Facebook has teamed up with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant for the world's most popular video game, Minecraft. This isn't an AI that will help you automatically build worlds, but rather one capable of multitasking and helping users with everyday tasks outside a gaming environment. Minecraft was chosen by the researchers because it's currently the most popular game in the world with more than 90-million people playing it every month and it has "infinite variety" yet simple predictable rules. Plus, there's a big opportunity for the AI assistant to learn inside'Minecraft' and help human players to acquire more knowledge outside the game. "The opportunities for an AI to learn are huge, Facebook is setting itself the task of designing the AI to self-improve, the researchers think the'Minecraft' environment is a perfect one to develop this kind of learning," said the report.

Many waited with bated breath as two of some of the greatest tech minds of the generation, Elon Musk and Jack Ma, came together at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Wednesday. As expected, the energy was high and the discussion, at times, tense. In an hourlong conversation, the men behind Tesla and Alibaba had a war of words over artificial intelligence, Mars, and the future. After Ma said he wasn't scared of the future of AI, Musk laughed and said those would be the Chinese businessman's "famous last words." "I think AI is going to open a new chapter of this society of the world that people try to understand ourselves better rather than the outside world," Ma said. He added: "I'm quite optimistic.

The two luminaries of the technology, Alibaba's Jack Ma and Tesla's Elon Musk, shared the dias to discuss about the prospects of artificial intelligence (AI) -- its impact on humanity, education, jobs, environment, civilisation and its extinction, etc. One thing was clear from the top minds that AI will disrupt the future solving things for humans, and both seem agreed that this is not some technology that will lead to a dystopian future. While there is an ongoing debate from around the world whether AI is actually beneficial for modern society, views presented by Ma and Musk on the technology, however, were unending -- yet logical and smart. "I think AI is going to open a new chapter for the society; it will help humans understand ourselves better... I don't think AI is a threat, or terrible. People worry a lot about this today are those people that I call them… uhhh'college smartiness'," Ma said.

Vijay Raghani has 13 years of professional experience with 4 years in Architect role covering all aspects of software life cycles. He is a Sr. Architect for MS Stack (SharePoint and Office 365 technologies) in Sogeti India Microsoft Practice and Innovation Lead in Sogeti India for upcoming technologies such as'AI' (Chatbots, Cognitive Services and Artificial Intelligence). He has been involved in Solution Estimation, RFP response for SharePoint projects across various industry verticals.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Agriculture Market report provides an unbiased and detailed analysis of the on-going trends, opportunities/ high growth areas, market drivers, which would help stakeholders to device and align Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Agriculture market strategies according to the current and future market. The report firstly introduced the Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Agriculture basics: definitions, classifications, applications and market overview; product specifications; manufacturing processes; cost structures, raw materials and so on. Then it analyzed the world's main region market conditions, including the product price, profit, capacity, production, supply, demand and market growth rate and forecast etc. The overviews, SWOT analysis and strategies of each vendor in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Agriculture market provide understanding about the market forces and how those can be exploited to create future opportunities. Production Analysis: SWOT analysis of major key players of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Agriculture industry based on a Strengths, Weaknesses, company's internal & external environments.

An Israeli agtech company called Seedo might have the solution for the challenges of urban agriculture in vulnerable areas such as the Caribbean, that struggle with environmental and climate factors that lead to crop loss. Latin and America and the Caribbean is the most urbanised region in the world with up to 80% of the region's population residing in cities (UN-Habitat 2012). While urbanization is an important element of economic growth and modernization, the diminishing ratio of food producers to food consumers in urban settings negatively impacts local food systems, causing populations to be more susceptible to non-communicable diseases, obesity and undernourishment. Urban farming practices such as rooftop gardens, community greenhouses and vertical farms have provided an alternative to rural agriculture, but given the high cost of urban land, space and size limitations, non-conducive environmental conditions and limited human resources, these methods have not been without their challenges. Vertical farming's "closed and controlled" approach has been successful in eliminating the risk of insects, pests and diseases that are prevalent in traditional agricultural systems but the infrastructure required has typically been cost-prohibitive and highly reliant on fossil fuels (solar power is typically not enough).

A team of researchers at Yonsei University and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has recently developed a new technique that can recognize emotions by analyzing people's faces in images along with contextual features. They presented and outlined their deep learning-based architecture, called CAER-Net, in a paper pre-published on arXiv. For several years, researchers worldwide have been trying to develop tools for automatically detecting human emotions by analyzing images, videos or audio clips. These tools could have numerous applications, for instance, improving robot-human interactions or helping doctors to identify signs of mental or neural disorders (e.g.,, based on atypical speech patterns, facial features, etc.). So far, the majority of techniques for recognizing emotions in images have been based on the analysis of people's facial expressions, essentially assuming that these expressions best convey humans' emotional responses. As a result, most datasets for training and evaluating emotion recognition tools (e.g., the AFEW and FER2013 datasets) only contain cropped images of human faces.

The Department of Energy wants to lend its world-class artificial intelligence technology for private sector biomedical and public health research to develop better treatments for brain diseases and disorders. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and Weill Family Foundation founder Sandy Weill signed a memorandum of understanding this week establishing a public-private partnership seeking supercomputing breakthroughs addressing neurological disorders like traumatic brain injuries. Research could range from better understanding brain function to finding new ways to treat, prevent and repair damage done by brain diseases. "By signing this MOU, we're collaborating at the critical nexus of leading-edge technology, our own national labs, world class capabilities at [University of California, San Francisco] -- the research excellence and health care expertise that's there," Perry said. "I know [University of California, Berkeley is going to be involved with this as well, and there's just this vast potential of philanthropy from the private sector."

Paris, July 5, 2019 – The ethical use of AI is becoming fundamental to winning people's trust, a new study from the Capgemini Research Institute has found. As organizations progress to harness the benefits of AI, consumers, employees and citizens are watching closely and are ready to reward or punish behavior. Those surveyed said that they would be more loyal to, purchase more from, or be an advocate for organizations whose AI interactions are deemed ethical. Companies using AI in an ethical way will be rewarded: Among consumers surveyed, 62% said they would place higher trust in a company whose AI interactions they perceived as ethical, 61% said they would share positive experiences with friends and family, 59% said that they would have higher loyalty to the company, and 55% said that they would purchase more products and provide high ratings and positive feedback on social media. By contrast, when consumers' AI interactions result in ethical issues, it threatens both reputation and the bottom line: 41% said they would complain in case an AI interaction resulted in ethical issues, 36% would demand an explanation and 34% would stop interacting with the company.

Shanghai has established full innovation system for artificial intelligence, but still lacks highlighted achievements on AI chips and algorithms, the city's …