Android app designed to spy on users has been discovered by security researchers. Called Chrysaor, it's capable of spying on users through their smartphone camera and microphone, as well as accessing messages, emails, contact details and browser history. In Greek mythology, Chrysaor was the brother of Pegasus, the winged horse. The spyware was thus named because it's believed to be linked to Pegasus, spyware that was found to be targeting handsets running iOS last year. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

Last year, Alphabet's DeepMind division captured the world's attention by besting humanity's top player in the game of Go. The achievement, which many experts predicted was still a decade off, showed the rapid progress being made in the world of artificial intelligence. DeepMind subsequently announced that its next goal in gaming was mastering StarCraft, a classic PC game that is a staple of competitive e-sports. Facebook also threw its hat in the ring, creating an open-source framework so that developers could work on solving StarCraft using the social network's AI toolkit. Now a team from China's Alibaba has published a paper describing a system that learned to execute a number of strategies employed by high-level players without being given any specific instruction on how best to manage combat.