RELATED ARTICLES: Ford wins best'small engine' for 5th year running New Ford Trucks series launched in Qatar Ford recreates march to Aqaba with truck line-up Ford has announced its intention to produce a fully autonomous, or "SAE level 4-capable" (operable without a wheel of pedals), vehicle for commercial operations by 2021 as part of a ride-hailing or ride-sharing service. To achieve this, the company is investing in or collaborating with four start-ups and doubling both its Silicon Valley team and Palo Alto technology campus in San Antonio, Texas. "The next decade will be defined by automation of the automobile, and we see autonomous vehicles as having as significant an impact on society as Ford's moving assembly line did 100 years ago," said Mark Fields, Ford president and CEO. "We're dedicated to putting an autonomous vehicle on the road that can improve safety and solve social and environmental challenges for millions – not just those who can afford luxury vehicles." Raj Nair, Ford executive VP for global product development and chief technical officer, noted: "Ford has been developing and testing autonomous vehicles for more than 10 years.

Poverty could be predicted by reading the satellite images using artificial intelligence. By indicating the areas where the most help is needed, these images could help eradicate global poverty. One can make an idea of a country's wealth by examining how much it shines at night. A comparison between China and South Korea's intense brightness and North Korea's dark mass could be one of the best examples found by the scientists. This kind of information could only be obtained by sending legions of survey-takers in populated rural areas.

Everybody from Facebook to Microsoft to President Barack Obama thinks that chat bots -- robots you talk to like humans in apps like Facebook Messenger or Microsoft's Skype -- are the future. As showcased by the relative success of gadgets like the Amazon Echo and digital agents like Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana, we're at the precipice of a new kind of computing, where you can use your natural language skills to get stuff done. The problem is chat bots these days kind of stink out. It's often harder to get stuff done with a chat bot than it is with the suite of apps and websites to which we've become accustomed. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Tay Twitter bot had a high-profile meltdown, showing how far AI still has to go.

In the not too distant future the smartphone of a farmer in India will not only track the weather forecasts but perhaps advise him on the next best action to take if the weather turns inclement. It might even go a step ahead and help him make a decision on locking up the best future price for his produce. A smart fishing app will learn from the past performance of fishing trips on the high seas to guide Indian fishermen on improving their catch while an intelligent learning app will coach Indian students to cope better for competitive examinations. A clever tax collection app will help the government detect sophisticated methods of tax evasion while a subsidy app will better target benefits to those who need them the most, helping plug leakages. All of these have a chance of becoming a reality in the next decade, given the recent advances in artificial intelligence if only we in India wake up and get our act right.

A new bot called Wonder will remember anything you want, and then return the information you need via a text message. Once you enter your phone number on the Wonder website, the bot will send you a text explaining how it works – and then you just reply back with the information you want it to store. Using CUDA and GPUs in the Amazon cloud to train the deep learning models, the bot is able to understand the texts coming in and remember the things you're wondering. When you're trying to remember something later, you ask Wonder a question, like "When's the next company meeting?," What's my wife's favorite Starbuck's order?" or anything else you previously told the bot to remember.

Pop culture's many takes on artificial intelligence New technique using artificial intelligence to read satellite images could aid efforts to eradicate ...

Exploration of hydrocarbon resources is a highly complicated and expensive process where various geological, geochemical and geophysical factors are developed then combined together. It is highly significant how to design the seismic data acquisition survey and locate the exploratory wells since incorrect or imprecise locations lead to waste of time and money during the operation. The objective of this study is to locate high-potential oil and gas field in 1: 250,000 sheet of Ahwaz including 20 oil fields to reduce both time and costs in exploration and production processes. In this regard, 17 maps were developed using GIS functions for factors including: minimum and maximum of total organic carbon (TOC), yield potential for hydrocarbons production (PP), Tmax peak, production index (PI), oxygen index (OI), hydrogen index (HI) as well as presence or proximity to high residual Bouguer gravity anomalies, proximity to anticline axis and faults, topography and curvature maps obtained from Asmari Formation subsurface contours. To model and to integrate maps, this study employed artificial neural network and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) methods. The results obtained from model validation demonstrated that the 17x10x5 neural network with R=0.8948, RMS=0.0267, and kappa=0.9079 can be trained better than other models such as ANFIS and predicts the potential areas more accurately. However, this method failed to predict some oil fields and wrongly predict some areas as potential zones.

Pop culture's many takes on artificial intelligence New technique using artificial intelligence to read satellite images could aid efforts to eradicate ...

Responsibility for securing enterprise applications has been moving down the development lifecycle, and for good reason. It not only makes the enterprise more secure, but also saves companies time and money. For example, the average time to fix a vulnerability in IBM's application security solution has dropped from 20 hours to 30 minutes, according to a study Forrester Consulting released last month. Also, finding bugs earlier rather than later in the development process resulted in a 90 percent cost savings, the study indicated. If security at the application creation level is going to gain traction, however, it's going to require a change in the attitude on the part of developers.

Historically speaking, people defending digital infrastructure are at a significant disadvantage. Bad guys can morph their malware tools at will, while security professionals must always be at the ready to shove out new versions of their products when previously undetected malware is discovered--often too late for the defenders who then have to clean up the mess. And bad guys are opportunists, always casting their nets in waters teeming with unsuspecting victims. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the mobile industry, in particular devices running the Android operating system. Security companies have been reporting massive increases in malware infections.