The term Artificial Intelligence was coined in 1956, but AI has become more popular today thanks to increased data volumes, advanced algorithms, and improvements in computing power and storage. In the 1960s, the US Department of Defense took interest in this type of work and began training computers to mimic basic human reasoning. For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) completed street mapping projects in the 1970s. And DARPA produced intelligent personal assistants in 2003, long before Siri, Alexa or Cortana were household names. This early work paved the way for the automation and formal reasoning that we see in computers today, including decision support systems and smart search systems that can be designed to complement and augment human abilities.

Imagine a world where killer robots, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), have the ability to decide who lives and who dies on the basis of deep learning and algorithms, without any human intervention. This scenario has been criticised by naysayers as alarmist. But experts, including United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, have warned of the risk that AI can be put to nefarious use in the wrong hands. Please subscribe or log in to continue reading the full article.

Back in 2017, the Microsoft Research team developed and open-sourced Aerial Informatics and Robotics Simulation (AirSim). On Monday, the team shared how AirSim can be used to solve the current challenges in the development of autonomous systems. Microsoft AirSim is an open-source, cross-platform simulation platform for autonomous systems including autonomous cars, wheeled robotics, aerial drones, and even static IoT devices. It works as a plugin for Epic Games' Unreal Engine. There is also an experimental release for the Unity game engine.

Kizuna Ai, the most popular streamer in Japan, is an anatomically exaggerated, perpetually adolescent girl in frilly thigh-high socks and a pink hair ribbon. She's also an entirely virtual character, given life by the actions and voice of an invisible actress. In the home of anime and "Ghost in the Shell" futurism, millions now follow Kizuna Ai online, and that success has spawned thousands of copycat acts and a cottage industry catering to so-called virtual YouTubers, or VTubers. Defying the Western streamer blueprint of young male gamers like PewDiePie and Ninja, Japan has invented a new class of streaming star that's equal parts digital avatar and interactive anime. "What separates VTubers from regular anime characters is that you can believe they actually exist," said Takeshi Osaka, founder of Activ8 Inc., the Tokyo-based company behind Kizuna Ai. "That presence is an important part of what makes them so appealing."

In the operationalising ethics category, the two selected projects include "Patient-Centric Frameworks for the Evaluation of AI-Enabled Medical Tests" that has Amit Sethi of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT Bombay) as the principal investigator and "Targeted Bias in Indian Media Outlets" that has Animesh Mukherjee of the Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur) as the principal investigator. One of the research projects picked for the governance category, "Ethical Implications of Delegating Decision-making Journey to AI Systems", has Rahul De from the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore (IIM Bangalore)

The FAA has warned against equipping your drone with weapons such as flamethrowers and handguns. But can a nail gun really be considered a weapon -- that is, outside of Quake? Let's hope not, because roboticists at the University of Michigan have made a roofing drone that uses that tool to autonomously nail shingles into place. In a video shot in UM's special drone testing habitat, the craft flies up, approaches its bit of roof, and gingerly applies the nail gun before backing off and doing it a couple more times. It's very much just a tech demonstration right now, with lots of room to improve.

Countless studies have shown not only that gender bias is real but also that it has significant repercussions. The pattern of diminishing representation on the higher rungs of the career ladder in STEM fields also holds true broadly in the corporate world: 56% of university graduates are women, yet women represent only 38% of the total workforce, 26% of the managerial ranks, 15% of executive-level positions, and 5% of the CEO ranks. How, then, will AI affect gender diversity in the leadership pipeline? AI has the potential to mitigate the corporate gender and leadership gaps by removing bias in recruiting, evaluation, and promotion decisions; by helping improve retention of women employees; and, potentially, by intervening in the everyday interactions that affect employees' sense of inclusion. Biased data is a source of risk.

With an aging population and a growing shortage of drivers, Japan is a country where autonomous transportation services would seem to have a bright future. Demand is particularly high for self-driving trucks in regions with few alternatives to hauling freight by road, such as Hokkaido. Among truck manufacturers, UD Trucks Corp., a Japanese unit of Sweden's AB Volvo, has teamed up with an agricultural cooperative in the northern prefecture that is increasingly concerned about the declining number of delivery truck drivers. The company has been testing its autonomous heavy-duty trucks on a 1.5-km-long (about 1 mile) designated route in and around a sugar factory in Shari, eastern Hokkaido. The truck is capable of Level 4 self-driving, meaning it performs all driving tasks without human intervention within a limited area, even in emergencies.

Oracle just concluded Oracle OpenWorld 2019, its annual user conference hosted in San Francisco. Larry Ellison, Chairman and CTO of Oracle Corporation is more bullish about the company's cloud strategy than ever. Larry's keynote focused on the core differentiating factors of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. He claimed that only Oracle has the best cloud infrastructure, platform, and SaaS offerings. Ellison emphasized on the enhancements made to Gen 2 Cloud Infrastructure, Autonomous Database, and some of the new services such as the Digital Assistant Bot and a Machine Learning platform.

The experts at Greenbone Networks vulnerability analysis and management company discovered 600 unprotected servers exposed online that contained medical radiological images. The research was conducted between mid-July 2019 and early September 2019. The unprotected medical image storage systems were located in 52 countries, the experts discovered that they were affected by 10,000 vulnerabilities, more than 500 of them rated with the highest severity score (CVSS 10 out of 10). Greenbone Networks researchers analyzed about 2,300 Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) systems exposed online. PACS servers are used in the healthcare industry to archive images created by radiological processes and to make them available to medical staff for analysis and diagnosis. These systems use the DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) standard to manage medical imaging data.