BUTTE - Montana Tech in Butte is giving some high school students from around the state a chance to build the best robot rover. Four schools, including Butte High, Red Lodge, Great Falls CMR and Anaconda High were given kits from Montana Tech to build robot rovers -- rovers that could be sent down to rescue trapped miners. The team with the best rover will be rewarded in the end. "We're going to provide all the team participants a $1,000 scholarship to Tech, and the high school mentors receive a stipend for their work. Any supplies that are needed, we provide those as well," said Montana Tech Assistant Dean Curtis Link.

In developing artificial intelligence for use on the battlefield and throughout the defense enterprise, the U.S. military is challenging China and other adversaries to a multigenerational contest. At stake is nothing less than global dominance in the fast-arriving digital future. "We are in a contest for the character of the international order in the digital age," Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director of the Pentagon's new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told reporters at a recent briefing. "Our potential adversaries are moving very deliberately towards a future of artificial intelligence." To get an edge on the competition, the U.S. military plans to "democratize" access to AI development tools across the Defense Department, through a collaborative, cloud-based platform called the Joint Common Foundation.

SkinVision is on a mission to save 250,000 lives in the next decade through early detection of skin cancer using machine learning. Digital Health's Owen Hughes caught up with SkinVision CEO, Erik de Heus, at the Intelligent Health conference in Basel last month to find out more. A key facet of preventative health initiatives is mobilising health around individuals in a way that allows them to become more proactive in their wellbeing. Giving patients the power to do this using technology they already possess can therefore play a huge role in helping people stay aware of their health and acting before an issue turns into something more serious. SkinVision embraces this idea by turning the smartphone into a tool for the early detection and monitoring of skin cancer.

HONG KONG – A unit of Activision Blizzard Inc. has punished a player for expressing support for Hong Kong's protest movement, the latest example of a U.S. company attempting to rein in speech that might displease the Chinese Communist Party. Blizzard Entertainment said it was banning Ng Wai Chung, also known as Blitzchung, from its professional Hearthstone esports competition for a year. Blizzard is also withholding money he had already earned in the company's top-tier Grandmasters tournament, which Ng said in a Twitter message cost him $10,000 of prize earnings. The move was triggered when Ng -- dressed in a gas mask and goggles in defiance of authorities' ban on face masks -- used a slogan in support of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protesters during a post-match interview. "After an investigation, we are taking the necessary actions to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future," Blizzard said in a statement.

Airbnb is an online-based marketing company that connects people looking for accommodation (Airbnb guests) to people looking to rent their properties (Airbnb hosts) on a short-term or long-term basis. The rentals properties includes apartments (dominant), homes, boats, and whole lot more. Since its inception in 2008, Airbnb has steadily risen in terms of revenue growth and its range of service provisions. As of 2019, there 150 million users of Airbnb services in 191 countries, making it a major disruptor of the traditional hospitality industry (this is akin to how Uber and other emerging transportation services have disrupted the traditional intra-city transportation services). Airbnb generates revenue by charging its guests and hosts fees for arranging stays: hosts are charged 3% of the value of the booking, while guests are charged 6%-12% per the nature of the booking.

The US has added 28 Chinese organisations to the Entity List for their suspected involvement in human rights and privacy violations against Muslim minority groups, particularly the Uyghur. As a result, the action will prohibit trade between the 28 entities and US companies. The Department of Commerce has not specified reasons for blacklisting the organisations, apart from ruling that they were "acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States". Among the trade-blocked companies are Hikvision and Dahua Technology, two of the world's largest video surveillance suppliers and manufacturers that have been implicated in AI surveillance operations and data collection against Muslim minorities. The Department of Commerce's report stated: "Specifically, these entities have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China's campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the XUAR [Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region]."

Fairness ProjectLast week, I moderated a panel at TWIMLcon about how teams and organizations can operationalize responsible AI that combined perspectives from three people from different corners of the tech and AI community. Rachel Thomas is best known as cofounder of fast.ai, a popular free online deep learning course. In recent months, Thomas was named director of a new organization that mixes research, policy, and education called the Center for Applied Data Ethics at University of San Francisco. Guillaume Saint-Jacques is a senior software engineer at LinkedIn's Fairness Project, an applied research team that assesses the performance of the company's AI systems. Parinaz Sobhani is director of machine learning at Georgian Partners, an investor in SaaS startups with its own applied research lab to help portfolio companies apply machine learning.

In the last 6 years – we have helped millions of users in learning data science, we helped hundreds of companies across the globe hire top data science talent and we conducted the biggest data science conference for practitioners in India. Over the last 9 months – we took all our experience in helping people learn and helping companies hire talent, and created our flagship program out of it – Certified AI & ML Blackbelt (Beginners to Masters). The program was launched last month and we have received raving feedback from the community. This program comes with 10 courses, more than 20 projects and one-on-one mentorship for 18 months. There are no pre-requisites to take this course.

How will Canadian universities change over the next 20 years? What challenges will they face and what opportunities lie ahead? In honour of University Affairs' 60th anniversary, we put questions like these to seven people representing different regions and facets of the university enterprise from coast to coast. They spoke about their dreams for universities that better represent the world scholars strive to understand, about their concerns around finances, how the students they serve inspire and teach them, and about the opportunities – and risks – posed by the onslaught of rapid technological change. Most of all, they affirmed that universities have a vital role to play in helping society navigate through the deepest challenges of our time, from climate change to the dangers of misinformation and rising intolerance.

Therefore, we anticipate gaining trust from schools by doing school tours regularly, attend exhibitions internationally and locally to enhance the exposure as well as letting the fields to understand the advantages of integrating AI into education." "While there isn't much of a challenge for students, as it ultimately enhances their learning experience, the challenge lies with parents and schools. To adopt a new way of thinking and learning, accepting the alternating role of the human element from something as personal as education, seems to be the biggest challenge." "Educators, trainers, and students are generally reluctant to integrate AI into their curriculum when the technology is difficult to use or implement. The AI-based technology needs to be something they can naturally add into their day to day.