DeepMind is an artificial intelligence lab in London that creates what are known as general purpose self-learning algorithms. The company, acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported 400 million, is best-known for creating software „agents" that have mastered games like…

Minecraft has gained a tool that lets artificial intelligence experiments be carried out in its virtual worlds. The Malmo platform will be offered free of charge to research institutions as well as the general public.

DeepMind is an artificial intelligence lab in London that creates what are known as general purpose self-learning algorithms. The company, acquired by Google in 2014 for a reported 400 million, is best-known for creating software "agents" that have mastered games like Go and Space Invaders but it also wants to apply its technology to healthcare. Mustafa Suleyman, DeepMind cofounder and head of DeepMind Health, gave a talk at the King's Fund in London this week where he explained how the company is working with the NHS and what kind of benefits patients can expect to see in the long run. The company operates independently of Google and creates software that can think for itself. In order to create this kind of AI software, DeepMind draws on huge data sets that can help to teach DeepMind's AI how to perform certain tasks.

During the peak of the dot-com bubble, you'd be forgiven for thinking prefix investing was a legitimate tactic. A company could receive a nice jump in valuation by adding an "e-" prefix or ".com" suffix. Just being awake to the potential of the World Wide Web was enough to indicate to investors that a company might take advantage of it. What many of those suffixes and prefixes missed however was a detailed plan of attack. The internet was young and full of promises that were either technically or logistically impossible to fulfill.

According to TechSci Research report, "United States Artificial Intelligence Market, By Application, By Region, By End User Competition Forecast & Opportunities, 2011-2021", the artificial intelligence market in the US is projected to grow at a CAGR of 75% during 2016 - 2021 on account of growing artificial intelligence technology adoption in consumer electronic devices, research and developmental activities in healthcare industry, unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous cars, etc. Moreover, venture capital investments in this sector, are in full swing, especially in the US. The country is witnessing numerous start-ups sprouting every year, backed by various angel investors and venture capitalists. Major venture capitalist active in the United States artificial intelligence market include Accel, General Catalyst Partners, GV, Work-Bench, Promus Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Khosla Ventures, Samsung Electronics, Wipro Technologies, Samsung Global Innovation Centre, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Formation 8, among others. In 2015, western region of the United States dominated the artificial intelligence market of the country, on account of presence of major end users such as cyber security solution providers, healthcare institutes, government headquarters, etc., in the region.

As I write this, I'm listening to music written and performed by a robot that was built by Brain.fm to help me focus. I think it might be working, giving me a tiny buzz. It could of course be a placebo effect. In fact, the fact that I even wrote that last three-word sentence should tell you something about the attitude in which I approached Brain.fm's Brain.fm is a new audio startup out of Chicago that produces music written by artificial intelligence that promises to get your brain into one of several desired states, from deep sleep to focused work.

It's odd holding a minute's silence for a dead person who you never knew anything about, especially at a tech show where you can see messages from their AI reincarnation flashing up on a massive screen behind the very-much-alive woman who has made this whole strange scene possible. Is this what a 21st-century Dr Frankenstein looks like? Except now, instead of stitching body parts together to recreate life, what we're seeing is found fragments of the deceased's personality put through a form of machine learning to create a semblance of their life after death. Very recently however, Luka was adapted in a brand new way, to include a chatbot based on a real human being--one who just so happens to be dead. It's this ghost-in-the-machine that has the audience spellbound, as Luka's cofounder Eugenia Kuyda explains how text messages, social media conversations, and other sources of information on the deceased were grafted onto an existing AI platform.

SINGAPORE: At a time when radicalism is on the rise and people are concerned that their city might join the list of those tainted by terror, safety and security are topmost on the minds of government customers, Hewlett Packard Enterprise told Channel NewsAsia. The US-based IT giant is thus hoping to tackle these issues with a tool to help governments better make sense of the huge amounts of information being shared online by citizens, in the form of a Citizen Insights Dashboard. The tool, which is currently in beta, will be showcased for the first time at the World Cities Summit (WCS) held in Singapore from Sunday (Jul 10). It was developed in the city-state since April by a team led by Mr Jason Tan, director of HSE Insights Lab Singapore spearheading the project. More than just surveillance for security, the dashboard looks to make sense of posts made by citizens on social media to understand their thoughts and what they care about.

"Because we'll need something tasty to swill when our robot overlords finally come into their full artificial intelligence, a company in the UK is attempting to figure out if robots can help humans brew a better beer," reports The Consumerist website. "While there won't be robots stirring batches of wort or sorting hops, artificial intelligence will play a big part in London-based firm IntelligentX's plan to brew beer, CNET reports. And, you can found out that information by clicking here.

Millions of people use the world of Minecraft to bring their 3D visions to life, but Microsoft wants to take the creative utopia to the next level. A blog post by Minecraft's developers Mojang said that Microsoft's Project Malmo platform is now open to the public. The system was previously available to a limited group of computer scientists in a private preview, all of whom had a focus on artificial intelligence. According to Mojang, any developer can use Project Malmo's open source toolset to build artificial intelligence solutions that can be tested in Minecraft. Vast levels of coding experience are not necessary, as the Project Malmo team believes that the system is accessible for novice coders and above.