For years Google has warned users about natural disasters by incorporating alerts from government agencies like FEMA into apps like Maps and Search. Now, the company is making predictions of its own. As part of a partnership with the Central Water Commission of India, Google will now alert users in the country about impending floods. The service is only currently available in the Patna region, with the first alert going out earlier this month. As Google's engineering VP Yossi Matias outlines in a blog post, these predictions are being made using a combination of machine learning, rainfall records, and flood simulations.

Kai-Fu Lee is the chairman of Sinovation Ventures and the president of its Artificial Intelligence Institute. He was the founding president of Google China. He recently spoke about his new book, "AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order," with The WorldPost's editor in chief, Nathan Gardels. WorldPost: Artificial intelligence is surely the most consequential technological development of the 21st century. In your book "AI Superpowers," you've written the most comprehensive global account of artificial intelligence to date. What are the central themes of your book?

Machine learning cybersecurity startup Darktrace Ltd. said today it has raised $50 million in new late-stage funding on a valuation of $1.65 billion to further international expansion and development. The Series E round was led by Vitruvian Partners and included existing investors KKR and 1011 Ventures. Founded in 2013, Darktrace pitches itself as the leader in "Enterprise Immune System Technology" with a cybersecurity product that tackles advanced cyberthreats using a machine learning platform developed at the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge. Differentiating itself from others in the market, Darktrace claims its platform is based on the "biological principles of the human immune system." It also says the platform can learn "self," which is said to constitute "the normal pattern of life for the organization, its users and devices – and detecting subtle deviations from this normal behavior, which suggest a compromise, breach or cyber-attack."

IBM and Galp, a Portuguese energy group with a global footprint, have developed an AI-based advisor to enhance seismic interpretation in the oil and gas exploration area. This tool can facilitate creation of enhanced geological models, risk assessment of new prospects, and optimization of the placement of new oil wells. As global energy consumption increases and much of the globe still relies on fossil fuels to supply its energy needs, the oil and gas industry is facing the challenge of finding new resources. More advanced analysis and computing are required to find and evaluate hidden sources of fuel. IBM and Galp are helping to solve that.

AI and cyber security firm Darktrace has raised $50 million in funding at a valuation of $1.65 billion. The investment is led by European private equity firm Vitruvian Partners with participation from existing investors KKR and 1011 Ventures. Darktrace uses artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to automatically detect cyber threats to its customers' networks. The Cambrige-headquartered business claims that its Antigena product can respond automatically to cybersecurity issues within two seconds. Its roster of customers includes eight major international airports including London Gatwick.

Google started out as a simple search engine in 1998 and has turned into one of the most important and influential companies in the world. On Thursday, the company celebrates its 20th birthday, and although searching for something on the internet has commonly become "googling", the company itself has become a part of the everyday lives in more ways than one. Google was officially founded in September 1997 but September 1998 is generally seen as the date the company really started its now ubiquitous search engine. The search engine was created for about $100,000 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, two Stanford PhD students, who wanted to challenge Altavista and Yahoo, the two most popular search engines in the earlier days of the internet. As its popularity grew, the company expanded to new territories.

Security professionals believe AI and machine learning are the answers to many of the issues they face. The Ponemon Institute, on behalf of Hewlett Packard Enterprise subsidiary Aruba, conducted a survey of security professionals. It found the majority of respondents agreed security products with AI features will help reduce false alerts, increase team effectiveness, make investigations more efficient, and will speed up the discovery of and response to stealthy cyberattacks. According to more than half of the survey respondents, "AI technologies such as [machine learning] and behavioral analytics are essential for detecting attacks on the inside before they can do damage." For the report, "Closing the IT Security Gap with Automation & AI in the Era of IoT," Ponemon surveyed 3,866 IT and security professionals in Asia, EMEA, North America, Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

The fourth industrial revolution is firmly upon us and it is one that will provide customers with a greater range of customized products and a better service experience, while allowing manufacturers to transition towards predictive and adaptive processes and machinery. Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a peripheral component of this industry change; it is at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution, a key enabler to take the step from automation to autonomy, creating growth and competitive advantage. Together with Industry of Things World, Europe's leading Industrial IoT conference, HPE surveyed 858 predominantly European professionals and executives from various industrial verticals to find out what effect AI has in the industrial sector today and is expected to have by 2030.[1] Their responses show that the European industrial sector has clearly understood and embraced the strategic power of AI--but it also reveals that there are some key challenges that have to be overcome to fully unleash its potential. Let's start with the really good news.

Roughly 2 million farms dot the continental U.S., and the decisions their proprietors make impact the entire food supply chain. According to one study, if just 5 percent of the U.S. broccoli production isn't harvested, over 90 million pounds of broccoli go uneaten. To help stabilize a market often fraught with unpredictability, IBM today launched the Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture, a new platform comprising artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things, and cloud solutions that together generate "evidence-based" insights. It's available as a managed service offering and part of IBM's new collection of prepackaged tools pretrained for customer service, human resources, manufacturing, and marketing use cases. "Farming has always been a complex undertaking that requires growers to manage an interconnected web of pre-season and in-season decisions while at the mercy of mother nature," the Armonk company wrote in a press release.

Sepsis is a medical condition caused by an infection that leads to an immune response so vigorous it attacks the body itself, often spreading to the bloodstream, leading quickly – if unchecked – to death. Sepsis affects as many as 18 million people worldwide each year.[1] It causes 200,000 deaths annually in the United States, and is the number one killer of people who are hospitalized.[2] While many other diseases dominate the headlines of our health conversations, sepsis is "more common than heart attack, and claims more lives than any single cancer."[3] It is the most costly condition treated in U.S. hospitals.[4]