In the context of Europe, the UK is one of the leading places for AI adoption. "I would say it's the UK and then Germany and France," explains Ben Lorica, chief data scientist at O'Reilly Media. "If you were to look at the world as a whole, I think at this moment at least, because of the nature of the technology involved, the US and China are considered the leaders." This is because a lot of the emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, rely on massive amounts of data and computing to be successful. In these two markets (US and China), companies can scale up to many users right away, because of the availability of larger datasets and computational power.

Bird populations are plummeting, thanks to logging, agriculture, and climate change. Scientists keep track of species by recording their calls, but even the best computer programs can't reliably distinguish bird calls from other sounds. Now, thanks to a bit of crowdsourcing and a lot of artificial intelligence (AI), researchers say they have something to crow about. AI algorithms can be as finicky as finches, often requiring manual calibration and retraining for each new location or species. So an interdisciplinary group of researchers launched the Bird Audio Detection challenge, which released hours of audio from environmental monitoring stations around Chernobyl, Ukraine, which they happened to have access to, as well as crowdsourced recordings, some of which came from an app called Warblr.

This September, a study by the Stanford University School of Medicine and Unanimous AI found that a combination of human and machine intelligence could offer more accurate diagnoses than human doctors alone. Here's the interesting part: the swarm was also more accurate than intelligent software alone by a significant 22 per cent. So, instead of replacing medical professionals, AI can act as a helpful assistant. As well as more accurate diagnoses, how else can AI augment healthcare services? Every two years, the amount of available data in the world doubles.

A 16th-century scroll which was burned and fused together hundreds of years ago can finally be read thanks to a new X-ray technique. Cardiff University experts deployed the scanning method to'virtually unravel' the long-lost document which could not be opened without destroying it. The scans reveal'blobs' in the texts which can then be deciphered using advanced computer algorithms. The reading of the scroll, which had been charred and damaged centuries ago, revealed records of a country house in Tudor England. The researchers' technique, which involves collaborators from the UK and across the world, firstly involves using X-ray tomography.

A man who broadcast part of a pay-per-view fight on his phone has received thousands of pounds worth of fines, despite not actually broadcasting a single minute of the fight itself. The case has prompted industry warnings about the free live streams set to spread across Facebook and Twitter ahead of Saturday's fight between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229. Josh Mellor said he had no idea that he was breaking the law when streaming several minutes of the pre-fight coverage of a boxing match using Periscope on his smartphone. "I went round to my friend's house to watch a pay-per-view boxing match and while we were waiting for the fight to start I started scrolling through Periscope," Mr Mellor told The Independent. "I'd heard in the pub, and from friends, that you could watch free live streams of the fight and wondered how as we'd paid to watch it. Whilst on Periscope, I saw a number of streams and while exploring I clicked the'Go Live' button. I streamed the pre-fight coverage from my mate's TV for a few minutes before quitting the app."

Artificial intelligence (also known as AI) is becoming part of our lives increasingly every day. You might use a home assistant like Alexa, Siri on your iPhone, or work in a job that uses elements of AI, chances are you would have encountered it before, whether you realise it or not. In short, AI is software that can learn, adapt and think, similar to the human brain. Get our free ebook on how the Soviet Union became Putin's Russia. But unlike the human brain, AI isn't affected by feelings like boredom, pressure, and fatigue. And that's how it beats humanity -- by remaining untouched by outside influences.

Last time we saw UC Berkeley's Salto-1P, the robot was bouncing all over the place, able to hop continuously without any trouble. It was impressive to watch, especially when it occasionally exploded itself. But of course the Berkeley researchers had long-term plans to take the robot from generally bouncy to bouncy with a level of control that would allow them to teach it some sophisticated tricks. We saw some of those tricks this week at IROS 2018 in Spain, where Justin Yim presented a new video of Salto-1P turning some office furniture into a bouncy house. Salto-1P's hardware is the same as last year.

The German-French Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) lander captured this photo of asteroid Ryugu during landing operations on Oct. 3, 2018. The lander's shadow is visible at upper right. A small Japanese probe landed an observation robot on the asteroid Ryugu Tuesday night in mission to study the solar system's origins. The box-shaped lander created by Germany and France's space agencies is called MASCOT or Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout. It was launched from the Hayabusa2 probe and captured numerous photos of the asteroid located more than 186 miles from Earth. "The camera worked perfectly," said Ralf Jaumann, a planetary scientist with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) that built MASCOT, in a statement.

XPO Logistics is to deploy 5,000 "intelligent robots" throughout its logistics sites in North America and Europe. The robots, designed to "collaborate with humans", will supplement XPO's existing workforce and support future growth, said the company in statement. XPO has a strategic partnership with robotics manufacturer GreyOrange that makes XPO the exclusive logistics provider for use of its robots in North America, the UK and eight other European countries. Bradley Jacobs, chief executive officer of XPO Logistics, said, "We've developed our logistics technology to integrate the latest intelligent automation and adapt it at lightning speed. This allows us to dramatically improve fulfillment time and cut costs. "The addition of 5,000 collaborative robots will make our logistics operations safer and more productive in picking, packing and sortation.

Eos Venture Partners' strategic insurtech fund has made its first two investments. The UK-based specialist venture capital fund, working through its debut EVP 1 fund, committed early financing to Concirrus, a marine insurance analytics platform and Digital Fineprint (DFP) which makes an SME-focused lead generation and underwriting product. Concirrus uses software with artificial intelligence tech to help marine insurers move to behavioral based underwriting. The software provides behavioral analysis that considers hundreds of factors including a ship's location and speed to offer more accurate underwriting models. It accesses and interprets vast datasets, such as vessel statistics, movements, cargo and machinery information, and combines this with historical claims information to reveal the behaviors that correlate with underwriting and claims.