Caption Health, a leading medical AI company, announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized marketing of Caption Guidance, software that assists medical professionals in the acquisition of cardiac ultrasound images. Caption Guidance uses artificial intelligence to provide real-time guidance and diagnostic quality assessment of images, empowering healthcare providers--even those without prior ultrasound experience--with the ability to capture diagnostic quality images. Empowering more clinicians with ultrasound image acquisition capability will bring the benefits of ultrasound to more patients, help standardize the quality of care, and help institutions realize valuable cost and time savings. Caption Guidance was authorized via the De Novo pathway, a regulatory pathway reserved for novel technologies. The granting of this De Novo is groundbreaking, as Caption Guidance is the first medical software authorized by the FDA that provides real-time AI guidance for medical imaging acquisition.

Neural networks have proven their abilities to learn complex mappings many times in the past. Deep learning neural networks can be a powerful tool to predict the future due to its nature of discovering complex nonlinear dependencies. Time Series Forecasting problems are one of the most difficult problems in real life as there are many unpredictables resulting in complex temporal dependences. For instance, stock prices can form very nice time series; yet there are still no good ways to predict the stock prices even with the newest technology/algorithms. To deal with that, when it comes to modeling, we have to add in additional structures to improve the performance of the model.

Deloitte Global predicts that the industry for smart speakers--internet-connected speakers with integrated digital voice assistants--will be worth US$7 billion in 2019, selling 164 million units at an average selling price of US$43.1 We expect 2018 sales of 98 million units at an average of US$44 each, for a total industry revenue of US$4.3 billion. This 63 percent growth rate would make smart speakers the fastest-growing connected device category worldwide in 2019, and lead to an installed base of more than 250 million units by year-end.2 Robust sales performance in 2019, although high, will represent a deceleration from the prior year: In Q2 of 2018, smart speaker sales were up 187 percent year over year.3 Smart speakers have, literally, a world of opportunity for growth. Much of that opportunity comes from expansion into non-English-speaking countries.

Innovators in England are now able to submit their applications for a new AI in Health and Care Award launched by health secretary Matt Hancock to speed up testing, evaluation and adoption of the "most promising" AI technologies for healthcare. The initiative will see £140 million be made available during the next three years, with a call for applications running twice a year. Initially, the award will focus on four areas: screening, diagnosis, clinical decision support and system efficiency. Run by the Accelerated Access Collaborative, NHSX and the National Institute for Health Research, it forms part of the £250m announcement made in August to support the creation of an AI Lab for the health service. "Too many good ideas in the NHS never make it past the pilot stage," Hancock said in a speech at the Parliament & Healthtech conference in London on Tuesday.

A team of artificial intelligence researchers at the University at Buffalo plans to study the brain waves and eye movements of around 25 people, Digital Trends reports, while they play a video game. They'll then use the information they glean from the gamers to build an advanced AI -- so that it can then coordinate the actions of entire fleets of autonomous military robots. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- better known as DARPA -- has awarded the UB team a $316,000 grant for the study, which researcher Souma Chowdhury told Digital Trends is moving at "a pretty aggressive pace." The team still needs to gather the gamer data, but that shouldn't take too long. The researchers have already built a real-time strategy game for the study, with a round of the game taking about five to 10 minutes to complete.

Recently, I've curated a list of 50 Finnish startups in the field of AI & Machine Learning for those who are looking for business partners or companies to invest in. If you are an international investor who wants to connect with one of the startups, feel free to drop me a message. I can make the intro and provide the companies' investor pitch deck to you if it is available. You can also use Finder.fi to check the company's revenue development. If you are an ambitious entrepreneur (based in Finland) who is working on the next world-changing idea and is looking for funding, let's meet! I'll be happy to discuss how we can help you with the fundraising process (for free). Most of the following information is from the company website. But if you've spotted an error, please let me know and I will revise accordingly. "AISpotter has developed a time-saving, fast service for coaches all around the world. Our goal is to combine high-end technology and sports of any kind. With real-time analysis, coaches and teams are given the power to be one step ahead in team development." "We've taken over 30 years of recognized University of Oulu Machine Vision Group technology and adapted it to improve your sports game. By combining state-of-the-art machine learning and computer vision in our unique way, we provide automatic and fast analysis service for your game."

It can also reflect human flaws and inconsistencies, including 180 known types of bias. Biased AI is everywhere, and like humans, it can discriminate against gender, race, age, disability and ideology. AI bias has enormous potential to negatively affect women, minorities, the disabled, the elderly and other groups. Computer vision has more issues with false-positive facial identification for women and people of color, according to research by MIT and Stanford University. A recent ACLU experiment discovered that nearly 17 percent of professional athlete photos were falsely matched to mugshots in an arrest database.

If HBO's Entourage ever comes back on the air--and hopefully it won't--there will likely be a new character in the lineup along with the boys: a semi-sentient Cadillac Escalade. Because no vehicle could be better for wandering between parties than a glitzy-glamor seven-seat SUV that can handle the highways of Los Angeles all by itself. The 2021 Escalade, unveiled this week in Los Angeles (where else?), will carry the latest version of Super Cruise, Cadillac's much-lauded competitor to Tesla Autopilot. On the highway, the feature lets drivers take their hands off the wheel but uses an infrared camera to ensure they keep their eyes on the road. Super Cruise, which debuted in 2017 on the CT6 sedan, uses cameras and radars to monitor traffic and road conditions, follow turns, and adjust speed based on terrain.

Amid the cacophony of concern over artificial intelligence (AI) taking over jobs (and the world) and cheers for what it can do to increase productivity and profits, the potential for AI to do good can be overlooked. Technology leaders such as Microsoft, IBM, Huawei and Google have entire sections of their business focused on the topic and dedicate resources to build AI solutions for good and to support developers who do. In the fight to solve extraordinarily difficult challenges, humans can use all the help we can get. Here are 8 powerful examples of artificial intelligence for good as it is applied to some of the toughest challenges facing society today. There are more than 1 billion people living with a disability around the world.

The subtitle "Nissan Beats Tesla To The Post?" definitely needs the question mark in it, as, with autonomous driving, there are too many unknowns to make any definite comparisons. Not all documentations of journeys are published, and we know Tesla and Waymo have millions or billions of miles of driving data tucked away. Also, who knows when the first truly autonomous vehicle will be generally available to be used by almost anyone, anywhere? All we can say for sure about the Nissan announcement of a 230 mile journey completed in November 2019 in an automated LEAF is that it is a record for length of an autonomous journey in the UK. It is also remarkable in that it was completed without human intervention, on all kinds of roads, including motorways (freeways) and ordinary rural roads with no markings.