Europe
Drone over Heathrow was 'wingspan away' from collision with jet
Two more near-misses between drones and passenger planes at UK airports have been reported by aviation authorities, including one a "wingspan away" from a jet landing at Heathrow. Pilots have called for a clampdown on drone use after a spate of incidents. Among the latest six to be investigated and verified by the UK Airprox Board, which monitors the threat of midair collisions, three were in the most serious bracket of risk, one involving a small light aircraft and two involving larger passenger planes. The closest calls came in late September as an Airbus A319, which typically carry up to 180 passengers, landed at Heathrow, and two days later as a turboprop commuter plane, believed to be a LoganAir flight to Scotland, left Manchester airport. The pilot at Heathrow reported a drone helicopter hovering close to his flight path, and was unable to take evasive action as the drone passed less than 30 metres away from his A319.
Artificial Intelligence News: Artificial Intelligence News Issue 27
In this special guest feature, Dave O'Flanagan, CEO and co-founder of Boxever, outlines how airlines are leveraging big data and predictive capabilities to transform how they engage with customers. Dave is the CEO and co-founder of Boxever, a data science and omni-channel personalization platform for travel companies. The subprime financial crisis revealed that our data is only as good as our ability to analyze and understand it. AI will be necessary to helping prevent the next crisis before it happens. Marco Scirea, a PhD student at the IT University of Copenhagen, won the best paper award at the EvoMUSART conference for his research on music composition using artificial intelligence.
Intelligent Machines: Do we really need to fear AI? - BBC News
Picture the scenario - a sentient machine is "living" in the US in the year 2050 and starts browsing through the US constitution. Having read it, it decides that it wants the opportunity to vote. Oh, and it also wants the right to procreate. Pretty basic human rights that it feels it should have now it has human-level intelligence. "Do you give it the right to vote or the right to procreate because you can't do both?" asks Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington.
Watch Microsoft's Seeing AI help a blind person navigate life
In a span of two and a half hours, Microsoft packed a lot into the opening keynote of its Build 2016 conference. But it was the last video shown that seem to have the biggest impact on many of the viewers at home: the introduction of an AI that helps one of its blind developers "see." At the very end of its keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reiterated that he wants technology to enhance the ways humans communicate. Though the many chat bots he introduced earlier seems technologically "smart," the framework behind it still needs the help of developers to continue improving on what has already been built. Some of the biggest names in tech are coming to TNW Conference in Amsterdam this May.
The real face of artificial intelligence: Why it's is already all around us
Artificial intelligence (A.I. as many refer to it) is quickly becoming our reality. And even though its technology is all around us, many of us don't understand what that technology is. The "misconception" about artificial intelligence, is that it's a "robot," says Tim Urban, whose stick-figure-filled explainer on the technology has been read by more than 4 million people on his website, Wait But Why. The robot, however, is merely the "container" for the artificial intelligence, Urban told Olivia Stern for "Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist." "The A.I. is the software inside the container. The A.I. is, in particular, software that can make decisions."
Time to teach ethics to artificial intelligence The Japan Times
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY โ Last month, AlphaGo, a computer program specially designed to play the game go, caused shock waves among aficionados when it defeated Lee Sidol, one of the world's top-ranked professional players, winning a five-game tournament by a score of 4-1. Why, you may ask, is that news? Twenty years have passed since the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and we all know computers have improved since then. But Deep Blue won through sheer computing power, using its ability to calculate the outcomes of more moves to a deeper level than even a world champion can. Go is played on a far larger board (19 by 19 squares, compared to eight by eight for chess) and has more possible moves than there are atoms in the universe, so raw computing power was unlikely to beat a human with a strong intuitive sense of the best moves.
Proposed New York 'textalyser' law would let police check if drivers have been using mobile phones
Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display
Singer: Google's AlphaGo and the perils of artificial intelligence
Twenty years have passed since the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and we all know computers have improved since then. But Deep Blue won through sheer computing power, using its ability to calculate the outcomes of more moves to a deeper level than even a world champion can. Go is played on a far larger board (19 by 19 squares, compared to 8x8 for chess) and has more possible moves than there are atoms in the universe, so raw computing power was unlikely to beat a human with a strong intuitive sense of the best moves. Instead, AlphaGo was designed to win by playing a huge number of games against other programs and adopting the strategies that proved successful. You could say that AlphaGo evolved to be the best Go player in the world, achieving in only two years what natural selection took millions of years to accomplish.
GE's electronic work instructions with the Google Glass by Novotek - Decide Software
GE's electronic work instructions with the Google Glass by Novotek: Novotek combined GE's electronic work instructions with the Google Glass wearable computing device, and was demonstrated to Summit attendees in the Technology Fair. Novotek, is the largest European distributor for GE's Intelligent Platforms business and it has been awarded the Scanautomatic Prize for Innovation at Scanautomatic 2014 in Gothenburg, Sweden in October. Novotek has since 1986 worked with integration of IT and automation systems in the process and production industry. Novotek mainly supplies world-leading products and solutions from GE in the Nordics and Benelux. A work process management solution, GE's Proficy Workflow software provides users with interactive, step-by-step task instructions and captures process, traceability and quality data across systems to reduce errors, waste and delays.