Asia
Global AI & Robotics Summit held in Shenzhen - CCTV News - CCTV.com English
The Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Summit has opened in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. Our reporter Ge Yunfei went to China's southern technology center to find out more about the potential of the budding industry. The success of Alpha Go in defeating the human mind has aroused the world of artificial intelligence. But at the Global Artificial Intelligence & Robotics Summit in Shenzhen, it's limitations have been projected. Michael Wooldrige -- who is leading a cooperation initiative between Oxford University and Google on artificial intelligence -- said although Alpha Go is unique in its own right, it's not THAT smart.
NeoWize uses A.I. to power real-time personalization in ecommerce
Shopping has never been the same experience from person to person, and merchants are constantly searching for a service that creates the ultimate personalized experience. While a few companies are using some machine learning to tailor things for consumers, NeoWize believes there's a better solution. It thinks that its use of artificial intelligence can offer better customization in real time. The company has launched and is offering its services to ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Magento. Founded by Omer Nevo, Yoav Cafri, and Ronen Ness, this Y Combinator-backed startup leverages active machine learning, a process that looks at a person's journey on a site or app and continuously analyzes their behavior -- did they scroll past a particular product?
Islamic State faces uphill 'branding war' in Afghanistan, Pakistan
ISLAMABAD – The U.S. drone strike that killed the Islamic State group's commander for Afghanistan and Pakistan was the latest blow to the Middle East-led movement's ambitions to expand into a region where the long-established Taliban remain the dominant Islamist force. The Islamic State group has enticed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of jihadi fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan to switch loyalty and has held a small swath of territory in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, where leader Hafiz Saeed Khan was killed on July 26 by a U.S. drone, Washington confirmed late Friday. But outside that pocket of territory, security officials and analysts say that the group remains -- for now -- more of a "brand name" than a cohesive militant force in much of the region. "Groups around the world want to jump on that bandwagon and cash in on their popularity and the fear they command," said a Pakistani police official based in Islamabad, on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media. Anxiety over the Islamic State group -- also known as ISIS or "Daesh" -- in Afghanistan and Pakistan has been building since the al-Qaida breakaway movement seized portions of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014 and began promoting itself worldwide.
AI feasts on data-rich diet in Southeast Asia- Nikkei Asian Review
Artificial intelligence could scale new heights on its growing application in Southeast Asia, thanks to the region's relative openness to data collection. Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok began using IBM's Watson AI platform to assist in cancer treatment late last year. The system automatically collects and learns from clinical studies and new papers, suggesting treatment options and giving expected success rates for each patient. Watson lets doctors make unbiased decisions on the best options, according to James Miser, Bumrungrad's chief medical information officer. The Thai hospital has consulted with Watson in treating breast, colon, lung and prostate cancer in about 50 patients so far and intends to expand its use.
SpaceX Falcon 9 launches satellite, sticks ocean landing
SpaceX launched JCSAT-16 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and landed the first stage on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Thursday, July 28, 2016 with a secret payload for the National Reconnaissance Office. SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral and landed it about eight minutes later. United Launch Alliance launched an Atlas V rocket at 10:30 a.m. SpaceX launched a pair of communications satellites from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, but it was unknown if the first stage landed successfully.
Toyota teaches cars to drive by studying human drivers - TechRepublic
Toyota plans to have its self-driving car out by 2020. It's been testing a modified Lexus GS as well as their own hybrid self-driving vehicles on the road. In January 2016, Toyota announced the creation of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), a 1 billion investment in AI to develop autonomous driving capabilities as well as home-care robots. Jim Adler, the first head of data at TRI, has been on the job for just two months. Before that, he was an executive at Metanautix, a data analytics platform that sold to Microsoft last year. Adler talked to TechRepublic about how Toyota is using data and simulation to teach cars to drive themselves. It sounded like so much fun and interesting, and leveraged quite a bit of my experience. How do you say "no" to working on a self-driving car and a robot?
Doctors In Japan Use Artificial Intelligence To Diagnose Leukemia
If you've watch TV shows like House, you probably know that there are some conditions that people suffer from that are rare and aren't as easy to diagnose. However it seems that in the future, such conditions could be diagnosed much quicker thanks to the help of AI, which is what doctors in Japan did. In what could be described as a world's first, doctors in Japan relied on artificial intelligence to help diagnose a woman who was suffering from a rare form of leukemia. The patient was initially treated for acute myeloid leukemia, but her recovery from post-remission therapy was slow, which is when doctors decided that the initial diagnosis could have been wrong. This is when they turned to IBM's Watson to help them with their case.
Are Machine Learning Search Algorithms To Blame For Stereotypes?
Do machine-learning algorithms processing search engine queries bring on prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping in query results? Search results have been known to highlight these negative attributes in the past. Now researchers at Brazil's Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais suggest it could be true when it comes to female physical attractiveness in images available across the Web. The paper submitted to the International Conference on Social Informatics scheduled for publication analyzes how Google and Bing represent female beauty in their image search results, particularly when it comes to different age and racial groups. They then passed the more than 2,000 images through a program, which estimates subject age, race and gender with an estimated 90% accuracy.
IBM Watson diagnoses a rare cancer physicians missed
After conventional methods of detection failed, a team of Japanese researchers from the University of Tokyo's Institute of Medical Science used IBM Watson to successfully diagnose a 60 year-old woman where physicians were unable to, according to NDTV. The patient was initially diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, but treatments for that condition proved ineffective. Watson was able to identify the more rare form of leukemia she suffered from and ultimately provide a different, more successful form of treatment, according to the report. Artificial intelligence systems like IBM Watson may still be a ways off from being regularly used in hospitals, as they require large amounts of comparative data, according to Engadget. However, when given access to that type of information, AI systems can work quickly -- Watson produced the accurate diagnosis for the Japanese patient after comparing her genetic data against a database of 20 million researcher papers in just ten minutes.
An Adaptive Resample-Move Algorithm for Estimating Normalizing Constants
Fraccaro, Marco, Paquet, Ulrich, Winther, Ole
The estimation of normalizing constants is a fundamental step in probabilistic model comparison. Sequential Monte Carlo methods may be used for this task and have the advantage of being inherently parallelizable. However, the standard choice of using a fixed number of particles at each iteration is suboptimal because some steps will contribute disproportionately to the variance of the estimate. We introduce an adaptive version of the Resample-Move algorithm, in which the particle set is adaptively expanded whenever a better approximation of an intermediate distribution is needed. The algorithm builds on the expression for the optimal number of particles and the corresponding minimum variance found under ideal conditions. Benchmark results on challenging Gaussian Process Classification and Restricted Boltzmann Machine applications show that Adaptive Resample-Move (ARM) estimates the normalizing constant with a smaller variance, using less computational resources, than either Resample-Move with a fixed number of particles or Annealed Importance Sampling. A further advantage over Annealed Importance Sampling is that ARM is easier to tune.