Hyderabad: As scientific disciplines go, the field of'Deep Learning' is but an infant. However, it will soon have a disruptive effect on the field of drug design, experts say. They were speaking at a panel discussion as part of the ongoing international conference on high performance computing in Hyderabad on Wednesday. Deep learning, a subset of machine learning, functions by imitating the workings of the human brain to process large amounts of data. The artificial neural networks used in these functions have neuron nodes connected together like a web.

In August, Google AI researchers working with the ALS Therapy Development Institute shared details about Project Euphonia, a speech-to-text transcription service for people with speaking impairments. They showed that, using data sets of audio from both native and non-native English speakers with neurodegenerative diseases and techniques from Parrotron, an AI tool for people with impediments, they could drastically improve the quality of speech synthesis and generation. Recently, in something of a case study, Google researchers and a team from Alphabet's DeepMind employed Euphonia in an effort to recreate the original voice of Tim Shaw, a former NFL football linebacker who played for the Carolina Panthers, Jacksonville Jaguars, Chicago Bears, and Tennessee Titans before retiring in 2013. Roughly six years ago, Shaw was diagnosed with ALS, which requires him to use a wheelchair and left him unable to speak, swallow, or breathe without assistance. Over the course of six months, the joint research team adapted a generative AI model -- WaveNet -- to the task of synthesizing speech from samples of Shaw's voice prior to his ALS diagnoses.

It has been quite a year for legal tech startup Evisort. Twelve months ago this week, the company introduced its flagship product, Document Analyzer, a cloud-based AI and text-mining application that helps enterprises analyze and manage their contracts. At the time, I wrote that it "might just be the hottest legal tech and AI company you've never heard of." After launching with angel funding from Amity Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, and Village Global, a VC firm whose backers include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Reid Hoffman, the company earlier this year raised another $4.5 million in seed funding. Now today it is announcing that it has closed a Series A funding round of $15 million.

Severe weather is impacting agriculture across the globe. The Midwestern United States has been continually flooding since March, inflicting $2.9 billion in property damage and threatening the livelihoods of farmers throughout the region. Internationally, food security is under threat from an onslaught of drought, while agriculture is already subject to the challenges of thin margins and complex global trade. Meanwhile, there is increasing pressure to do more with less to ensure food security for the growing global population. To meet these pressures, farmers are driven to get the most out of every harvest, even if that short-term focus may have long-term ill effects on the soil and ultimately their yield.

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia is set to win unconditional EU antitrust approval for its $6.8 billion acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. Nvidia, known for its powerful gaming graphics chips, is looking to boost its data center and artificial intelligence business via the takeover, its biggest deal, helping it to better compete with rival Intel . The European Commission, which is scheduled to decide on the deal by Dec. 19, declined to comment. Nvidia and Mellanox also declined to comment. U.S. authorities have already cleared the deal without conditions while approval is still pending in China where Mellanox has major customers such as Alibaba and Baidu .

Dr. Iain Brown is the Head of Data Science for SAS UK&I and Adjunct Professor of Marketing Analytics at the University of Southampton. For the last decade he has been working closely with the financial services sector, providing thought leadership on the topics of risk, AI and machine learning. During his time at SAS he has been involved in driving innovation in AI and the corresponding fields of machine learning, computer vision and natural language understanding through the delivery of numerous projects. He is also a contributor to SAS' blog and an active member of the AI community on Twitter. In a wide-ranging conversation about the applications of machine learning in the financial services sector, Iain offered some helpful advice around the integration of AI into business models.

A council in England is using virtual assistants (VAs) to check it is paying staff and schools correctly. Wiltshire Council is using Microsoft technology to complete repetitive tasks such as checking payrolls in its Human Resources department. This frees up staff to work on more critical tasks that directly help the 435,000 residents in Wiltshire and the council. VAs are currently checking more than 43 payrolls each month, which cover schools and academies in the region as well as council staff. Payroll checks need to be completed before payments can be made to ensure the correct amount of money is paid to the right person or organisation.

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho, Dec. 5, 2019 – A powerful new supercomputer arrived this week at Idaho National Laboratory's Collaborative Computing Center. The machine has the power to run complex modeling and simulation applications, which are essential to developing next-generation nuclear technologies. Named after a central Idaho mountain range, Sawtooth arrives in December and will be available to users early next year. That is the highest ranking reached by an INL supercomputer. Of 102 new systems added to the list in the past six months, only three were faster than Sawtooth.

"Student relaxation is not the main function of the University of California, Irvine's groundbreaking library chatbot."--Source: Many campus libraries are helping facilitate deeper AI integrations on campus while also introducing students to new technology, whether they're using an AI-powered supercomputer or getting their questions answered by a chatbot.

The Nordic nation, headed by the world's youngest head of government, Sanna Marin, will mark the end of its rotating presidency of the EU with a highly ambitious goal. Finland is aiming to give practical understanding of AI to 1% of EU citizens -- or about five million people -- through a basic online course by the end of 2021. As its presidency gift to Europeans, the Finnish state provides the free online course by us and @ReaktorNow, translated to all official EU languages. It is teaming up with the University of Helsinki, Finland's largest and oldest academic institution, and the Finland-based tech consultancy Reaktor. Teemu Roos, a University of Helsinki associate professor in the department of computer science, described the near £1.5 million project as "Finland's gift to Europe" and "a civics course in AI" for every EU citizen to cope with the society's ever-increasing digitalisation and the possibilities AI offers to the job market and elsewhere.