American technology giant Intel Corp. has acquired Israeli AI processor developer Habana Labs in a deal worth approximately $2 billion, the companies announced on Monday.Founded by David Dahan and Ran Halutz in 2016, Tel Aviv-headquartered Habana Labs is the developer of powerful artificial intelligence processors, optimized for training deep neural networks and artificial intelligence systems, and for deployment in production environments.Intel said the acquisition, the company's second largest in Israel to date, will strengthen its artificial intelligence portfolio and accelerate its efforts in the fast-growing AI silicon market, expected to be worth more than $25b. Chairman Avigdor Willenz will serve as a senior advisor to both the business unit and to Intel.The company currently employs 150 people worldwide at its offices in Tel Aviv, Caesarea, California, Beijing and Gdańsk."We We are excited to partner with Intel to accelerate and scale our business. Together, we will deliver our customers more AI innovation, faster."Prior to the acquisition, in November 2018, Intel Capital - the strategic investment arm of the Santa Clara-headquartered chipmaker - led a $75 million Series B round of fundraising for Habana.The purchase of Habana represents Intel's second largest in Israel to date and the latest in a long line of investments in the country. In August 2017, Intel purchased Jerusalem-based vision technology company Mobileye for a record $15.3b., the largest sale or "exit" of an Israeli company yet.Intel, which has been active in Israel since 1974, employs nearly 13,000 workers in the country, exporting products worth $3.9b. in 2018 and procuring local materials and services worth $1.7b., primarily from peripheral areas.In January, Intel announced plans to invest approximately $10.9b. in the company's Israel-based operations to construct a vast production facility in Kiryat Gat.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A prominent group of researchers alarmed by the harmful social effects of artificial intelligence called Thursday for a ban on automated analysis of facial expressions in hiring and other major decisions. The AI Now Institute at New York University said action against such software-driven "affect recognition" was its top priority because science doesn't justify the technology's use and there is still time to stop widespread adoption. The group of professors and other researchers cited as a problematic example the company HireVue, which sells systems for remote video interviews for employers such as Hilton and Unilever. It offers AI to analyze facial movements, tone of voice and speech patterns, and doesn't disclose scores to the job candidates. The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a complaint about HireVue to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and AI Now has criticized the company before.

Hamish Fraser first encountered Babylon Health in 2017 when he and a colleague helped test the accuracy of several artificial intelligence-powered symptom checkers, meant to offer medical advice for anyone with a smartphone, for Wired U.K. Among the competitors, Babylon's symptom checker performed worst in identifying common illnesses, including asthma and shingles. Fraser, then a health informatics expert at the University of Leeds in England, figured that the company would need to vastly improve to stick around. "At that point I had no prejudice or knowledge of any of them, so I had no axe to grind, and I thought'Oh that's not really good,'" says Fraser, now at Brown University. "I thought they would disappear, right? Much has changed since the Wired U.K. article came out. Since early 2018, the London-based Babylon Health has grown from just 300 employees to approximately 1,500. The company has a valuation of more than $2 billion and says it wants to "put an affordable and accessible health service in the hands of every person on earth." In England, Babylon operates the fifth-largest practice under the country's mostly government-funded National Health Service, allowing patients near London and Birmingham to video chat with doctors or be seen in a clinic if necessary. The company claims to have processed 700,000 digital consultations between patients and physicians, with plans to offer services in other U.K. cities in the future. "I thought they would disappear, right?

Companies have a never-ending list of cloud applications they rely on with crucial data becoming ever-more siloed. Yet, in order to make sense of all this information, they need IT to manage exporting, massaging and importing data from various platforms to effectively make data-based decisions. IT of course is spread thin and decisions often need to be made in real-time, meaning one-time imports and exports get old, quickly. This is where SnapLogic comes in. Their simple and fast IaaS-based enterprise integration platform empowers enterprise IT organizations and lines of business to connect apps, things and data.

In Europe, 51 per cent of top global manufacturers use at least a single use case of AI in their operations. New Delhi: Europe is leading the implementation process of artificial intelligence (AI) in the manufacturing sector, claims a study by Capgemini Research Institute. More than half of European manufacturers are implementing AI use cases in the sector with Germany as the frontrunner. In Europe, 51 per cent of top global manufacturers use at least a single use case of AI in their operations. While, in Germany, 69 per cent of manufacturers are using AI in their operations, compared to 28 per cent in the US and 11 per cent in China, reveals the study.

Meaningful artificial intelligence (AI) deployments are just beginning to take place, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner's 2018 CIO Agenda Survey shows that four percent of CIOs have implemented AI, while a further 46 percent have developed plans to do so. "Despite huge levels of interest in AI technologies, current implementations remain at quite low levels," said Whit Andrews, research vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "However, there is potential for strong growth as CIOs begin piloting AI programs through a combination of buy, build and outsource efforts." As with most emerging or unfamiliar technologies, early adopters are facing many obstacles to the progress of AI in their organizations. Gartner analysts have identified the following four lessons that have emerged from these early AI projects.

However, researchers at the University of Michigan are claiming the first memristor-based programmable computer that has the potential to make AI applications more efficient and faster. Because memristors have a memory, they can accumulate data in a way that is common for -- among other things -- neural networks. The chip has both an array of nearly 6,000 memristors, a crossbar array, along with analog to digital and digital to analog converters. In fact, there are 486 DACs and 162 ADCs along with an OpenRISC processor. According to the paper, the chip turned in 188 billion operations per second per watt while consuming about 300 mW of power.

Finland is offering a wildly popular Elements of Artificial Intelligence online course to all EU citizens for free. The initiative was launched to mark the approaching end of Finland's presidency of the Council of the EU. The Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment will finance the project, which was valued at 1.7 million euros. The Finnish government announced that the goal of the project is to attract one per cent of EU citizens or five million people to complete the course in 2020 and 2021. The offer of the online programme represents an innovative way to say goodbye to more traditional gifts such as books or scarves.

A new nuclear war simulator program will allow users to see the extraordinary and far-reaching consequences of global nuclear war. Developed by German engineer Ivan Stepanov, Nuclear War Simulator will be available to the public in early 2020. The program will let users plan not just a single nuclear detonation, but hundreds of them all around the world, simulating how a nuclear war might break out from smaller regional conflicts. In an interview with Motherboard, Stepanov said the goal of the project was to'raise awareness of the dangers that nuclear weapons present to our society.' The program presents an interactive 3D model of the Earth, which users can rotate and zoom in and out of to locate targets.

Cars with built-in artificial intelligence (AI) systems that alert drivers or slow down when they are getting drowsy or distracted will start being rolled out from 2022. Engineering firm Bosch is developing an'interior monitoring system' which uses cameras built into a car's steering wheel and rear-view mirror to watch motorists. The AI will also keep an eye on passengers, warning of unfastened seat-belts and adjusting safety devices like airbags and belts to match how they sit. Past research has estimated that around one in ten car accidents are caused by either drivers being distracted or feeling drowsy. 'If the car knows what its driver and occupants are doing, driving will become safer and more convenient,' said Bosch board member Harald Kroeger.