In early 2017, we published the German AI Landscape, and later in 2017, we created the European AI Landscape. We determined that London, Paris, and Berlin were strong individual hubs for Artificial Intelligence. However, we wanted to know how cumulative Europe compares to the global AI landscape. We started by collecting a list of over 7,500 companies claiming to build Artificial Intelligence solutions. We cleaned the data, sorted, and analyzed it.

Most of us don't think about what has happened behind the scenes to prepare our container of milk or fruit juice as it cools us down on a warm summer day. Literally billions of drink cartons each year are cut, printed, assembled, filled and sealed in assembly lines before you pick up the one that was destined to be yours. But this is all far from mind as we pop open the container and drink the contents down. However, SIG, one of the world's largest providers of packaging systems for the food and beverage industry, is always thinking about this process and how to make it better and more efficient. So is its chief software analytics provider, GE Digital, which deploys its Predix internet of things software platform to optimize the carton maker's manufacturing process across 400 factories in 65 countries.

Two robots delivering abortion pills at a protest in Belfast have been confiscated by police. The robots were part of an initiative by the group Women on Waves, who claimed that the country's "mediaeval" anti-abortion laws were being broken because the so-called abortion robots were being operated from the Netherlands. "We try to find legal loopholes to draw attention to laws that violate women's rights," Rebecca Gomperts, a spokesperson for Women on Waves, told The Independent. "We've done it before with a ship and a drone to help women who cannot legally get an abortion in their country." One of the small remote controlled vehicles was seized by police before the protest, however a second was deployed after it was hidden by the protestors.

The Google Assistant was the star of Google I/O for the second year in a row. Now that the technology has been available for well over a year, Google is adding numerous features that will expand the AI's reach in Google's quest to dominate your home. In other words, expect to be talking to your phone a lot more in the coming years. Getting voice answers Google Home or your phone is fine and all, but sometimes it helps to have a visual aid. Google is leveraging Chromecast to do just that.

AI is poised to revolutionize medicine. An overview of the field, with selected applications in ophthalmology. From the back of the eye to the front, artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to give ophthalmologists new automated tools for diagnosing and treating ocular diseases. This transformation is being driven in part by a recent surge in attention to AI's medical potential from big players in the digital world like Google and IBM. But, in ophthalmic AI circles, com puterized analytics are being viewed as the path toward more efficient and more objective ways to interpret the flood of images that modern eye care practices produce, according to ophthalmologists involved in these efforts. The most immediately promising computer algorithms are in the field of retinal diseases.

This September, delivery drones will begin to fly the friendly skies of Vanuatu. And this isn't a one-shot demonstration, like many of the stunts we've seen from the likes of Amazon and Google. This is an attempt to make drones part of the medical infrastructure. The South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, a string of 83 volcanic islands spread over 1600 kilometers (995 miles), has just issued a "request for tender" to drone companies around the world. The companies are invited to submit bids for bringing vaccines to scattered hospitals and health clinics on three islands.

In the AI arms race, Google's I/O conference is akin to Russia's Victory Day parade -- an annual, carefully-orchestrated pullback of the curtains hiding otherwise-secret projects, designed to showcase technical prowess and achievements. This years I/O highlight was Duplex, Google Assistant feature that-- using recurrent neural-network-based AI (and a telephone) -- will schedule appointments for you. To demonstrate, Duplex called two businesses: a hair-salon and a restaurant. With lifelike voices and natural conversation flow -- including appropriate disfluencies (the technical term for "hmms," "uh's", etc.) --Duplex appeared to fool both humans into thinking a living, breathing, potential customer was on the line. By displaying behavior indistinguishable from that of a human, some think Duplex could pass the Turing test.

Apple has prevented Telegram from updating its app ever since Russian authorities ordered its removal from the App Store, the CEO of the popular messaging app has revealed. Telegram has been banned in Russia since April after the app refused to provide decryption keys to the country's security agencies, which would have allowed them to monitor the communications of Telegram users. "We believe we did the only possible thing, preserving the right of our users to privacy in a troubled country," Telegram boss Pavel Durov said in a statement on Telegram on Thursday, 31 May. While Russia makes up only 7 per cent of Telegram's user base, Apple is restricting updates for all Telegram users around the world since mid-April." Mr Durov added that issues with features like stickers were unable to be fixed, despite an update being available. The inability to update the iOS app also means that Telegram is unable to properly comply with GDPR for its users in the EU, Mr Durov said.

Ireland is witnessing a new age of technological and creative innovation with Cork, Dublin and Galway ranking highest in terms of new ways of sharing, creating and innovating respectively. This is according to the New Renaissance Hotspots Report, commissioned by Huawei and authored independently by the Institute of Arts and Ideas and Kjaer Global. The in-depth analysis scored cities based on key indicators, such as the number of creative and knowledge-based jobs, levels of engagement with digital creativity and cultural activities, as well as the diversity of integration with new technologies. It also considered how well cities were prepared for the future, analysing the number of graduates in key creative and technology-based fields and looking at applications for patents in ICT. The study predicts that the New Renaissance will be responsible for the creation of more than 1.1 million jobs across Europe by 2025 and 1.47 million jobs by 2030.

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence or AI has immense potential. In the next few years, it will revolutionize every field of our life, including healthcare. The technology has sent vast waves across the sector, powered by the growing availability of healthcare data and the fast progress of analytic procedures. Due to its power of transforming healthcare, there have been active discussions of whether AI will take the place of physicians/doctors in the future. One thing is for sure that even if AI will not replace physicians/doctors, it can surely help them tackle key issues in the healthcare system.