A new research centre opened its doors Wednesday at Britain's Cambridge University to look at the implications--good and bad--of artificial intelligence. Professor Stephen Hawking, who was due to speak at the centre's launch later on Wednesday, said: "The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. "We do not yet know which. The research done by this centre will be crucial to the future of our civilisation and of our species," he said. Making sure AI is used to benefit humanity is the express aim of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), funded by a 10 million (11.2 million-euro, 12.3-million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust. A collaboration between the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Berkeley, California, the CFI will see researchers from multiple disciplines work with industry representatives and policymakers on projects ranging from regulation of autonomous weapons to the implications of AI for democracy. Its practical applications can help us to tackle important social problems, as well as easing many tasks in everyday life," said Margaret Boden, a professor of cognitive sciences and consultant to the CFI.

With an estimated 50 million users swiping on Tinder every month, it can be easy for your profile to be overlooked. But Tinder has introduced a new feature that could help you get noticed in a sea of profiles. Tinder Boost is a new premium feature that places paid users at the top for 30 minutes, giving them up to 10 times more profile views than the standard method. After being announced earlier this month, the update is now being rolled out for Tinder users worldwide over the next few days. Tinder will ask users if they'd like to activate Boost while swiping through profiles in the app.

Today on Mars, a 13-year-old American robot will look up from its crater to photograph the arrival of a new European companion. It's a solar system first: No robot on the the surface of another planet has ever been there to greet a new space traveler. The newest arrival, named Schiaparelli, will be doing its part to ensure that someday, humans will be the ones watching and waving as ships come and go. The European Space Agency's Schiaparelli lander is touching down today in Meridiani Planum, the same area where the Opportunity rover has been trundling along since 2003. Opportunity is about 10 miles outside of Schiaparelli's landing area, and will try to photograph the parachute as the European robot plummets Marsward.

Columnist Ed Baig reviews Pixel, which features the high-IQ Google Assistant and a competitive, high-end smartphone camera. Guests inspect the new Pixel phone by Google after it was introduced at a Google product event in San Francisco, Calif., Oct 4, 2016. SAN FRANCISCO -- When Google's new smartphone goes on sale this week, no one is expecting an iPhone-like hit -- at least not right away. Despite a splashy launch and a "Made by Google" marketing campaign, not to mention some positive reviews, the Pixel is still taking on the likes of the wildly popular iPhone. Samsung's recent spate of troubles may boost Pixel sales with defecting Note and Galaxy owners, but not enough to make a serious dent in the high-end smartphone market, analysts say.

Contact centers across Latin America are looking to transform their customer service solutions by implementing new channels, such as chat, social media, email, video, or updated voice services, which are still hugely relevant in the region. Within that scope, speech recognition technology is often seen as a means to cut costs, improve customer satisfaction, and increase productivity in the call center. But are these solutions worth it? Speech recognition is performed by a machine or program that can identify words or phrases in spoken language and convert them into a machine-readable format. Beyond interactive voice response (IVR) systems, some of the more popular call center speech recognition applications are call routing, speech-to-text, voice dialing, and voice search.

Researchers at Houston Methodist have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) software that reliably interprets mammograms, assisting doctors with a quick and accurate prediction of breast cancer risk. According to a new study published online Aug. 29 in Cancer, the computer software intuitively translates patient charts into diagnostic information at 30 times human speed and with 99 percent accuracy. "This software intelligently reviews millions of records in a short amount of time, enabling us to determine breast cancer risk more efficiently using a patient's mammogram. This has the potential to decrease unnecessary biopsies," said Stephen T. Wong, Ph.D., P.E., chair of the Department of Systems Medicine and Bioengineering at Houston Methodist Research Institute. The team led by Wong and Jenny C. Chang, M.D., director of the Houston Methodist Cancer Center used the AI software to evaluate mammograms and pathology reports of 500 breast cancer patients.

Apple is set to reveal a whole new host of Macs at an event at the end of the month. The company will be showing off new computers at an event on 27 October, according to Recode. The event has been long expected – a number of Mac models have gone without updates for many years, and the company has only really introduced one new computer in the last year. That lack of activity has meant that many experts and recommendation sites have warned people not to buy the computers, because updates are expected for so long. Apple's Mac Pro has lagged particularly in that respect – not being updated for more than three years, despite Apple making fun of claims that it couldn't innovate when it released the computer. In recent months, computer specialists of the project MV-IT systems have built a Boeing 737-800 cockpit and reconstructed part of the cabin with 15 seats.

Gartner, Inc. today highlighted the top technology trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2017. Analysts presented their findings during the sold-out Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place here through Thursday. Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with substantial disruptive potential that is just beginning to break out of an emerging state into broader impact and use or which are rapidly growing trends with a high degree of volatility reaching tipping points over the next five years. "Gartner's top 10 strategic technology trends for 2017 set the stage for the Intelligent Digital Mesh," said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "The first three embrace'Intelligence Everywhere,' how data science technologies and approaches are evolving to include advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence allowing the creation of intelligent physical and software-based systems that are programmed to learn and adapt. The next three trends focus on the digital world and how the physical and digital worlds are becoming more intertwined. The last four trends focus on the mesh of platforms and services needed to deliver the intelligent digital mesh."

Pisa, 11-16 July We are pleased to announce the launch of the first edition of the International Summer School on'The Regulation of Robotics in Europe: Ethical, Legal and Economic Implications', which will be held in Pisa (Tuscany, Italy) from 11th to 16th July, 2016. This unique initiative, funded by the European Commission through the Jean Monnet Program, stems from the successful experience of the RoboLaw project (www.robolaw.eu) For further information please click HERE Bruxelles, September 24th, 2014 RoboLaw enters the European Parliament RoboLaw project coordinator Prof. Erica Palmerini and RoboLaw researcher Dr. Andrea Bertolini have been invited to present a paper on the main findings of the RoboLaw project at the workshop'Upcoming issues of EU law', organised by the JURI Committee of the European Parliament. The paper presented, entitled'REGULATING ROBOTICS: A CHALLENGE FOR EUROPE' is available here Bruxelles, September 24th, 2014 RoboLaw meets NEERI at the European Commission Prof. Erica Plamerni and Dr. Andrea Bertolini will participate in a meeting with the coordinator and the researchers of NEERI - Neuro-Enhancement: Responsible Research and Innovation, an FP7 project about human enhancement. The objective of the meeting is to discuss possible future collaborations and networking.

A small robot probe could make history today by becoming the first European spacecraft to survive a landing on Mars - and it is likely to be a bumpy ride. Scientists will be crossing their fingers as Schiaparelli flies itself on autopilot through the Martian atmosphere, which is expected to welcome the probe with stormy weather. The probe will take images of Mars and conduct scientific measurements on the surface, but its main purpose is to test technology for a future European Mars rover. A small robot probe could make history today by becoming the first European spacecraft to survive a landing on Mars, and it might be a bumpy ride. Scientists will be crossing their fingers as Schiaparelli (artist's impression) flies itself on autopilot through the Martian atmosphere, which is expected to welcome the probe with stormy weather You can watch the livestream on MailOnline, at Esa's website, or via its livestream channel.