Indonesian insurance provider TUGU Insurance has launched the "tdrive" mobile app to deliver a seamless brand experience to its agents and customers. Developed by Singapore-based insurtech company Zensung, the app leverages artificial intelligence and Internet of Things to prevent and reduce fraudulent claims. The app is currently available for TUGU Insurance's auto insurance products, but plans to expand it to other verticals such as travel, medical and home insurance are in the pipeline. While enabling agents and policyholders to buy insurance and submit their claims digitally, the app also aims to help them understand potential risks. According to a press release, tdrive includes functions to promote safe driving and drivers safety as well as carbon footprint awareness for drivers and organisations.

The Digital Single strategy of the European Commission sets out to "open up digital opportunities for people and business and enhance Europe's position as a world leader in the digital economy."(1) This article will briefly examine a part of that by looking at the work of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (Unit A.1). We know that the Unit sets out to push forward the development of a competitive industry in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) throughout Europe. Certainly, this includes industrial and service robots plus the growing field of autonomous systems from drones and driverless vehicles to computing and cognitive vision. Also, the Unit encourages the wide uptake and best use of robotics and AI in all societal and industrial fields.

A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) under the guidance of Professor Gordon Cheng has developed artificial skin for the whole body of a humanoid robot. The artificial skin even covers the soles of the feet of the H-1 Robot. This is, however, not their first attempt giving artificial skin to robots. Eight years ago in 2011, the same team had equipped a smaller robot with 31 of these hexagonal "skin cells." They have outdone themselves with the latest endeavor -- putting 1260 of these hexagonal skin cells on a humanoid robot, providing a total of 13,000 sensors.

We've allowed artificial intelligence into our lives almost without even realising it. Alexa (or one of her competitors) will tell us what the weather will be like tomorrow from a barely distinct command. Netflix's algorithms suggest what we might like to watch based on viewing habits. Health apps are crunching data and drawing conclusions about our wellbeing as we go about our business. The CIPD's April 2019 report, People and Machines: From Hype to Reality, found that – despite the technology being in its relative infancy – 32 per cent of UK organisations had already invested in AI and automation, with 22 per cent introducing software to perform cognitive tasks. Many HR departments are already using text-based chatbots of the kind deployed by banks or retailers to handle customer service queries by mimicking natural conversations.

At today's Spark AI Summit in Amsterdam, we announced the availability of the MLflow Model Registry, a new component in the MLflow open source ML platform. Since we introduced MLflow at Spark AI Summit 2018, the project has gained more than 140 contributors and 800,000 monthly downloads on PyPI, making MLflow one of the fastest growing open source projects in machine learning! MLflow already has the ability to track metrics, parameters, and artifacts as part of experiments, package models and reproducible ML projects, and deploy models to batch or real-time serving platforms. The MLflow Model Registry builds on MLflow's existing capabilities to provide organizations with one central place to share ML models, collaborate on moving them from experimentation to testing and production, and implement approval and governance workflows. Since we started MLflow, model management was the top requested feature among our open source users, so we are excited to launch a model management system that integrates directly with MLflow.

This week's episode of Move the Deal features Max Armbruster, founder and CEO of Talkpush. Based in Hong Kong, Talkpush brings artificial intelligence to large-scale recruiting to make hiring and finding talent easier. With vast industry knowledge, Armbruster noticed in the field of automation selection and screening that the solutions available weren't user-friendly and required candidates to jump through too many hoops before qualifying for a job. Talkpush works with companies who hire a few thousand people a year, focusing on automating recruitment conversations. Candidates connect to recruiters through chatbots, using a conversational interface that allows recruiters to save time by eliminating those who aren't a good fit.

Humans developed technology to serve them and now it threatens their very existence. "Deepfakes" or Deepfake videos are the latest addition to the league of AI-powered advancements that are doing more harm than good. Imagine this: Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, who is theoretically privy to the private data of two billion people, sinisterly claimed in an Instagram video, "I owe it all to Spectre. They showed me whoever controls the data, controls the future." To mimic the appearance of genuine news, the video is framed by broadcast chyrons saying "We're increasing transparency on ads."

Winnow, the U.K. startup that has developed smart kitchen tech to help commercial kitchens reduce food waste, is disclosing $12 million in Series B funding. Backing the round is Ingka Group (a strategic partner to the IKEA franchisee system), Mustard Seed, Circularity Capital, D: Ax and The Ingenious Group. It follows a recent $8 million loan from The European Investment Bank (EIB), meaning that Winnow has added $20 million of capital in the last month. Counting global clients such as IKEA and the Armani Hotel in Dubai, Winnow is on a mission to offer the hospitality industry technology to help cut down on food waste by making commercial kitchens'smarter.' Its latest Winnow Vision product automates waste tracking by using computer vision to track what food is being discarded and therefore enabling kitchens to make better inventory decisions.

Abu Dhabi has announced that it has established the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) the first graduate level, research-based artificial intelligence university in the world. MBZUAI will enable graduate students, businesses, and governments to advance in the AI field, and will introduce a new model of academia and research to the field of AI. This will provide students and faculty access to some of the world's most advanced AI systems to unleash its potential for economic and societal development, it said. Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of State, who has been appointed Chair of the MBZUAI Board of Trustees and is spearheading the establishment of the University, said the university aligns with the vision of the UAE leadership and is based on sustainable development and finding practical solutions based on innovation and state-of-the-art technology. The University will offer Master of Science, MSc, and PhD level programmes in key areas of AI – Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Natural Language Processing – while also engaging policymakers and businesses around the world so that AI is harnessed responsibly as a force for positive transformation. MBZUAI has partnered with the Abu Dhabi-based Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IIAI), a global force in excellence and leadership of AI research, for the supervision of PhD students and curriculum development.

India's telecom giant Reliance Jio has unveiled an artificial intelligence-based video call assistant that a user can use via their 4G phone with just a call, without having the need for any other application. The announcement came during the India Mobile Congress event held in the capital of the country, New Delhi. The video assistant has been developed by Reliance Jio along with the helping hands from US-based Radisys, a Reliance Industries Ltd subsidiary. Interestingly, the firm at the launch of the service noted that they already have a number of companies like HDFC willing to use the offering. The user can make a normal call via their 4G phone and then by clicking on a video call, a human will answer the question through a pre-recorded video message.