SHANGHAI, China, Sept. 16, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On August 29th, with the theme of "Intelligent Connectivity, Infinite Possibilities", the 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), co-sponsored by the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, National Internet Information Office, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering and Shanghai Municipal People's Government, was solemnly held in Shanghai. More than 500 top universities, international organizations and the world's most influential scientists, entrepreneurs and investors in the field of artificial intelligence gathered in Shanghai. Turing Award winners Raj Reddy and Manuel Blum, former Dean of the School of Computer Science at CMU & Chief AI Scientist of Squirrel AI Learning Tom Mitchell, Nobel Prize winner George Smoot, "Father of Machine Learning", Finn E. Kydland, Swiss AI Lab IDSIA Scientific Director Jürgen Schmidhuber Co-founder and CEO of Tesla Elon Musk, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Tencent Pony (Huateng) Ma, Co-chairman of the United Nations High-level Group on Digital Cooperation Jack Ma etc., delivered brilliant speeches and conversations respectively. In the top-leader conversation session, Elon Musk, Co-founder and CEO of Tesla, conducted an in-depth conversation with Jack Ma, Co-chairman of the United Nations High-level Group on Digital Cooperation. When it comes to education, Musk said, "The lecture is the worst because it's too slow. It's hard to make fewer mistakes for us in predicting the future, but you have to try first, and then to adjust it according to the errors you have predicted before."

The recent rise of insurtechs has spurred modernization in the fundamentals of insurance, including policy creation, underwriting, and claims management. Insurtechs, such as Hippo and Lemonade, have implemented AI and data analytics to provide quick and accurate quotes to their customers while also decreasing their own operating costs. Such innovation has disrupted the traditional insurance industry and has helped alter underlying business models of legacy companies, forcing them to invest heavily in insurtech technology to remain competitive. Hippo, which promotes savings of up to 25% on home insurance, offers customer quotes in less than 60 seconds and also provides complimentary smart home sensor kits to all policyholders. These kits include a two-sensor smart home monitoring system and premium discounts for helping to prevent common risks from fire, water damage, and break-ins.

When Peter Cushing turned to face the camera in Rogue One, Star Wars fans were as excited as they were confused. After all, the actor had died more than 20 years earlier, and yet, there was no mistaking him. For a major Hollywood movie, this is a clever trick. But not everyone is trying to entertain us, and you don't need a million-dollar budget to deceive. "You take the face of one person and put it on the body of another," said Jeff Smith, associate director at the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado Denver.

Technology expert John Best provided an overview of the potential that artificial intelligence (AI) holds for credit unions during a general session at the CUNA Operations & Member Experience Council Conference in Chicago. Best says the long-held vision of AI is a robot that performs virtually all our day-to-day duties, but in the immediate future, AI applications will act as our assistants. "Tomorrow's AI revolution will grow from today's technology," he says. "We're going to have applications in place that take what we do today and do it better." Whether employees are in the call center or accounting, they'll have AI that will assist them with their everyday duties, he says.

Police officers have raised concerns about using "biased" artificial-intelligence tools, a report commissioned by one of the UK government's advisory bodies reveals. The study warns such software may "amplify" prejudices, meaning some groups could become more likely to be stopped in the street and searched. It says officers also worry they could become over-reliant on automation. And it says clearer guidelines are needed for facial recognition's use. "The police are concerned that the lack of clear guidance could lead to uncertainty over acceptable uses of this technology," the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi)'s Alexander Babuta told BBC News. "And given the lack of any government policy for police use of data analytics, it means that police forces are going to be reluctant to innovate.

Advancements in artificial intelligence may result in "atrocities" because the technology will behave in unexpected ways, a former Google software engineer has warned. Computer scientist Laura Nolan left Google in June last year after raising concerns about its work with the U.S. Department of Defense on Project Maven, a drone program that was using AI algorithms to speed up analysis of vast amounts of captured surveillance footage. Speaking to The Guardian, the software engineer said the use of autonomous or AI-enhanced weapons systems that lack a human touch may have severe, even fatal, consequences. She said: "What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed. There could be large-scale accidents because these things will start to behave in unexpected ways.

AI is changing the field of synthetic biology and how we engineer biology. It's helping engineers design new ways to design genetic circuits -- and it could leave a remarkable impact on the future of humanity TVs and radios blare that "artificial intelligence is coming," and it will take your job and beat you at chess. But AI is already here, and it can beat you -- and the world's best -- at chess. In 2012, it was also used by Google to identify cats in YouTube videos. Today, it's the reason Teslas have Autopilot and Netflix and Spotify seem to "read your mind."

People have long blamed video games as a cause of school shootings, but a new study has found that this is more likely to be the case if the perpetrator is white. Researchers have found that video games are eight times more likely to be mentioned when the perpetrator was a white male than if the shooter were an African American male. Experts believe the public looks to find an explanation for this type of behavior if the act is carried out by someone who doesn't match the racial stereotype of a violent person. Although many politicians and media outlets point to violent video games as the cause of school shootings, experts have yet to find scientific evidence to support these claims. 'Video games are often used by lawmakers and others as a red herring to distract from other potential causes of school shootings,' said lead researcher Patrick Markey, PhD, a psychology professor at Villanova University.

Issue tracking and resolution systems are an essential part of any business. Yet, the tech used to streamline the trouble ticket process isn't as effective it could be. This makes it difficult to scale business profitably. Up-sizing ticket resolution systems mean increasing costs, time, and manpower. MetTel is a telco out of New York.

"[T]here's a fundamental flaw in our justification for these technologies," Accenture's Responsible AI Lead Rumman Chowdhury wrote on Twitter last month, referring to the San Francisco proposal. "Do we live in a sufficiently dangerous state that we need this? Is punitive surveillance how we achieve a healthy and secure society (it is not)?" My question about any new technology that is being rapidly adopted--AR, VR, big data, machine learning, whatever--is always "why?" Why do businesses or governments want face recognition? "'We' aren't justifying these technologies," I replied.