MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's military said it had shot down a drone that came close to its Syrian air base at Hmeimim on Saturday and was launched from the Idlib "de-escalation" zone controlled by what Moscow calls "illegal military groups", TASS agency reported.

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Roundup Hello, here are a few bits of AI news for the weekend. You don't always need a ton of cash to buy a wad of GPUs to train your models super quickly. You can do it pretty cheaply on cloud platforms. There's also a robot that can play Where's Waldo (Wally in the UK), and Microsoft's computer that is trying to tell if you've found a joke funny. Public code for training ImageNet super quickly: A group of engineers have managed to train ImageNet to 93 per cent accuracy using hardware rented on public cloud platforms for just $40.

In the last few years, machine learning applications have quietly entered every aspect of life: social media to speech recognition, radiology to retail, warfare to writing articles, coding to customer service, robotics to route optimization. During the 40 year information age, we told computers what to do. With advances in artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning, and faster processing chips we can feed computers giant data sets and they can (in narrow slivers) draw some inferences on their own. As we reported in Ask About AI, the rise of code that learns marks the beginning of a new era of augmented intelligence. It's a great opportunity for us to expand access to a great education and for young people to make a big contribution.

The fast-rising power and sophistication of artificial intelligence is transforming how insurers engage with their customers. It is dramatically enhancing the experience insurance providers can offer their policyholders. Insurtech start-ups Lemonade, Insurify and Spixii, for example, are deploying intelligent virtual assistants to deliver a powerful customer experience and innovative digital services. Using artificial intelligence to delight customers is not the sole preserve of insurtechs. Large insurers, including Allianz, Credit Agricole, PNB MetLife, GEICO and USAA, are also applying artificial intelligence to heighten the customer experience delivered by their digital distribution channels.

Microcontrollers (MCUs) have a memory range of 1-megabyte to 4-megabytes, so AI in a MCU should be as useful as a jellyfish or a snail. Not much intelligence would you say? Well, let's look at it twice: Snail and jellyfish can feed themselves, move, reproduce and hide when they feel threatened. They manage complex interactions with the environment, recognize patterns and control their body to create motion. This level of intelligence is enough for simple devices, like thermostats, vacuum cleaners, and doorbells. The idea here is to have devices that make micro-decisions based on the sensing of their environment. A device with a snail brain could at least recognize some micro-patterns, the same way a snail identifies what to eat and what to fear. Imagine a door lock identifying an attempt to tamper with it, or a washing machine defining its program by the color of your clothes. Animals, even ones with lower intelligence, are incredibly skilled at one thing that seems to evade computers: Interaction.

Former chess champion Garry Kasparov sounded the alarm about Vladimir Putin's regime in his 2015 book Winter Is Coming. "As you can guess, I'm a big fan," Kasparov says in Episode 321 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I recently had a great experience touring some of the spots when they were shooting in Belfast, taking my wife and my daughter, who are also big fans of the show." Kasparov sees many parallels between life in Westeros and real-world politics. He says that Americans--like our fictional counterparts--are so consumed with petty squabbles that we've ignored a gathering threat.

New research from ESET reveals that three in four IT decision makers (75%) believe that AI and ML are the silver bullet to solving their cybersecurity challenges. In the past year, the amount of content published in marketing materials, media and social media on the role of AI in cybersecurity has grown enormously. ESET surveyed 900 IT decision makers across the US, UK and Germany on their opinions and attitudes to AI and ML in response to this growing hype. The findings showed that US IT decision makers are most likely to consider the technologies as a panacea to solve their cybersecurity challenges, compared to their European counterparts – 82% compared to 67% in the UK and 66% in Germany. The majority of respondents said that AI and ML would help their organization detect and respond to threats faster (79%) and help solve a skills shortage (77%). "If the past decade has taught us anything, it's that some things do not have an easy solution – especially in cyberspace where the playing field can shift in a matter of minutes.

Fresh off winning a major 5G hardware supply contract with Verizon, Ericsson announced today that it is increasing its investments in the United States to speed deployments of 5G, AI, and automation technologies in North America. Under the plan, Ericsson says that it will hire more U.S. personnel for its R&D and manufacturing initiatives, as well as shortening timelines between new products' introduction and delivery to customers. "The United States is our largest market," explained Ericsson CEO Börje Ekholm, "accounting for a quarter of Ericsson's business over the last seven years. To serve the demand of these fast-moving service providers, we are strengthening our investment in the U.S. to be even closer to our customers and meet their accelerated 5G deployment plans." On the R&D side, Ericsson says it will expand the work of a recently opened 5G chip design center in Austin, Texas, as well as opening a new baseband software development center this year, collectively supporting nearly 300 employees.

Our survey mission has reached the outer perimeter of Galaxy W2246-0526. We rode our bubble of space through 12 and a half billion light years in 7.2 seconds. Took a bit longer than calculated. Traces of minor chemical adjustments in the organic passengers have occurred which are being monitored. Unease is apparent within the arrival pod as we await inflation of Habitat One. Some, like Judge Bulbous, have been pulled away from political turmoil back home only to be riding in close quarters with political rivals who are on this journey. "Watch Csaynik take credit for anything we find out here…" chuckled Senator Pretyman moments after we got here. She's one of the more vocal organics who can't accept that President Csaynik is the first "artificially" intelligent president of the U.S. ever elected. I would caution that more trouble is likely to come from the ego-driven nature of our organic crew members than from a weakness in their physiology. And in so cautioning, I will restate that which I said before we left the Milky Way; intergalactic voyages should be conducted by self-repairing artintels* like myself and our mission Alpha. Hard to believe this galaxy was once the most luminous galaxy known, putting out 10,000 times the energy of the Milky Way. The perpetual energy generation that we've come to observe seems completely self-contained near the core of the galaxy. One might say "disturbingly" dark. My examination of Alpha reveals tampering from outside. Concerned, being the only other artintel aboard Resolution, I run the same diagnostic on myself. I, too, have been compromised. Playback reveals the most likely perpetrator, who infected me and Alpha by touching our skin and releasing microlegions to drill into us, interfering with cognitive and motor functions. Senator Pretyman is arrested and an autoguard activated at Detainment. What made that organic conservative think it was okay to inject updates into artintels? Human power over sentient life was abolished with the 47th Amendment. By the time the home world's finished with her, Ms. Pretyman won't even be allowed to vote! I've given Ms. Pretyman a drink from her own subversive swamp in the form of an injected immune-weakening microbe that will leave her susceptible to ailments of all variety. Tragically, it might even cause her demise. Unlike organic physicians, I've not taken an oath to do no harm. The organics say that an oath taken by one of us is no better than an oath taken by a parrot. I can do all the harm I please. I can't find a way to save Mrs. Ichnida. She's gone into a sort of coma. However Alpha and I should be good for several days beyond their deaths.