Fall armyworm, the larval life stage of a fall armyworm moth, impacts maize crops worldwide but particularly in countries like Uganda, where agricultural businesses employ 70% of the population. Studies show the potential impact is between 8.3 and 20.6 million tons per year, with the fallout amounting to between $2.48 million and $6.19 million per year. The threat of devastating losses prompted developers participating in a Google Developer Group in Mbale to create an Android app -- FlatButter -- that identifies signs of fall armyworm damage in maize crops. It's been featured on a national TV station in Uganda and highlighted by the Food Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, as well as by Google in a short film published today. "The vast damage and yield losses in maize production, due to FAW, got the attention of global organizations, who are calling for innovators to help," wrote Hansu Mobile and Intelligent Innovations CEO Nsubuga Hassan, who led the team that developed the app.

Microbiology and MBA grad JK started to learn about big data and machine learning in his job, but wanted to learn more about data science in a structured environment. He enrolled in Springboard's Machine Learning Career Track to learn about ML and AI online. JK tells us how he balanced his full-time job with the Springboard bootcamp (hint: he didn't sleep much), and how networking at conferences helped him land his new job as a Data Engineer at KPMG! What is your educational and career background? I didn't come from a computer science (CS) background. My undergrad was in microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics. I then completed an MBA with a concentration in Accounting and Finance, working at the Australian Chamber of Commerce in Korea. And that's where I got a taste of some CS database work.

New South Wales courts could be flooded with tens of thousands of cases every year if the NSW government moves ahead with plans to roll out cameras that use artificial intelligence to detect drivers using their mobile phones, a parliamentary committee has warned. The state parliament is considering legislation that would allow mobile phone detection cameras to be placed around NSW to capture drivers using their mobile phones while behind the wheel. The government estimates that there were at least 158 casualties on NSW roads between 2012 and 2018 involving mobile phones. Under the plan, two cameras are used at each location, with one at an angle to capture people with phones to their ears, and a second placed to capture people using their phones in their laps. Every car passing through thelocation is snapped, and Transport for NSW says it then deploys artificial intelligence to determine which drivers were using their mobiles.

Between 2013 and 2016, U.S. farmers and ranchers weathered a 45% dip in net farm income -- the largest since the Great Depression -- while the number of mouths to feed grew sharply by the day. The global population is expected to increase by 2.2 billion by 2050, and the world's farmers will have to grow about 70% more food than is now produced. If you ask Microsoft, the solution lies in technology. The tech giant's FarmBeats program, which launched in preview today on Azure Marketplace ahead of Ignite 2019, is a multi-year effort to bring robust data analytics to the agriculture sector. With a backend built on Azure and compatibility with hardware from a range of top manufacturers, it aims to promote what Ranveer Chandra, FarmBeats project lead and chief scientist at Azure Global, calls "data-driven" farming techniques. The International Food Policy Research Institute claims these can boost farm productivity by as much as 67% while reducing resource usage.

This is the fourth in a series of articles I am writing about Māori ethics with AI, Data sovereignty and Robotics. Article 3: Māori Ethical considerations with Artificial Intelligence Systems; Article 2: Māori ethics associated with AI systems architecture and Article 1: Māori cultural considerations with Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. The next planned articles are"Indigenising the Internet" and "Tikanga and Facial Recognition". At the conclusion of this article, are the English, Māori and a Translation into English of the Māori version of te Treaty of Waitangi. There is an international debate about whether we regulate Artificial Intelligence (AI) or assume that AI systems developments will be the better of the wider community.

Four years ago, I stood in the darkened operations center in front of a wall of blinking screens, arms crossed and squinting at video footage on one of them. The commander asked me for the second time, signaling toward the figure on the screen. I looked over and reviewed a mental checklist of the individual's pattern of life over more than a decade. I weighed this against his latest movements, reflected on the screen in real time. The commander took a step toward me and started again, "Kara. We are running out of time. I had a decision to make. Using a machine to determine the validity of the target and take action is a nonstarter. But not everyone agrees on the details. Though the machines I dealt with that day were only semi-autonomous, it is not difficult to imagine a world where fully autonomous weapons are programmed to make a lethal decision. Institutions, countries, industry, and society must choose when and how to govern this technology in today's world, where semi-autonomous ...

Back in October 2017, publication of the Hall & Pesenti review, Growing the Artificial Intelligence Industry in the UK, caused something of a stir – if subsequent actions are anything to go by. Seven months after the independent, government commissioned study hit ministers' desks, the AI Sector Deal was announced. Trumpeted as a £1 billion Whitehall vote of confidence in the industry – which has deep, historic roots in the UK – closer examination revealed it to be a more conservative £300 million of public funds backed by a promise of £700 million from industrial and academic partnerships. It still provided a welcome boost to the country's ambitions, even if the announcement itself was fumbled by the mandarins of SW1. At a Westminster eForum event in February 2018, the Deal was trailed for publication in early March. However, policymakers sat on it until May, when it finally emerged days after the EU had published its own AI strategy to the tune of €20 billion – a pointless and frustrating own goal for the UK.

We introduce the use of a Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) for influenza prediction at the state- and city-level in the US, and experiment with the inclusion of real-time flu-related Internet search data. We find that a GRU has lower prediction error than current state-of-the-art methods for data-driven influenza prediction at time horizons of over two weeks. In contrast with other machine learning approaches, the inclusion of real-time Internet search data does not improve GRU predictions.

The chief executive of technology giant IBM has urged Australian business leaders to plan for dramatic changes to their organisations and the workforce caused by artificial intelligence and advances in quantum computing. Ginni Rometty, who has run the $US120 billion company since 2012 and is in Australia to sign an AI deal with Woodside Petroleum and attend other customer meetings, said business leaders must change their approach to hiring or risk being left behind. Ms Rometty gave a keynote address at a cloud computing conference in Sydney on Tuesday, alongside Woodside chief executive Peter Coleman who told the event he expects AI technology to slice maintenance costs in its plants by 30 per cent a year - or around $300 million. Mr Coleman said this is one of several applications being developed with IBM that also include automating production and improving cybersecurity. Westpac Banking Corp chief executive Brian Hartzer also spoke at the event.

Woodside and IBM will work together to re-imagine the way work is done using next-generation technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing to help Woodside realize its vision of an "intelligent plant." Announced today at IBM's Cloud Innovation Exchange in Sydney by Woodside CEO Peter Coleman and IBM Chairman, President and CEO Ginni Rometty, the collaboration will include Woodside becoming a member of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, which is a collaborative industrial-academic laboratory focused on advancing fundamental AI research. Woodside will also join the IBM Q Network, making it the first commercial organization in Australia to join IBM's quantum computing network. Woodside and IBM will use quantum computing to conduct deep computational simulations across the value chain of Woodside's business. During the past five years Woodside and IBM have worked together to implement cognitive solutions, enabling advances in health and safety, planning and operations, and project engineering.