Vijay Pratap Singh, CEO/Co-Founder of ekgaon on leveraging Artificial Intelligence to drive Affordable Intelligence by providing financial & agriculture advisory services to farmers. INNOVATIVE STARTUP OF THE MONTH - EKGOAN Ekgaon is a technology platform which provides financial & agriculture advisory services to farmers. Their technology solutions now connect the entire agriculture value chain in rural India, from farms to market. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence, they provide customised advisory services to farmers which has lead to higher farm productivity and let them connect to markets.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may help develop safe, clean and virtually limitless fusion energy for generating electricity, scientists say. A team, including researchers from Princeton University and Harvard University, are applying deep learning to forecast sudden disruptions that can halt fusion reactions and damage the doughnut-shaped tokamaks or apparatus that house the reactions. Deep learning is a powerful new version of the machine learning form of AI, according to the findings published in the journal Nature magazine. "This research opens a promising new chapter in the effort to bring unlimited energy to Earth," Steven Cowley, director of US Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). "Artificial intelligence is exploding across the sciences and now it's beginning to contribute to the worldwide quest for fusion power," Cowley said in a statement.

From driverless trucks and the conquering of Go and other complex board games, to the ability to help diagnose cancer and source great talent for HR teams, the applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) are seemingly endless. AI is even being used to generate paintings and compose classical symphonies. For NASA most recently, AI helped in the discovery of two new planets. So I'd not be at all surprised if you're wondering how AI will impact aviation? But first, let me give you a definition: AI is a field of computer science that makes machines smart; machines powered by algorithms to solve specific problems or complete tasks that used to be handled by humans.

World-renowned science institute, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (known as Cern), is working to develop "fast machine-learning" for use with autonomous driving. In an announcement Thursday, Zenuity -- a joint venture between Volvo Cars and Swedish firm Veoneer -- said it was working with Cern to speed up the decision making of self-driving cars, which would improve safety. It said the development of these next-generation cars faced a "fundamental challenge" when it came interpreting the vast amounts of data produced during normal driving conditions. This includes the identification of other vehicles and pedestrians. Based in Switzerland, Cern is known for its Large Hadron Collider, which is the biggest and most powerful particle accelerator on the planet.

Imagine this: You click on a news clip and see the President of the United States at a press conference with a foreign leader. The news conference is real. You share with a friend. They share with a friend. Soon, everyone has seen it.

Adcore Inc. (ADCO:TSX.V), the developer of machine-learning powered advertising technologies, reported record second quarter financials, including an increase in revenue growth of 53% year over year. Adcore uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to automate online search and shopping advertising and is used by digital agencies and advertisers to enhance and maximize search engine marketing. The company also announced two major contracts for online advertising, one with the Israeli Government Advertising Agency for CA$125 million over five years, and the second with Experience Oz, Australia and New Zealand's number one site for travel experiences, with an online advertising budget of up to CA$5 million per year. "Our growth continues to outpace the market and our competitors, with yet another record quarter of revenue and earnings,-- said Omri Brill, Adcore's CEO. "Our outlook for the second half of the year, historically the stronger half of the year, remains extremely bullish and we expect to make several exciting announcements over the coming months to drive shareholder value." The firm has developed three sets of tools to assist advertising agencies and advertisers with digital media marketing. Ben Mann, founder and director of Experience Oz, stated, "Adcore is the perfect partner to take our search and shopping to the next level.

Three research teams surgically placed electrodes onto a human brain recently, so AI could turn patients brain signals into computer-generated speech. Scientists constructed words and sentences from brain signals by using artificial intelligence. Some of those sentences were gibberish, but encouragingly some made sense. This has never been achieved before. Dr. Stephen Hawking was unable to speak.

The explosion of digital diagnostics and therapeutics, increasing patient-centeredness, interoperable data, and increased regulatory collaboration are all signs of the tremendous changes that digital technologies are driving in the health care industry. How can biopharma prepare for this new reality? How should biopharma companies transform their operating and business models to compete? In research and development (R&D), digital transformation has the potential to drastically improve productivity by applying artificial intelligence (AI) and computational biology to drug discovery and development and by making clinical trials much more efficient. In commercial, more targeted patient engagement and the application of behavioral science principles could lead to better patient outcomes. Persona-based marketing to health care providers could lead to greater market awareness and action. In supply chain, digital supply networks can result in much greater product visibility, traceability, and inventory control. How can companies leverage the promise of digital?

When Andrew Kaplan reminisces, his engrossing tales leave the impression that he's managed to pack multiple lives into a single existence: globe-trotting war correspondent in his 20s, a member of the Israeli army who fought in the Six-Day War, successful entrepreneur and, later, the author of numerous spy novels and Hollywood scripts. Now -- as the silver-haired 78-year-old unwinds with his wife of 39 years in a suburban oasis outside Palm Springs -- he has realized he would like his loved ones to have access to those stories, even when he's no longer alive to share them. Kaplan has agreed to become "AndyBot," a virtual person who will be immortalized in the cloud for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. If all goes according to plan, future generations will be able to interact with him using mobile devices or voice computing platforms such as Amazon's Alexa, asking him questions, eliciting stories and drawing upon a lifetime's worth of advice long after his physical body is gone. Someday, Kaplan -- who playfully refers to himself as a "guinea pig" -- may be remembered as one of the world's first "digital humans."

Leland Wilkinson is Chief Scientist at H2O and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago. He received an A.B. degree from Harvard in 1966, an S.T.B. degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1969, and a Ph.D. from Yale in 1975. Wilkinson wrote the SYSTAT statistical package and founded SYSTAT Inc. in 1984. After the company grew to 50 employees, he sold SYSTAT to SPSS in 1994 and worked there for ten years on research and development of visualization systems. Wilkinson subsequently worked at Skytree and Tableau before joining H2O.