Asia
Say hello to underwater drones: The Pentagon is looking to extend its robot fighting forces
This fall, an unusual vessel will begin sea trials off the coast of California. The 51-foot-long Boeing Echo Voyager will have no crew. It will glide underwater for days or weeks, quietly collecting data from the ocean floor to send back to crews on ships or on land. Ever since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. military has relied more and more on flying drones to take on dangerous air missions. But increasingly, drones are taking to the sea as well.
Woz on Tim Cook's first 5 years as Apple CEO
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak spoke during a roundtable Wednesday in Singapore. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, the concern was that no one would be able to succeed him. Apple's stocks dipped following his resignation, and his death led to anxiety among investors and some of Apple's customers. Oracle boss Larry Ellison predicted that, without Jobs, Apple "will not be nearly so successful." Five years later, Jobs's successor Tim Cook has very much kept the ship afloat, helping the company to double its revenue from 108 billion in 2011 to 231 billion in 2015.
China building cruise missiles powered by killer artificial intelligence
China is developing a new range of killer cruise missiles fitted with technology which will effectively turn them into killer robots. Dubbed "death drones", the missiles will use artificial intelligence (AI) to guide themselves in flight and potentially even choose new targets. Wang Changqing, director of the General Design Department of the Third Academy of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, told China Daily that his country was leading the world in the development of AI weapons. He said: "We plan to adopt a'plug and play' approach in the development of new cruise missiles, which will enable our military commanders to tailor-make missiles in accordance with combat conditions and their specific requirements. "Moreover, our future cruise missiles will have a very high level of artificial intelligence and automation.
Stephen Pratt's Noodle.ai launches operations in India - Artificial Intelligence Online
The TPG funded venture's enterprise solutions include applied artificial intelligence technologies using machine learning, predictive data analytics, and data sciences with human-centered design, business process engineering and big data. Stephen Pratt said that the large talent pool in India was what made Noodle.ai "Data science is different from software development life cycle and requires highly skilled professionals to build an artificially intelligent engine. We are hiring PhD and master's degree holders from India to work for Noodle.ai," Ted Gaubert, CTO at Noodle.ai wrote a bot programme that crawled through the web to generate and list of professionals with the skills the company was looking for and then the shortlisted candidates were interviewed.