In this desperate fight for saving ourselves and our species, the main weapon we have deployed is intelligence. What we are witnessing is a spectacular collaboration of individual and collective human and Artificial Intelligence (AI). As we deal with the fear of a biological apocalypse, will our fear of the other apocalypse, AI taking over humans, reduce to give way to more confidence and faith in tech based innovation? Artificial intelligence Canadian health monitoring company Blue Dot's AI algorithms had predicted coronavirus long before it went viral and was officially declared as a threat. Over the last few weeks, research teams worldwide have been using AI to study big data to power breakthroughs in finding the elusive cure for Covid-19.

Making new friends, or even catching up with old ones, can be hard enough when you're 93 years old and living in fear of the coronavirus. Which is why Chui Dip-sai has been so grateful for Temi, an Israeli-developed service robot that has become the Hong Kong nursing home resident's constant companion after city-wide lockdowns have kept family and friends away. "It is very easy to use," Chui told the Nikkei Asian Review in a video interview facilitated by the Cantonese-speaking robot on wheels. "I always talk with Temi, and I don't feel bored anymore." With a tablet-like screen for a face, and voice control powered by Google, Temi can keep Chui entertained for hours with music, videos and other diversions.

Two chefs get blasted in the face with a mystery entree on Dishmantled. Two chefs get blasted in the face with a mystery entree on Dishmantled. The streaming service Quibi -- short for "quick bites" -- calls itself "the first entertainment platform designed specifically for your phone." Perfect for the busy, distracted, on-the-go consumer! Too bad none of us are on-the-going anywhere, these days.

Against a backdrop of startling international developments, such as Brexit and the Hong Kong protests, Japan's financial sector is uniquely positioned to step out of the shadows of its competitors in Singapore and Hong Kong. This is the assessment of The Organization of Global Financial City Tokyo -- also known as FinCity.Tokyo -- which, on March 19, held its FinCity Global Forum at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo in Roppongi to explore the opportunities and challenges that await Japan in its pursuit to become a top global financial hub. Established in April 2019, FinCity.Tokyo is an organization that promotes Tokyo as a global financial hub and supports foreign financial services firms set up in Tokyo. In addition to the keynote and other speeches, the forum consisted of a series of panel discussions that invited industry veterans to discuss a wide array of topics, ranging from regional revitalization and socially oriented asset management to competition and collaboration among international financial cities. The first panel, centered on the theme of "Advancement of the Asset Management Industry and Global Financial City Initiative," invited panelists Yasumasa Tahara, director of the strategy development division at the Financial Services Agency; Kazuhide Toda, managing executive officer and chief investment officer at Nippon Life Insurance Company; and Oki Matsumoto, chairman and CEO at Monex Group Inc., to share their thoughts on how the industry can improve its asset management environment.

The 15th Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human Robot Interaction – HRI 2020 – was meant to take place in the city of Cambridge UK. Instead it will be launching online today. You can follow latest happenings on twitter and youtube. Check here for a list of all the papers. The theme of this year's conference is "Real World Human-Robot Interaction," reflecting on recent trends in the HRI community toward creating and deploying systems that can facilitate real-world, long-term interaction between robots and users.

Many online businesses rely on image galleries to deliver a good customer experience and consequently, generate more revenue. Hence, the image galleries need to be of the highest quality.

This week at KGW we've been looking to the future to get a glimpse of what our lives might look like in the next 10 years A NASA-style command center, called Mission Control, at Oregon Health & Sciences University was just added a couple years ago. To keep it simple, it shows doctors the available beds across four hospitals: OHSU, Doernbecher, Hillsboro Medical Center, and Adventist Health Portland. The command center is staffed 24-7. Think air traffic control, but for hospitals. In 2016, OHSU turned away more than 500 people because a lack of beds.

As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) initiatives reshape critical sectors, CXOs need to understand the ethical issues of using AI and ML at their operations. ZDNet and TechRepublic published a PDF ebook: Managing AI and ML in the enterprise 2020, which examines how companies manage, benefit from, and make ethical decisions regarding their AI and ML usage. Artificial intelligence projects are a top priority for many companies, but there are plenty of potential pitfalls for the unwary. Learn more in ZDNet's Daphne Leprince-Ringuet's feature "AI for business: What's going wrong, and how to get it right." How to approach cost justification, identify ROI, and avoid implementation missteps for AI/ML initiatives is the topic of TechRepublic contributor Mary Shacklett's article, "The true costs and ROI of implementing AI in the enterprise."

In order to help government agencies, academic institutions and healthcare organizations handle the influx of calls and messages regarding the coronavirus, IBM has announced that it will provide a bundle of Watson services for free. The company will combine Watson Assistant, which uses IBM Research's natural language processing technology, with Watson Discovery to create IBM Watson Assistant for Citizens. The new Watson suite will be available online and on smartphones and will be free for at least 90 days. According to IBM, wait times for coronavirus-related questions are exceeding two hours, so the company believes that using AI via Watson may be able to help speed up response times. "While helping government agencies and healthcare institutions use AI to get critical information out to their citizens remains a high priority right now, the current environment has made it clear that every business in every industry should find ways to digitally engage with their clients and employees. With today's news, IBM is taking years of experience in helping thousands of global businesses and institutions use Natural Language Processing and other advanced AI technologies to better meet the demands of their constituents, and now applying it to the COVID-19 crisis. AI has the power to be your assistant during this uncertain time."

Artificial Intelligence has proved its usefulness in this time of crisis. The technology is one of the greatest soldiers the world could ever get in the fight against coronavirus. AI along with its subsets is leveraging significant innovation across the healthcare sector and others as well to win against the pandemic. Where on the one hand computer vision is helping officials and government authorities to identify people who are not wearing a mask which is extremely critical in today's time, Natural Language Processing (NLP) powers chat programs to help detect the outbreak in the initial stages. NLP, moreover, is driving monitoring efforts in order to minimize the virus spread.