Zurich-based DeepCode claims that their system -- essentially a tool for analyzing and improving code -- is like Grammarly for programmers. The system, which uses a corpus of 250,000 rules, reads your public and private GitHub repositories and tells you how to fix problems, remain compatible and generally improve your programs. Founded by Veselin Raychev, advisor Martin Vechev and Boris Paskalev, the team has extensive experience in machine learning and AI research. This project is a spin-off from ETH in Switzerland and is a standalone research project turned programming utility. I ran one of my public repositories through the system and received 49 suggestions in 449 files.

Ahold Delhaize is partnering with the Innovation Center for Artificial Intelligence to optimise the company's supply chain and improve the customer experience. In the joint ICAI-Ahold Delhaize industry lab, the Artificial Intelligence for Retail Lab (AIRLab), scientists will conduct research into socially responsible algorithms that can be used to make recommendations to consumers and into transparent AI technology for managing goods flows. The research will take place at Albert Heijn and bol.com, both brands of Ahold Delhaize. In addition, AIRLab will focus on talent development tracks. "Ahold Delhaize, Albert Heijn and bol.com look forward to working with ICAI," said Frans Muller, deputy chief executive officer of Ahold Delhaize.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced the multi-million-pound deal today, which aims to put the UK at the forefront of AI. The deal includes almost £300m of private sector investment and newly allocated government funding for AI research. The announcement follows on from the government's recent Industrial Strategy, in which AI was highlighted as one of the country's four'grand challenges'. The EC strategy paper, released today, focuses heavily on skills, including funding for the training of 8,000 computer science teachers, 1,000 government funded AI PhDs by 2025. Furthermore, the government has committed to developing a global Turing Fellowship programme to attract and retain AI research talent to the UK.

Artificial intelligence has recently experienced increasing attention, following staggering achievements in applications such as self-driving cars. This article shows how the adaptivity and self-learning capability of machine learning tools may add value for asset managers. However, the inherently flexible nature of machine learning methods is also their biggest challenge. It requires that the methods are put in the right context and thoughtfully applied. We are convinced that machine learning will most likely turn out not to be the much-searched Holy Grail, but that it will help quantitative investment managers in further improving their allocation processes.

The Commission is proposing a three-pronged approach to increase public and private investment in AI, prepare for socio-economic changes, and ensure an appropriate ethical and legal framework. This follows European leaders' call for a European approach on AI. The EU (public and private sectors) should increase investments in AI research and innovation by at least EUR 20 billion between 2018 and the end of 2020, according to the Commission's official press release. To support these efforts, the Commission is increasing its investment to EUR 1.5 billion for the period 2018-2020 under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. This investment is expected to trigger an additional EUR 2.5 billion of funding from existing public-private partnerships, for example on big data and robotics.

Last week I attended the 2018 INFORMS Conference on Business Analytics & Operations Research in Baltimore, MD. Among the activities of the conference, several teams of researchers from universities and industries were competing in challenges to show how their work is influencing the world. I had the honor to be among the finalist teams for the 2018 Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics. The Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics was established in 2015 with funding provided by prize winnings awarded to Syngenta in connection with its receipt of the 2015 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences. This year's Challenge asked participants to develop a quantitative framework for predicting corn hybrids performance in new, untested locations.

Business Secretary Greg Clark and Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Matt Hancock (second left) talk with Alistair Cohen (left) and Brent Hoberman, Chairman of the Founders Factory (right), as they meet with artificial intelligence companies at Northcliffe House in Kensington, London as part of the launch for the Artificial Intelligence Sector Deal. Britain wants you to know that even as it stumbles towards Brexit, it's racing ahead on one of the most important technological innovations of our time - artificial intelligence. The U.K. government announced Thursday that it had put together "an AI deal worth more than £1 billion" that includes public and private funding. The money is going towards research and grants, with around £145 million from two foreign venture capital firms going into British, emerging-tech startups. It comes a couple of weeks after France announced its own commitment to AI.

Neanderthals may have died out because they lacked part of the human brain that helps us adapt to change and be sociable. Our ancient cousins had less grey matter in an area vital for memory, thinking and communication skills, suggests a new study. This would have affected their social and cognitive abilities, and could have been a major factor in their demise, scientists said. Neanderthals would have been less able than humans to adapt to climate change by innovating, for example. Researchers scanned the skulls of Neanderthals to assess their brain matter.

On a fine early afternoon in late March a young German-Iranian friend and I walked into the Garage Gallery at the Fire Station in Doha, Qatar - and we wondered. We were there to see the famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's "Laundromat": "A traveling installation", as the official description of the exhibition says, "that brings the current European migrant crisis into sharp focus." We had read before that "the work is centered around a vast makeshift camp near the village of Idomeni, on the border with the Republic of Macedonia. As part of his recently released documentary Human Flow, Ai Weiwei has borne witness to the brutal plight of refugees worldwide." Does the brutal plight of refugees worldwide - those from Syria in particular - need a witness?

One of my favorite Feynman contributions is a now-legendary talk entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," which he delivered at Cal Tech in 1959. You can easily find it online. The "plenty of room" that Feynman referred to is the possibility of putting lots of information, and lots of action, into very small spaces. In the years since, parts of his vision have been realized and surpassed, but not all of it. His central insight, simple yet profound, was that atoms, though very small, are usable building blocks.