Facebook is taking a swipe at Tinder with a new dating service that is being rolled out today. The newly released service, called Facebook Dating, will harness the power of the platform's user data, including what you like, what events you go to, and what groups you're a part of, to connect you to both Facebook and Instagram users who have opted in. Unlike other major dating apps like Tinder, however, Facebook won't require users to mutually'match' before being able to connect, and instead will let participants browse profiles via a familiar card-style cue and interact with the ones that interest them. Facebook says users can interact with profiles in two ways: by liking a profile to let someone know that they're interested or by commentating directly on a picture. Facebook is jumping into the dating game with its new Facebook Dating service that will allow users to connect with people in and outside of their friend network.

For seven days next July, before Japan kicks off the Summer Olympics, Tokyo will let dozens of driverless vehicles roam freely around the competition venues in the city's waterfront area to promote the nascent technology. As many as 100 self-driving cars will ferry up to 7,000 passengers in the week starting July 6, said Seigo Kuzumaki, director for the government's autonomous-vehicle program. Carmakers including Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. as well as parts manufacturers and startups are participating, he said. The largest driverless-vehicle trial in Japan so far is meant to showcase the country's strengths in the field. From next month through 2022, Japan will run a slew of tests on public roads in Tokyo, involving cars from 28 companies and institutions.

Every day, the ProgrammableWeb team is busy, updating its three primary directories for APIs, clients (language-specific libraries or SDKs for consuming or providing APIs), and source code samples. If you have new APIs, clients, or source code examples to add to ProgrammableWeb's directories, we offer forms (APIs, Clients, Source Code) for submitting them to our API research team. If there's a listing in one of our directories that you'd like to claim as the owner, please contact us at editor@programmableweb.com. Thirteen APIs have been added to the ProgrammableWeb directory in categories including Internet of Things, Identity, and Machine Learning. Highlights include an API for IBM Watson enabled branded assistants and an API for trivia from the Jeopardy TV show.

New research published today by the Artificial Intelligence Forum of New Zealand (AI Forum) is calling for urgent action to progress the use of AI to address some of New Zealand's most pressing social, environmental and economic challenges, and not wait for a formal Government-led national strategy. The study called'Towards Our Intelligent Future' positions AI as a fundamental tool to tackle issues highlighted by the Treasury's new Living Standards Framework for Wellbeing, launched in December 2018, and also the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals. It reveals how New Zealand can benefit from AI supporting wellbeing and sustainability, along with the multi-billion dollar boost to the economy it could provide by 2030. By then, models from McKinsey and PwC show global GDP could be 14 percent higher with AI, and New Zealand could gain between 5.6 and 10.4 percent of total GDP, compared to a scenario without AI. It also shows New Zealand is performing reasonably well in the international AI discussion but highlights an urgent need to invest more and secure supply of homegrown talent.

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are a type of neural network most often used for image recognition and classification. CNNs excel at these tasks because they are designed to automatically learn how to recognize spatial hierarchies in an image. Once these algorithms are trained, they can'infer' the next best prediction for the task at hand. Beyond basic image recognition, CNNs are used for many different real world applications. We're beginning to see applications like China's TikTok that present AI as a product to consumers, where a recommendation engine infers which 60-second video they'd like to see next (with next to zero human guidance telling the app what to do).

John Paty, VP Finance at Expert System, will be joining a panel discussion on Machine Learning, RPA and AI during the WSTA's fall seminar on September 11 in Boston, MA. The panel will discuss implementation, lessons learned and new use cases for these technologies in finance and banking. John will be joined with other financial executives to give a 360 degree view of AI in financial institutions and their technology partners. Expert System's Artificial Intelligence solutions have been deployed in many of the world's largest banking and financial services institutions to support intelligent process automation and knowledge discovery, ranging from knowledge management and content enrichment, investment research, customer care and support, risk mitigation and anti-money laundering compliance.

In January of this year, Wired Magazine published an article about a collaboration between The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Google parent Alphabet's DeepMind unit to create software powered by artificial intelligence that attempts to predict which patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) are likely to develop acute kidney injury (AKI). The article stated that more than 50% of adults admitted to an ICU end up getting AKI, which is life-threatening. According to the article, the Department of Veterans Affairs contributed 700,000 medical records to the project. The goal of the project was to test whether artificial intelligence could be developed to help doctors better predict which patients were at risk for developing AKI so preventative measures could be taken sooner. It looks like artificial intelligence may in fact be able to help doctors identify which patients in the ICU are at serious risk of AKI.

Over the history of Science and Technology in the world, Africa has received relatively little attention compared to other regions of the world, despite notable African developments in mathematics, metallurgy, architecture, and other fields. Our Event is to shine light on the emerging advances going on in parts of Africa and speaking to leaders head on about what can be done to gain mass adoption. We will be speaking to Kevin Kissi Founder of Engineer Africa & Brian Asingia Founder of DreamGalaxy & Author of "The Last Digital Frontier"

SqwidNet, in partnership with Sigfox, has concluded the second round of its Internet of Things (IoT) SA University Challenge with ten university teams competing in the final pitch presentation day this week. The programme is designed to challenge students to develop and create innovative projects focused on building solutions that support the UN Sustainable Development Goals using SqwidNet/Sigfox technology. "We were astounded by the creative thinking displayed by the ten teams that presented their solutions to the judges this week," says Phathizwe Malinga, managing director of SqwidNet. "The solutions presented ranged from agricultural solutions for early pest detection to avoid crop losses, to generating electricity from plants by collecting electrons from roots in an anode and converting that into electricity. We also saw an IoT water monitoring solution, an early fire detection for rural communities and a two-way learning solution using artificial intelligence."

What examples are there of AI helping to solve some of the world's problems? A couple of examples that I find motivating are areas where AI is being used to provide healthcare, where human support might be quite restrictive or not enough. AI can also improve accuracy rates to help more people in a safer manner. Another example is a product we've developed at AI for Good called rAInbow, where we've built an AI tool to help detect early signs of domestic violence and abuse. It's an issue that affects one in three women, whether it's physical, sexual, psychological or financial abuse.