Over the past seven days, Nissan has welcomed media from all over Europe to sit inside its prototype Leaf and see for themselves how it fares on a pre-set route around east London. I was there to ride shotgun with Tetsuya Iijima, General Manager of Autonomous Drive Development at Nissan, through the streets of Beckton, onto the A13 dual carriageway and back to the ExCel, a short distance from London City Airport and across the river from The O2. It's not the first time the company has conducted a trial with the car -- they've tested it in Japan and Silicon Valley before -- but European roads pose a unique challenge thanks to an abundance of pedestrian (zebra) crossings, roundabouts and the unpredictable nature of London's drivers. Before fully autonomous Leafs can be sold in glitzy showrooms, Nissan needs to prove it can master each of these obstacles without error. From a distance, the autonomous Leaf looks like any other Leaf you'd see on London's roads. Dotted around the car are four lasers, five radars and 12 cameras, most of which have been seamlessly integrated into the bodywork, that provide the car with 20 centimetre accuracy.

WhatsApp is working on a new feature that businesses can use to contact customers directly, according to a new report. The feature, which is being tested by a number of Y Combinator startups, is designed as a way for the the messaging app to make money. Businesses could end up paying WhatsApp for the ability to get in touch with potential customers, according to Reuters, which adds that the Facebook-owned firm is wary of spam potentially becoming an issue. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, ...

Ex Machina has a simple story dealing with a deeply complex and philosophical topic: namely what makes humans human. The increasingly omnipresent Oscar Isaac plays billionaire Nathan Bates, genius creator of'Google' - my mistake - 'BlueBook', the world's "leading search engine". Bates lives in the middle of the American wilderness (in reality, a very picturesque Norway) and in a property that actually exists (BlueBook the Juvet Hotel). He is leading a one-man research project into the development of an Artificial Intelligence. Leading neatly on from the recent Cumbur-busting "The Imitation Game" the eccentric and erratic Nathan needs to share his work with someone external in order to perform'The Turing Test' - the test to determine if a machine can genuinely pass itself off as human to another human.

My wife used to love reading but since her stroke has aphasia, no speech, limited vision and limited dexterity in her left hand only. She can select TV channels on a remote but she cannot read a short news story let alone a novel, so she listens to the radio and watches a lot of TV. I thought of getting her a Kindle e-reader but they don't seem to do text to speech any more. A shop assistant suggested a tablet with a text-to-speech app. It needs a really simple interface or my wife will not be able to use it without assistance.

NEW YORK; Mar. 8, 2017 – Rentokil, a global pest control company based in the UK, is piloting an Artificial Intelligence app developed by Accenture to help its almost 5,000 pest control technicians fight bugs faster for customers. The solution utilizes a partnership announced last year, when Accenture and Google joined forces to bring to market industry-specific solutions that help clients use cloud, mobility, machine learning and analytics to advance their digital transformation agenda and improve business performance. Rentokil technicians are some of the best trained in the industry but even they come across unusual insects that they can't identify. As part of a larger rollout of new Android mobile devices and apps to its field service workers, Rentokil took advantage of Accenture's alliance with Google to solve their business challenge through an innovative mobile app that identifies pests and automatically presents information, customer recommendations, and treatment plans. The Android app, called PestID and built by Accenture Mobility, part of Accenture Digital, uses Google's CloudML image classification technology to help field technicians identify and treat pest problems quickly and efficiently.

Mumbai: As pro vice-chancellor (product and partner development) of the University of Sunderland in the UK, Prof. John MacIntyre's brief includes covering research, innovation, knowledge exchange, employer engagement and regional economy. Since 1996, MacIntyre has also been the editor-in-chief of Neural Computing and Applications--an international scientific peer- reviewed journal published by Springer Verlag. In an interview, he talks about why artificial intelligence (AI) needs to be looked at more positively and how AI can contribute to society. MacIntyre will also address EmTech India 2017--an emerging tech conference organized by Mint and MIT Technology Review--on 9 March in New Delhi. You completed your PhD in applied AI, focussing on the use of neural networks in predictive maintenance.

Uber will stop using its "Greyball" tool to evade law enforcement efforts, the ride-hail company announced Wednesday, just days after it defended the controversial program as necessary to protect its drivers from harm. "We have started a review of the different ways this technology has been used to date," Uber's chief security officer Joe Sullivan wrote in a blog post. "In addition, we are expressly prohibiting its use to target action by local regulators going forward." Uber's backtracking comes less than a week after the New York Times revealed that the company had been serving up an alternative (and non-functioning) version of its app to public officials in cities where its service violated regulations. It also comes shortly after the company reversed course on applying for a permit to test self-driving cars in California.

A technology initially used to fight traffic fines is now helping refugees with legal claims. When Joshua Browder developed DoNotPay he called it "the world's first robot lawyer". It's a chatbot - a computer program that carries out conversations through texts or vocal commands - and it uses Facebook Messenger to gather information about a case before spitting out advice and legal documents. It was originally designed to help people wiggle out of parking or speeding tickets. But now Browder - a 20-year-old British man currently studying at Stanford University - has adapted his bot to help asylum seekers.

Written by Tom Mayor, national strategy leader for consulting firm KPMG's Industrial Manufacturing practice, and Todd Dubner, a principal in KPMG's Strategy practice. This is one in a series of periodic guest columns by industry thought leaders. Stop and think for a moment: How do you program a Class 8 truck to drive down the interstate? How do you go from there to instructing it to maneuver a 53-foot trailer in an urban area? How many millions or perhaps billions of lines of computer code would be required to figure out all the decisions necessary to make these day-to-day driving functions successful in an autonomous vehicle?

SAN FRANCISCO - Google paraded executives from Disney, Verizon,The Home Depot and others out today to boast about the infrastructure and enterprise readiness of its cloud services. The kickoff to Google Cloud Next showcased companies that are using Google's capabilities for artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics and offsite data storage. The main message was that Google is enterprise savvy and can deliver superior results to competitors thanks to its heavy investment in smarter computing. Google describes the conference as "an immersive event that brings together executives, customers, partners, developers, IT decision makers and Google engineers to build the future of the cloud." Running through Friday at Moscone Center West here, opening day also featured news about a new partnership with SAP and the acquisition of Kaggle.