On December 2, ten early stage startups from the 3rd WXR Accelerator Cohort will pitch and demo to investors, partners and future customers at the Verizon Innovation Center in San Francisco. All the companies have female founders and are building solutions using AR, VR or AI. The Pitch Showcase is the culmination of a three month accelerator program that covered topics such as product market fit, patents/IP, marketing and communications, sales/GTM strategies, team growth and fundraising. The WXR Accelerator launched in early 2018, and 16 companies across 2 cohorts have previously graduated from the program. Cohort 3 includes companies from outside of North America for the first time and also expanded to include companies building artificial intelligence applications in addition to spatial computing (AR/VR).

In his blog post on artificial intelligence (AI), GovTech Graduate Jonathan Manning draws on the New Zealand Law Foundation: Government use of artificial intelligence in New Zealand (the NZFL report) to discuss the role and effectiveness of explanation tools. As algorithms and AI become ubiquitous we all become'data subjects' to organisations such as governments and businesses. In response, regulations such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation are beginning to emerge. The New Zealand government is currently exploring how governments, business and society can work together to meet the challenge of regulating AI. A part of this challenge is ensuring when things like algorithmic harm arise, we can explain what happened and why so that mistakes can be fixed and not repeated or obscured.

Our cities are growing at an uncontrollable rate. The UN estimates that there are now 33 megacities with a population of over 10 million, (five in India and six- or more-in China), and the largest city in the world, Tokyo, has close to 37.5 million people. As cities sprawl into green space and their inhabitants endure increasingly cramped and polluted conditions, accurate planning about how urban spaces function is more important than ever. With the climate crisis looming, data and new technology could be our best option to create more liveable and sustainable cities. Part one of this series will focus on visualizing how cities are growing, how to plan them more accurately and sustainably, and explore how smart technologies can make cities more efficient now and in the future.

Canalys released its latest cloud infrastructure spending numbers for China today, and it's all trending upward. For starters, the market reached $2.9 billion for the quarter, an increase of 60.8%. China now accounts for 10.4% of worldwide cloud spending, meaning its second only to the US in overall spending. That is pretty amazing given that China was late in coming to the cloud, but also not surprising given the sheer size of the overall potential market. Once it got going, it was bound to gain momentum simply because of that size.

When Avi Yagil, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Physics at University of California San Diego flew home from Europe in 2012, he thought he had caught a cold from his travels. When a "collection of pills" did not improve his symptoms, his wife encouraged him to see a doctor. Further tests revealed something far more life-threatening to Yagil than the common cold. "A chest X-Ray showed my lungs were flooded with fluid, and a subsequent echocardiogram found I had damage to my heart." Yagil was diagnosed with heart failure.

Humans have an early understanding of the laws of physical reality. Infants, for instance, hold expectations for how objects should move and interact with each other, and will show surprise when they do something unexpected, such as disappearing in a sleight-of-hand magic trick. Now MIT researchers have designed a model that demonstrates an understanding of some basic "intuitive physics" about how objects should behave. The model could be used to help build smarter artificial intelligence and, in turn, provide information to help scientists understand infant cognition. The model, called ADEPT, observes objects moving around a scene and makes predictions about how the objects should behave, based on their underlying physics.

The delivery service follows a pilot program started by the companies in Scottsdale in August and involved Nuro's R1, a custom unmanned vehicle. The R1 uses public roads and has no driver and is used to only transport goods. Kroger's deal with Nuro underscores the stiff competition in the U.S. grocery delivery market with supermarket chains angling for a bigger share of consumer spending. Inc (AMZN.O) have also invested heavily in their delivery operations by expanding their offerings and shortening delivery times. Walmart, Ford Motor Co (F.N) and delivery service Postmates Inc said last month they would collaborate to deliver groceries and other goods to Walmart customers and that could someday use autonomous vehicles.

As a Principal Automation Architect at Magenic, Paul Grizzaffi is following his passion for providing technology solutions to testing, QE, and QA organizations, including automation assessments, implementations, and through activities benefiting the broader testing community. An accomplished keynote speaker and writer, Paul has spoken at local and national conferences and meetings. In addition to spending time with his twins, Paul enjoys sharing his experiences and learning from other testing professionals; his mostly cogent thoughts can be read on his blog. Jennifer Bonine is a well-known speaker, teacher, and trainer at both national and international conferences. She has keynoted numerous Testing, Agile, and Development conferences.

The Marshall Liberal Government will be the first government globally to host a $250,000 crowd sourced open data competition to fast-track the discovery of mineral deposits in South Australia. ExploreSA: The Gawler Challenge partners with open innovation platform, Unearthed, in a world-wide call for geologists and data scientists to uncover new exploration targets in the state's Gawler Craton region. Using the Geological Survey of South Australia's historical records, primary data and research, the competition combines geological expertise with new mathematical, machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase the number of potential drill targets across central South Australia. "This state-of-the-art competition has the potential to unearth the next Olympic Dam or Carrapateena by encouraging global thinkers and innovators to interrogate our open-file data and generate new exploration models and ideas for targeting," said Minister van Holst Pellekaan. "The Marshall Liberal Government is thinking outside the square to drive investment and jobs in South Australia's vital resources sector. "Mining is one of the pillars of the South Australian economy and this competition should add to the pipeline of projects in the resources and minerals processing sector.

As we edge ever closer towards the beginning of a new year, the next 12 months are set to provide an extraordinarily challenging time for marketers – but it's certainly not'doom and gloom' by any means. Not only will they be expected to seamlessly tackle the increasing volatility, data regulation and apathy towards traditional marketing methods, but they must do it all alongside having a clear, robust and forward-thinking strategy, in order to thrive. At the heart of such a strategy – and any business' plans – needs to be a serious commitment to data and digital via machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). ML and AI can already provide organisations with extraordinary insight into their competitive landscape, current performance and resource allocation. And, in turn, marketers can leverage these insights – along with many others – to radically improve performance. Microsoft has reported that early adopters of AI for business in the UK have already seen a 5% improvement in productivity, performance and enterprise outcomes, compared with those that have not explored its growing range of capabilities.