From Greta Thunberg's student-led climate strikes to the youth-driven protests in Hong Kong and Chile, the next generation is increasingly demanding a voice on pressing issues. Youth movements are reenergizing paralyzed debates among adults with fresh perspectives, inconvenient questions, and the rhetorical power of having to live with the long-term fallout of our short-term thinking. With another monumental societal transformation on the horizon--the rise of artificial intelligence--we have an opportunity to engage the power and imagination of youth to shape the world they will inherit. Many of us were caught off-guard by the unintended consequences of the first wave of digital technologies, from mass surveillance to election hacking. But the disruptive power of the internet to date only sets the stage for the even more radical changes AI will produce in the coming decades.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM DAY 1 WHERE IS IQ'WHALO? What will our generation be remembered for? This year marks the second IGF attended by UN Secretary-General António Guterres. His opening speech last year – together with French President Macron's speech – carried substantive reflections on the state of global digital policy, and an encouraging vision for the digital developments ahead of us. This year's opening speech couldn't be more different. Characterised by examples of how the Internet is being misused and exploited, Guterres gave a stark account of the profound issues which are affecting today's technology and tomorrow's developments. 'It is for me an enormous frustration to be that today, not only we are still building physical walls to separate people, but that there is also the tendency to create some virtual walls in the Internet also to separate people.' The three main divides – the digital divide, the social divide, and the political divide – are still profound.

Banana, a nutritionally-rich, delicious fruit, is a widely-cultivated crop across the world and is a staple diet of people living in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Due to pests and diseases, only 13% of the global production is traded, and often, farmers in India experience severe loss due to fusarium wilt or Panama disease. A novel innovation now aims to change the fortunes of banana growers by helping them detect diseases and pests with their smartphone. In a recent study, researchers from the USA, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Ethiopia and India have developed a banana pest detection app powered by artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial Intelligence is an emerging arena in computer science where machines are programmed to simulate human intelligence and perform tasks like speech recognition, visual perception, language translation and decision-making.

The LG Group said it will invest 20 billion won or $17 million in SoftBank's venture fund focused on artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups. Four affiliates of LG Group -- LG Electronics Inc, LG Chem Inc, LG Uplus Corp and LG CNS Co -- will jointly raise 20 billion won ($17 million) for Softbank Ventures' early-stage AI fund of 320 billion won, LG said. The investment in the Japanese tech giant's venture unit is part of the South Korean conglomerate's broader plan to develop advanced AI technologies that can be applied in a broad range of its products and services, Yonhap news agency reported. LG also unveiled a cloud-based AI platform for software developers to create synergy between its affiliates, vowing to expand collaborations with global IT giants, such as Amazon and Google. "We will pave the way for digital transformation through R&D and investment in AI technologies designed to break the existing framework and create more customer value," said Ahn Seung-kwon, the chief of LG Science Park.

The advancements in AI and robots are becoming ingrained in our society and people are voicing growing fears about them. Or at least that's what we've been conditioned to believe ever since sci-fi films introduced us to these machines years ago. As robots become further ingrained into our society, people are voicing growing fears about them -- that they're coming to take our jobs or, worse yet, take over the world. Your HCM System controls the trinity of talent acquisition, management and optimization - and ultimately, multiple mission-critical performance outcomes. For years, human employees have been hesitant to embrace technologies they felt might make their job obsolete.

I'm often asked why I think Artificial-Intelligence (AI) tools are key for luxury brands' success in the 21st Century. I think that's because AI is one of the most overused buzzwords today, and many people use the term very loosely. In fact, most people discuss AI without really understanding it or what the benefits are. First off, one must know that AI is just a small part of what I call advanced data querying technologies. These technologies also include machine learning and advanced data analytics.

If you've ever wanted to see Einstein play charades, Rodin's "The Thinker" wink at you, or an ancient Chinese Emperor cast in a Chaplin movie -- then the AI-powered video transformation tech you're looking for is "face reenactment," which can digitally deliver all such fantastic scenarios. Unlike face swapping, which transfers a face from one source to another, face reenactment captures the movements of a driver face and expresses them through the identity of a target face. Starting with a dynamic driver face, researchers can manipulate any target face -- from today's celebrities to historical figures, including any age, ethnicity or gender -- to perform any humanly possible face-based task. Previous approaches at synthesizing a reenacted face used generative adversarial networks (GAN), which have demonstrated tremendous ability is a wide range of image generation tasks. GAN-based models however require at least a few minutes of training data for each target.

The European Commission and European Investment Fund (EIF) has launched a new investment scheme for artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain in Europe, the organization announced in a Nov. 20 blog post. "With the European Commission, we are launching a dedicated investment scheme that will make EUR 100m available to venture capital funds or other investors that support AI and blockchain-based products and services. Because these are cornerstone investments, we expect a total of EUR 300m to be generated for AI and blockchain from other private investors'crowding in.'" The project will focus on development and growth beyond the research and proof of concept stage. Western Europe is expected to spend $674 million on blockchain technology in 2019, making it the second highest-spending region in the world.

Artificial intelligence applied to healthcare includes a collection of technologies that enable machines to sense, interpret, act and learn. AI implementations for digital health can be relatively simple when they are focused largely on personal patient engagement, or vastly complex when working with big data sets, highly specialized diagnostics, and the workflows of multiple highly complicated organizations. The addition of Internet of Things sensor data from connected health and related devices adds a new layer of critical, real-time contextual data. The uses cases for IoT sensor-informed healthcare applications can include home security and access control for vulnerable loved ones, remote patient monitoring of vitals, activity monitoring and anomaly detection, safety of the home and mobile environments, environmental monitoring for chronic conditions, and more. These use cases provide opportunities for the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to transform healthcare functions into data-driven services that can improve outcomes and deliver healthcare more efficiently.

Microsoft Executive Vice President Harry Shum (Shen Xiangyang), the head of Microsoft AI and Research, will leave the tech giant in early 2020. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the departure of the 23-year Microsoft veteran, who will continue advising CEO Satya Nadella and company co-founder Bill Gates. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott assumes Shum's position as head of Microsoft AI and Research effective immediately. Microsoft established its AI and Research Group in 2016 and chose Shum to lead it. At that time, the 5,000 person group comprised Cortana, Bing, and Ambient Computing and Robotics engineering teams mixed with parts of Microsoft Research.