Legendary astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson shares the view of Tesla founder Elon Musk that AI poses mankind's "biggest existential crisis". Musk made his now-infamous comment during the South by Southwest tech conference in Austin, Texas last year as part of a call for regulation. Musk warned: "I think that's the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one." A year later, Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked what he believes to be the biggest threat to mankind during an episode of his StarTalk radio show. Dr Tyson appeared alongside Josh Clark, host of the "Stuff You Should Know" and "The End of The World" podcasts, who was also asked the same question.

AI has been used to create deep fake images, voices and videos. Researchers believe that it may soon be impossible to tell the difference between a real person and a fake. "Criminals used artificial intelligence-based software to impersonate a chief executive's voice and demand a fraudulent transfer of €220,000 ($243,000) in March in what cybercrime experts described as an unusual case of artificial intelligence being used in hacking. The CEO of a U.K.-based energy firm thought he was speaking on the phone with his boss, the chief executive of the firm's German parent company, who asked him to send the funds to a Hungarian supplier. The caller said the request was urgent, directing the executive to pay within an hour, according to the company's insurance firm, Euler Hermes Group SA. Euler Hermes declined to name the victim companies. Law enforcement authorities and AI experts have predicted that criminals would use AI to automate cyberattacks. Whoever was behind this incident appears to have used AI-based software to successfully mimic the German executive's voice by phone. The U.K. CEO recognized his boss' slight German accent and the melody of his voice on the phone, said Rüdiger Kirsch, a fraud expert at Euler Hermes, a subsidiary of Munich-based financial services company Allianz SE. Several officials said the voice-spoofing attack in Europe is the first cybercrime they have heard of in which criminals clearly drew on AI. Euler Hermes, which covered the entire amount of the victim company's claim, hasn't dealt with other claims seeking to recover losses from crimes involving AI, according to Mr. Kirsch."

A Rochester Institute of Technology professor has earned a prestigious National Science Foundation award to use computers to better understand human behavior and social interaction. Ifeoma Nwogu, an assistant professor of computer science, received an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award and grant for her five-year project. She aims to study human behavior in a new way, by using machine learning techniques to analyze and find patterns in the many signals that individuals display during social interactions. Her work will specifically look at groups working in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), with the aim of supporting underrepresented groups in STEM. "In a conversation, people are constantly displaying and processing different non-verbal signals, such as how fast someone is talking or the facial expressions they are making," said Nwogu.

Inspur, a leading data center and AI full-stack solutions provider, today announced two AI-technology driven open computing systems. The X-MAN 4.0, developed with Baidu, is the world's first OAI (Open Accelerator Infrastructure) compliant and liquid cooling rack-scale AI computing product optimized specifically for deep neural network applications. The Inspur OAI UBB system, meanwhile, is a 21-inch Full-Rack OAM solution delivering efficiency, flexibility and management. Workloads in data centers are growing more diverse and complex with artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies and applications spreading rapidly. Plus, Internet companies are struggling with AI's increasing hardware complexity--integrating an AI accelerator typically takes 6 to 12 months.

Eric Iler may not be able to leave the hospital, but thanks to a robot called Well-E, he's getting the chance to spend the day at the zoo with his family.

Called FARM (Financial and Agricultural Recommendation Models) and delivered in partnership with social enterprise Agrics, the project is providing more than 200,000 small-scale farmers in Kenya with the hardware and software they need to analyse big data regarding issues such as weather patterns and soil quality. The platform uses AI to "intelligently" collect and process the data, before providing the user with personalised insights and recommendations to optimise crop yield and eliminate inefficiencies. In sustainability terms, results of acting on the recommendations are likely to be better water management, the use of less fertiliser, the generation of less food waste throughout the value chain and improved incomes for farmers.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are increasingly being used in materials science research. For example, MIT associate professor of materials science and engineering Juejun "JJ" Hu developed an algorithm that enhances the performance of a chip-based spectrometer, and Atlantic Richfield Associate Professor of Energy Studies Elsa A. Olivetti built an artificial-intelligence system that scours through scientific papers to deduce materials science "recipes." These and other MIT professors, as well as keynote speaker Brian Storey, Toyota Research Institute's director of accelerated materials design and discovery, will discuss insights and breakthroughs in their research using machine learning at the MIT Materials Research Laboratory's annual Materials Day Symposium on Wednesday, Oct. 9 in Kresge Auditorium. Associate Professor Hu recently explained what led to his breakthrough spectrometer, and why he is optimistic that machine learning and artificial intelligence are becoming an everyday tool in materials research. Q: Your spectrometer work in particular made use of machine learning techniques.

As higher education costs continue to rise, students bear the ultimate burden of choosing the right school, major, and delivery format to maximize post-graduation success. Unlike previous generations, millennials and adult learners are searching for alternatives to full-time, on-campus programs, and universities are eager to offer non-traditional routes to a degree. Distance learning programs have existed since the 1980s, but technological innovation, content scalability, and widespread mobile adoption have enabled the online degree program to be a competitive option for aspiring students. Long gone are the days of aggressive marketing tactics and empty promises made by degree mills and unaccredited for-profit universities. Today, a learner can enroll in competitive bachelor's and master's programs at U Penn, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, NYU, and more.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has moved out from the pages of science fiction to emerge at the forefront of technological revolutions of the 21st century. It has successfully made its way to numerous sectors such as Retail, Finance, Healthcare, Hospitality, Automotive and IT Services and showed its potential to completely revolutionize and cause a quantum shift in how society functions. With industries betting big on this change, India with its huge millennial workforce is set to face the unique impacts of automation – from jobs to quality of life – more than any other country. Artificial Intelligence is expected to create 2.3 million jobs by 2020, replacing the 1.8 million it will eliminate. The time has come for Indian technology professionals to stop fearing AI and demonstrate if they are AI-tentive.

Imagine a world where babies are stored in life-support jars, humans are stalked by oily ghosts, and the American president is played by Lindsay Wagner, the helter-skelter-haired star of 1970s cult TV show The Bionic Woman. This is the dystopian milieu of Death Stranding, which will hit shops soon, just in time for the hectic Christmas period. In this epic video game, by far the most controversial of 2019, players must traverse a future America to reconnect its "chiral network" (a posh internet), while dodging mysterious BTs (beached things). For reasons unknown, the living and dead coexist, with the protagonist able to connect to the "other side" via a "jar baby" in an artificial womb. One recent demo focused on such gimmicks as urinating to create mushrooms.