Beam, a telepresence robot with a screen that a person can remotely control and use to communicate via video, became a breakthrough success in the world of robotics in part because of its role in helping high-profile, but movement-limited, people like Edward Snowden better communicate with the outside world, and disability rights activists meet with world leaders. Now, the control of Beam the product itself is changing: Suitable Technologies, the creator of the Beam, is selling it to Blue Ocean Robotics, a Denmark-based developer and incubator that describes itself as a "Robot Venture Factory." In an interview we conducted via a Beam robot -- where I dialled into Blue Ocean's offices and navigated a Beam from its docking station around the office and into a private room -- Blue Ocean's CEO and co-founder Claus Risager said his company is not buying Suitable itself: the deal includes only the IP, staff who work on Beam robots, hardware inventory and other related assets. Currently, there are a few versions of the Beam on the market: the two main categories are a smaller robot that is priced around $2,000-$4,000, and a larger Beam Pro that sells for around $15,000 per machine. The key with Blue Ocean's development to date is that it has built a "toolbox" (Risager's term) that it uses to build different robotic hardware -- one of its most successful has been its UVD Robot that can perform remote, ultra-violet-based disinfection in hospitals and other infection-prone environments -- that it will be using to develop iterations of the Beam. That could mean that long-rumored ideas of the Beam getting robotic arms and other appendages could be coming at some point.

Dr. Stephen Friend on how machine learning will disrupt medicine - but why we need decision making to remain with the patient. Next Now: The 21st century has ushered in a new age where all aspects of our lives are impacted by technology. How will humanity anticipate, mitigate, and manage the consequences of AI, robots, quantum computing and more? How do we ensure tech works for the good of all? Dr. Stephen Friend is a globally acclaimed serial entrepreneur and biomedical researcher.

In the midst of the AI "gold rush," how can you separate the nuggets from the fool's gold? There's no shortage of cautionary tales involving overhyped AI claims. And applying AI technologies to health care, education, and law enforcement mean that getting it wrong can have real consequences for society--not just for investors who bet on the wrong unicorn. So IEEE Spectrum asked experts to share their tips for how to identify AI hype in press releases, news articles, research papers, and IPO filings. "It can be tricky, because I think the people who are out there selling the AI hype--selling this AI snake oil--are getting more sophisticated over time," says Tim Hwang, director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative.

AI Research is capital intensive & research-focused bodies aren't profit-making entities: In October 2018, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge announced a $1-billion investment in computer and AI research. Meanwhile, Stanford University in California and the University of Cambridge and Oxford University are also doubling down on building their own centres for AI research. Closer home, we have the Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is focusing more on solving India's economic and societal issues. Academic groups around the globe are investing heavily in AI research, but we don't look for profits and concrete products coming out of academia. While it's true that university budgets pale in comparison to corporate-owned AI research organisations, but heavy-duty research roadmaps demand big-ticket investments.

IMAGE: Written for investment professionals keen to learn about the latest investment analytics techniques in the dawn of artificial intelligence, this book presents sophisticated best-of-class techniques to solve high dimensional problems... view more What do we mean by "ia? Simply put, the'formula' symbolizes how investment analytics (ia) is not a simplistic reapplication of artificial intelligence (ai) techniques, as the popular press likes to suggest. Written for investment professionals keen to learn about the latest investment analytics techniques in the dawn of artificial intelligence, Investment Analytics in the Dawn of Artificial Intelligence aims to set the methodological gold standard for artificial intelligence-driven analytics for institutional investing. The book presents sophisticated best-of-class techniques to solve high dimensional problems in investment analytics with properties that go deeper than what is required to solve customary problems in engineering today. This book focuses on solving problems for professional and institutional asset managers, whose typical portfolios may contain hundreds if not thousands of assets.

Artificial intelligence-powered tools are rapidly becoming more accessible, including for people in the more remote corners of the globe. This is good news for smallholder farmers, who can use handheld technologies to run their farms more efficiently, linking them to markets, extension workers, satellite images, and climate information. The technology is also becoming a first line of defense against crop diseases and pests that can potentially destroy their harvests. A new smartphone tool developed for banana farmers scans plants for signs of five major diseases and one common pest. In testing in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Benin, China, and Uganda, the tool provided a 90 percent successful detection rate. This work is a step towards creating a satellite-powered, globally connected network to control disease and pest outbreaks, say the researchers who developed the technology.

During your stay in a hospital, computer systems are collecting and analyzing all sorts of data about you. In the background of all the beeping and gadgetry, an electronic medical record contains thousands of bits of information about your medical history, vital signs and laboratory results. Sentara Healthcare is now deploying artificial intelligence to use that data to stop patients from contracting life-threatening sepsis. Earlier this year the system launched a sepsis prediction tool that alerts doctors and nurses when a patient is at risk of developing the deadly infection. The tool --looks at relationships in order to predict what might happen in the future,-- said Dr. David Mohr, Sentara's vice president of clinical informatics and transformation.

This is the tiger longwing, formally known as Heliconius hecale. Artificial intelligence helped confirm one of the oldest ideas in evolution, but it also raised some new questions. The natural world is full of copycats. Pyralid moths use the same high-pitched warning noises as tiger moths to warn away predators, and harmless king snakes and venomous coral snakes have similar coloration. King snakes and pyralid moths are using something called Batesian mimicry, when a harmless species wards off predators by passing itself off as something fiercer or more toxic. That's not a delibrate ruse, of course; it's just that over time, the king snakes that survived long enough to reproduce tended to be the ones more easily mistaken for a coral snake, so they passed on that resemblance to their offspring.

Cybersecurity used to exist in the realm of science fiction. Think retinal scans from Star Trek. I cut my teeth on Star Trek and I'm still holding out for a Tricorder during my lifetime. In the present, we live a hyper-connected life, with technology informing everything we do. We use smart devices like phones and watches.

What insights might be gleaned from an education platform that's entirely online? In a newly published paper on the preprint server Arxiv.org They say their method allowed for tracking changes in behavior among students over time, as well as trends in the broader educational system. "How students behave … is an important topic in educational data mining. Knowledge of this behavior in an educational system can help us understand how students learn and help guide the development for optimal learning based on actual use," wrote the coauthors.