Japanese information technology group Fujitsu will offer financial institutions a credit-scoring tool that uses artificial intelligence to screen prospective borrowers. The Tokyo-based company envisions the cloud-based software, which will be available starting in October, being used by lenders mainly to assess small, owner-operated businesses. Fujitsu sees a need for such tools amid a shortage of data specialists available to perform credit analysis in Japan's financial sector. With financial technology startups proliferating, the IT-industry blue chip seeks to draw on its existing customer relationships in marketing the AI software. Credit scores will be generated based on such information as bank and business transactions.

Between 2010 and 2050, the global road network is expected to grow by 60 percent. Many of the new roads will emerge in areas that are still undeveloped in Africa, South America or Asia, further limiting the habitats of endangered animals. Many roads are unplanned or even illegally built. In rainforests, which are very important for the global climate, illegal road construction already leads to deforestation, slash-and-burn and colonization.

After a rash of tech employee protests, the Defense Department wants to hire an artificial intelligence ethicist. "We are going to bring on someone who has a deep background in ethics," tag-teaming with DOD lawyers to make sure AI can be "baked in," Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who leads the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told reporters during an Aug. 30 media briefing. The AI ethical advisor would sit under the JAIC, the Pentagon's strategic nexus for AI projects and plans, to help shape the organization's approach to incorporating AI capabilities in the future. The announcement follows protests by Google and Microsoft employees concerned about how the technology would be used -- particularly in lethal systems -- and questioning whether major tech companies should do business with DOD. The JAIC is building an AI ethics process with input from the Defense Innovation Board, the National Security Council and the Office of the Secretary of Defense Policy to address AI ethics policy concerns and offer recommendations to the defense secretary.

The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) adopts the AI definition found in the government's industrial strategy white paper – Industrial Strategy: building a Britain fit for the future, Department for Business, Energy and Industry Strategy, November 2017 "Technologies with the ability to perform tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence" This definition includes everything from the simplest application of AI, which relies on making decisions based on static, predefined rules and parameter checking – e.g. if x, then do y – as well as simple'yes' or'no' decision trees, right through to the dynamic complex'learning (or evolving)' algorithms which continuously review incoming data, find patterns and adapt existing algorithms (and so, 'learn'). The rise of AI is sometimes represented as a threatening new development – but many, now mundane, functions were once seen as awe-inspiring new AI developments! Everyday examples of functionality previously, but no longer, considered as AI include voice-to-text transcription – now available on any smartphone, the digitising of scanned documents through handwriting recognition or optical character recognition and spam filtering. Like it or not, health tech is being embraced at the highest NHS and government levels. Speaking at a digital health conference this summer – Unlocking the promise of digital health – Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, pledged to consider reimbursement reforms to the NHS tariff and other payment systems to incentivise the uptake of AI technologies across the health system.

Most people know about one of the greatest salespeople of all time, Steve Jobs. When Jobs introduced the first iPhone, in January of 2007, he had to convince a skeptical world to pay a then-outrageous sum of $600 for a phone made by a company that had never produced a handset before, with a slick back and no physical keyboard to peck out emails. It was a creative act on Jobs's part, an ability to craft a vision of how the world would be and to convince people their lives would be better in that world if they bought his shiny new object. That creative act poses a challenge for a raft of software startups trying to use artificial intelligence to reinvent sales. Companies including Vymo, InsideSales, SalesLoft, and Outreach have gotten hundreds of millions in financing in the last few years, in hopes that by mining historical data such as emails and customer call logs, they can figure out what the best salespeople do.

Britain's upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords, agreed early Thursday to vote by 5 p.m. Friday on a bill aiming to prevent the U.K. from crashing out of the European Union without an exit agreement. The House of Commons approved the bill on Wednesday, one of several consecutive defeats suffered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week. The lower house also rejected Johnson's motion to hold snap elections; the opposition Labour Party wants the legislation blocking a no-deal Brexit enshrined in law before agreeing to new elections. Assuming the House of Lords approves the bill on Friday, as expected, it will be returned to the House of Commons for a final vote, likely on Monday. Conservatives members of the upper House had threatened to filibuster the legislation, aiming to prevent its passage before Johnson suspends Parliament next week, but a compromise was reached in the early morning.

Interesting scientific controversies have been going for the last few years on recent trends in AI, sometime referred to as the "swing from symbolic to numeric AI". Such a dichotomy might not be very clarifying, nor does it seem very relevant for the advancement of the field. If one views and practices AI research as a multidisciplinary investigation whose purpose is the computational modeling and mechanization of a diversity of cognitive tasks (that may require embodiment in sensory-motor capabilities), then one has to face the challenges of integrating a diversity of mathematically heterogeneous representations. A single class of models highly adequate, for example, for data association can be totally ineffective for other purposes, such as, here, extracting and reasoning on the underlying ontology. The ambition of Integrative Heterogeneous AI is precisely to develop approaches and architectures capable of handling heterogeneous representations for complex tasks.

Police robots, thrown through a broken window, could be used to distract suspects before police enter a room. The idea is to add a distracting device that produces a loud bang and a brilliant flash to small robots already used by many US police departments. Weighing about half a kilo, Throwbots can be tossed through windows or over walls and driven around to explore building interiors with video, audio and infra-red sensors.

SHIZUOKA – Astronauts Soichi Noguchi and Norishige Kanai on Wednesday visited a factory making models of humanoid robots from the anime series "Mobile Suit Gundam" which are slated to be launched into space. The project is part of an effort by Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizers and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to boost spirits ahead of the games. In the project, a satellite carrying models of Gundam and Zaku, piloted by the main character from the series and his rival, will be launched into space. Noguchi and Kanai visited the Bandai Hobby Center, which creates molds for the models, in the city of Shizuoka. They spoke with factory staff about special materials that can withstand the conditions in space, asking questions such as what happens when radiation and ultraviolet rays hit the models.

New Delhi: What is the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on our lives? How can we combat increasing cyberattacks? Is the threat to digital privacy real? Co-written by Carlon Ann Browne, director of communications at Microsoft, the book will hit stands on September 10, publishing house Hachette has recently announced. The book claims not to be a self-glorifying "Microsoft memoir", but a "candid and eye-opening investigation into the most divisive issues facing tech companies and governments today -- cyberwar, privacy, mass surveillance, undermining of democracy, AI, diversity".