In honor of Alan Turing, DreamPort is announcing a prize challenge event for interested parties to develop a'Turing Test'. In 1950, Alan Turing conceived of the idea to identify in a conversation between two entities, which entity was a robot, and which was human. Our DreamPort Turing Test will be a challenge event where participants develop a stand-alone automated process to interact with a Microsoft Windows machine just as a human user may do with the goal being to fool a human judge who is monitoring target computers via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) or Virtual Network Computing (VNC) into thinking a normal user is interacting with that machine and not an automated program or process. This challenge requires participants to develop a complete stand-alone solution on their own for intermediate and final demonstration. To be clear, we want a developer or team to produce a complete program that can interact with a Windows client mimicking a normal user.

Businesses that make and sell products that replicate human connection are serving a deep need, but they may also be changing social norms in ways that can't be reversed. Many experts believe augmentation and automation are the shining stars of business uses of AI; their promise of greater productivity has lit up the executive imagination. In their shadow, however, a growing number of AI applications and devices are helping humans satisfy a basic need to connect with others. In particular, markets are slowly forming around artificially intelligent, emotionally attuned, responsive robots that people can relate to as companions. Certainly, if army veterans can form bonds with drones, many people can form emotional connections with their bots, either in lieu of human alternatives or in addition to them.

Paris, October 02, 2019 – Capgemini has developed an intelligent data platform called Project FARM (Financial and Agricultural Recommendation Models), which is designed to optimize the agricultural value chain and bolster global food supply. The platform uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to determine farming patterns through big data, generating insights from the data to make recommendations. It uses Machine Learning to make the platform applicable at scale by connecting it with cell phones. This solution has been built in collaboration with Agrics, a social enterprise operating in East Africa, which provides local farmers with agricultural products and services on credit. Global demand for food is anticipated to increase by 60% by 2050[1].

MCLEAN, Va. - Today, Booz Allen introduces ModzyTM, a first-of-its-kind enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) software product with a mission of its own: putting AI to work through the power of trusted models and a secure, scalable platform. The Modzy platform and model marketplace create the missing AI layer in today's tech stack, accelerating the deployment of AI from the lab to the enterprise. With click-to-deploy access for a growing list of AI models from leading tech companies and open source communities, and an environment to upload, manage and reuse AI models, Modzy greatly reduces risk and barriers to adopting and scaling AI. Interested customers can request an invitation to the Modzy Early Access Program, beginning today. "Achieving the promise of AI requires much more than training the next algorithm. It's about giving organizations choice and having a predictable and repeatable way to rapidly deploy, manage and secure AI models at enterprise scale," said Dr. Josh Sullivan, senior vice president, Booz Allen Hamilton and Modzy executive leader.

Synesthesia is the rare condition when our senses melt together -- some say they can hear colors, others that they can taste words. But what if we let the senses of an artificial intelligence overlap instead? Belgium-based machine learning researcher and educator Xander Steenbrugge has developed a neural network that can turn music into trippy visualizations. Steenbrugge's project, called "Neural Synesthesia," makes use of a generative adversarial network. That's a type of machine learning system that specializes in generating new data from a given training set.

U.S. government funding in artificial intelligence has fallen short and the country needs to invest in research, train an AI-ready workforce and apply the technology to national security missions, an independent government-commissioned panel said in an interim report on Monday. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) said it believes the U.S. government still confronts enormous work before it can transition AI from "a promising technological novelty into a mature technology integrated into core national security missions." The commission thinks an allied effort on AI in the realm of national security is important, Robert Work, vice chairman of the NSCAI and a former deputy secretary of defense, told reporters. The NSCAI has spoken with Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union, Work said. China is investing more than the United States in artificial intelligence, said the report, which referred to the Asian nation more than 50 times. "China takes advantage of the openness of U.S. society in numerous ways – some legal, some not – to transfer AI know-how," the report said.

This might sound like the plot from a dystopic future of a sci-fi movie. However, with recent progress, this technology is now taking the leap from science fiction to merely science. Autonomous non-invasive detection of brain activity is potentially useful in multiple domains such as human robot interaction and mental healthcare. It can provide an extra dimension of interaction between user and device, as well as enabling tangible information to be derived that does not depend on verbal communication. Such innovations also mean better brain-computer interfacing.

As a member of the Royal Society's Working Group on Machine Learning, Dr. Hauert is an expert in science communication. As a frequent speaker on the future of robotics, Hauert explains how robots are game-changers, but not in the way we think. Robots aren't going to replace humans; they're going to make our jobs much more humane. Difficult, demeaning, demanding, dangerous, dull--these are the jobs that robots will be taking. Productivity is one of the primary benefits of robotics in the workplace. In Europe, the goal is to attain a 20 percent increase in productivity by 2020. Central to achieving this is the exploration and use of robotics in the workplace.

History will be written on Nov. 4 at the VW plant in Zwickau, Germany. Anyone lucky enough to recently visit the factory, which is sealed behind blue rolling doors, entered into a secret world, a hidden industrial laboratory to which only a few Volkswagen employees have access. In its "ghost run," or test operation, orange-colored robots run by highly complex programs and aided by humans and machines assembled eight electric model-ID.3 Serial production is now set to begin on Nov. 4. Depending on how you see it, this marks either the beginning or the end of an era. In the future, 1,500 electric Volkswagen cars are to roll off the assembly line at the plant in the eastern state of Saxony every day, a total of 330,000 vehicles every year, in what the company describes as the "largest and most efficient electric car factory in Europe." The designers of the new compact, C-class ID.3 want to make it a 21st century icon, just as the VW Beetle and VW Golf were in their heydays. That's advertising language, of course, but even from a neutral perspective, it is difficult to overestimate the significance of what is happening: In Zwickau, Volkswagen is ringing the death knell for the combustion engine.

New technology is giving astronauts exploring distant worlds a helping hand. Scientists from NASA and the SETI Institute have developed a'smart glove' that lets astronauts control robots, specifically drones, through one-handed gestures. The innovation uses a micro-controller to read an array of sensors that capture even the smallest motion of the fingers and hands. The glove coincides with NASA's latest spacesuit design that aims to add more comfort and efficiency for astronauts as they explore the moon and Mars. Scientists from NASA and the SETI Institute have developed a'smart glove' that lets astronauts control robots, specifically drones, through one-handed gestures The smart glove is a prototype for a human-machine interface (HuMI) that would allow astronauts to wirelessly operate a wide array of robotic assets, including drones, via simple single-hand gestures.