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INNOVATION INSIGHTS: How this Australian facial recognition business helped save thousands of lives
Artificial intelligence and autonomous cars are no longer exclusive to science fiction. Google's self-driving cars have driven more than five million kilometres, while some Teslas can drive themselves under certain conditions, and Singapore could see a fully autonomous taxi hit the streets by the end of the year. While all these initiatives are focused on what's outside the car, on equipping and teaching machines to understand and react to the outside world, it's also important to understand the people inside. The solution they created – a camera that can understand when drivers are fatigued or distracted, has helped save thousands of lives. The company traces its origins to a group of roboticists at the Australian National University in 1997.
Using drones in refugee search and rescue efforts
After being stranded in the Mediterranean for three days, fear had overcome Alou Sango. "I thought that we would all die, because there was nothing left, the petrol had finished," he says of his journey from Libya. Like thousands before him, Sango boarded an overcrowded boat to escape the country's turmoil after being unable to return to his native Mali. But after days at sea the captain lost his way and, without a GPS position to give to the Italian authorities, the 100 or so passengers were losing hope. Their rubber dinghy was finally spotted by a Chinese vessel, which picked up the migrants and took them to Italy, where Sango, now 24, is studying through a Rome-based charity, Sant'Egidio Community.
School's in session -- Nvidia's driverless system learns by watching
How do you train a car to drive itself? Let it watch real drivers. Engineers from graphics processing unit (GPU) company Nvidia designed a system that learned how to drive after watching humans drive for a total of 72 hours, as reported by NetworkWorld. The likely conclusion of the system's success is that driverless cars are coming faster than most of us expected. The details of how Nvidia trained two test cars are in a file titled End to End Learning for Self-Driving Cars.
This Week's Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through April 30)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Inside OpenAI, Elon Musk's Wild Plan to Set Artificial Intelligence Free Cade Metz WIRED "In the rarefied world of AI research, the brightest minds aren't driven by--or at least not only by--the next product cycle or profit margin. They want to make AI better, and making AI better doesn't happen when you keep your latest findings to yourself." ROBOTICS: When a Robot Kills, Is It Murder or Product Liability? Ryan Calo Slate "There is a fundamental similarity between the question of whether a robot can be responsible and the question of whether a robot should enjoy rights...We wouldn't say of a driverless car that it possesses a responsibility to keep its passengers safe, only that it is designed to do so. But somehow, we feel comfortable saying that a driverless car is responsible for an accident."
China talents ready for artificial intelligence - China.org.cn
China has rich talent sources and great potential on AI or artificial intelligence thanks to strong mathematics and IT research as well as local firms' expansion into AI, said LinkedIn in a report yesterday after the AlphaGo's winning in a machine-vs-human Go match. There are totally 250,000 people work and research on AI globally, mainly in the United States, Europe, India and China, according to LinkedIn, the world's largest business social network. Besides the eye-catching AlphaGo, the artificial intelligence is already part of people's lives, from applications used in navigation, Siri and Google Translate to robots deployed in manufacturing and stock-advice software. AI technologies have been evolving steadily alongside the development of the Internet, big data, cloud computing and graphic chips. The United States has the most AI talents with the top employers Google, developer of AlphaGo, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Apple.
DBS' mobile-only bank: Open account in a cafe, talk to Virtual Assistant
DBS Bank of Singapore's recently unveiled Digibank, what it claimed is India's first mobile-only bank. Digibank brings together an entire suite of technology – from biometrics to artificial intelligence (AI) – to customers and is a completely paperless, signatureless and branchless bank. While most banks are offering banking facilities through mobile, DBS has said digibank has some unique features. Here are some of those features. Wherever they are, whatever their need, digibank customers can converse with digibank's AI-powered virtual assistant to get their queries answered or banking transactions performed.
Infosys launches artificial intelligence platform Mana ETtech
Software services major Infosys has launched an artificial intelligence platform'Mana' that will help clients drive automation and innovation. The company said that the platform, that brings machine learning together with'deep knowledge of an organisation', will enable businesses to continuously reinvent their system landscapes and lower maintenance cost of assets. Coupled with Aikido service offerings, Mana will help clients capture knowledge while delivering new and delightful experiences to their end users, it said. "Over the last 35 years, Infosys has maintained, operated and managed systems with global clients across every industry. Building on this deep experience, Infosys has recognised the need to bring artificial intelligence to the enterprise in a meaningful and purposeful way," Infosys CEO and Managing Director Vishal Sikka said at Infosys Confluence 2016.
A Statistician's View on Data and Data Science
In an Estimation problem, looking at a data to derive any inference about a'characteristic' of a Population, this approach mainly uses a sample taken at'random' from a collection of these similar items. An'estimate' of that characteristic (also known as a parameter) of the collection (or Universe, Population), is computed from that sample. This estimate is then tested to find out how close it might be to the original parameter, which is usually unknown. Graphical methods such EDA (Exploratory Data Analysis) are also used to study and guess the nature of the characteristic in the population, based on the data from the sample. Sampling is repeated or replicated several times, to reduce the error in the estimate.
VirtusaPolaris and WorkFusion to Deliver Robotic Automation and AI-powered Cognitive Automation to the Financial Services Sector
WIRE)--VirtusaPolaris, the market-facing brand of Virtusa Corporation and Polaris Consulting & Services, Ltd. and a leading worldwide provider of information technology (IT) consulting and outsourcing services, and WorkFusion, the leading smart process automation (SPA) provider, today announced a partnership to deliver new smart automation solutions for the banking and financial services (BFS) market. The combination of VirtusaPolaris' deep BFS industry and process expertise and WorkFusion's cutting edge platform will help clients reduce operational costs, while improving quality, productivity and agility. "Most financial services organizations continue to struggle with inefficient legacy systems that have not kept pace with the change in business and regulations, introducing gaps in process automation that negatively impact efficiency of business operations. Many of these gaps are low complexity high volume routine process steps and most organizations have deployed large operational workforces, frequently offshore, to handle these processes," said Bob Graham, global solutions head, Banking and Financial Services at VirtusaPolaris. "WorkFusion's combination of robotic and cognitive automation supported by VirtusaPolaris' expert consulting and implementation services allow customers to improve quality through greater accuracy and the removal of human error, reduce costs through rapid automation of manual tasks, and accelerate time to market with our proven delivery approach."
Dream: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep.[1] The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, as well as a subject of philosophical and religious interest, throughout recorded history. The scientific study of dreams is called oneirology.[2] Dreams mainly occur in the rapid-eye movement (REM) stage of sleep--when brain activity is high and resembles that of being awake. REM sleep is revealed by continuous movements of the eyes during sleep. At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable.[3] The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes.[3] People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase. The average person has three to five dreams per night, and some may have up to seven;[4] however, most dreams are immediately or quickly forgotten.[5] Dreams tend to last longer as the night progresses. During a full eight-hour night sleep, most dreams occur in the typical two hours of REM.[6] In modern times, dreams have been seen as a connection to the unconscious mind. They range from normal and ordinary to overly surreal and bizarre. Dreams can have varying natures, such as being frightening, exciting, magical, melancholic, adventurous, or sexual. The events in dreams are generally outside the control of the dreamer, with the exception of lucid dreaming, where the dreamer is self-aware.[7]