Google designers show their latest devices during a visit to its hardware studio where they designed the company's new Pixel 4 flagship phone, Pixel Go laptop, Pixel Buds wireless headphones, Nest Mini smart speaker and Nest Wifi system. Though the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones may be the stars of the Made by Google media event in New York City, a new and impressive smart speaker garnered quite a bit of chatter, too. Nest Mini ($49), which is about the size of a doughnut, has some improved hardware and software to go up against its primary competitor, Amazon Echo Dot. This diminutive smart speaker offers twice the bass as the original Google Home Mini, the company says. Indeed, the audio sounded fuller and louder than its predecessor when we cranked it up in a post-event demo session.

Fox News Flash top headlines for Oct. 15 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com They can form swarms of hundreds of mini, precision-guided explosives, overwhelm radar or simply blanket an area with targeting sensors. They can paint or light up air, ground or sea targets for enemy fighters, missiles or armored vehicles, massively increasing warzone vulnerability. The can instantly emerge from behind mountains to fire missiles at Army convoys, infantry on the move or even mechanized armored columns.

One in three councils are using computer algorithms to help make decisions about benefit claims and other welfare issues, despite evidence emerging that some of the systems are unreliable. Companies including the US credit-rating businesses Experian and TransUnion, as well as the outsourcing specialist Capita and Palantir, a data-mining firm co-founded by the Trump-supporting billionaire Peter Thiel, are selling machine-learning packages to local authorities that are under pressure to save money. A Guardian investigation has established that 140 councils out of 408 have now invested in the software contracts, which can run into millions of pounds, more than double the previous estimates. The systems are being deployed to provide automated guidance on benefit claims, prevent child abuse and allocate school places. But concerns have been raised about privacy and data security, the ability of council officials to understand how some of the systems work, and the difficulty for citizens in challenging automated decisions.

Reliance Jio unveiled its patent-filed innovation – an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based Video Call Assistant (Bot) at India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2019. The AI-based bot can be accessed via a 4G phone call, without the need for installing any other application. The Jio Video Call Assistant aims at revolutionizing customer support and customer communication use cases said the company in a release. "Jio is committed to bring innovative and relevant digital solutions to enable and empower businesses to conduct their operations more efficiently and Video Call Assistant is one such example of bringing a truly innovative and engaging product for millions of businesses in India. Radisys is helping us make AI accessible for everyone so that businesses – small or large can reap the benefits of new and emerging technologies. Radisys' innovation continues to help accelerate Jio's global innovation and technology leadership in the areas of 5G, IOT, and open source architecture adoption." said Mathew Oommen, president of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.

The government has announced it will invest £133m in new technology for the NHS, including tools for arthritis and cancer diagnosis, as well as gene-based therapies for diseases including dementia. The fund will be spread across several different areas of treatment, including £50m ring-fenced for NHS diagnostics services and for supporting Centres of Excellence in digital pathology and imaging with artificial intelligence. Adult social care will receive £7.5m over eight years, which will fund research to improve care delivery. A project dedicated to developing new therapies for genetic mutations, including those linked to Parkinson's and cancer, will receive £30m over four years. A further £14m will also be spent on bioscience projects across the UK.

This is an updated version of a story that initially appeared in Interglobix Magazine, the publication for data centers, connectivity and lifestyle. The road to the self-driving car of the future is paved with hardware and data centers. Autonomous vehicles promise to be one of the transformational technologies of the 21st century, with the potential to remake much of our urban and economic landscape. But many questions remain about how the connected car of 2019 will evolve to meet the vision for the autonomous vehicles of the future, and tough issues to be resolved on multiple fronts – including technology, regulation and infrastructure. The long-term vision is to create networks of connected vehicles that "talk" to one another using vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications over low-latency wireless connections, which can also allow vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) that enable robot cars to connect with traffic lights and parking meters.

A research team at TUM (Technical University of Munich) has recently developed biologically-inspired artificial skin for robots. The technology is crucial for the advancements of robots if they are ever to improve our everyday lives in a safely manner. Giving robots artificial skin (combined with sophisticated algorithms) would allow them to sense contact, proximity, temperature, and surroundings in great detail. This technology would enable robots to move around carefully with low risks of accidents - especially when humans are nearby. And this is what the team at TUM achieved.

Artificial intelligence is perhaps one of, if not, the most disruptive technologies of this era. Although it has been practised for over 60 years, AI has really emerged as a practical part of operations across industries in the last decade or so. Healthcare is one such sector where its impact promises to be far-reaching. Of the numerous benefits AI has to offer, enhanced patient safety and greater accessibility are the most obvious ones. A report titled'Artificial Intelligence (AI): Healthcare's new nervous system' by Accenture estimates that health AI market in the US will be worth USD 6.6 billion by 2021, with a staggering CAGR of 40 percent.

AI "needs to span every battlefield system that we have, from our maneuver systems for our fire control systems to our sustainment systems to our soldier systems to our human resource systems and our enterprise systems." Gen. Matthew Easley, Director of the Army AI Task Force (AAITF), made these remarks at the 2019 AUSA Warriors Corner, which runs from October 14-16. "We need to be able to create an AI infrastructure for the Army" -- Brig. The US Army is looking to integrate AI into every facet of its operations. "We see AI as an enabling technology for all Army modernization priorities -- from future vertical lift to long range precision fires to soldier lethality," said Easley.

You may not realize that among more conventional applications of artificial intelligence like apps and search engines, emerging technologies are transforming yet another unexpected area of design: materials. A fascinating new material study released by Delft University is showing how machine learning may upend our assumptions of how materials are capable of behaving. The Delft study, led by assistant professor of materials science and engineering Miguel Bessa, has developed a new meta material that transforms brittle polymer materials into ultra compressible forms--to understand what this means for the future of product design, Bessa says with an innovation like this, "everyday objects such as bicycles, dinner tables and umbrellas could be folded into your pocket." While it's difficult to imagine fitting an entire bicycle in your back pocket, the material has been developed in scales ranging from macro to nano and shows great promise. So how do researchers utilize artificial intelligence to develop new materials?