For many, pets are an essential part of childhood. Walking the family dog, feeding the class goldfish, chasing around an irritable cat that wants nothing to do with you whatsoever. For generations, pets were cute, furry creatures with the occasional scaled or feathered friend thrown in. But, for kids of the late 1990s, the entire concept of what a pet is, does and means was turned on its head. Suddenly, they could be more.

There are lots of companies who make wearable tails for humans, but they're usually for cosplay or other entertainment pursuits. Researchers at Keio University in Japan have created a wearable animated tail that promises to genuinely augment the wearer's capabilities--not just appearance--by improving their balance and agility. I wrote a post about Disney's efforts to market Zootopia to furries last week, and I really pissed… The easiest way to understand what inspired this creation is to watch a video of monkeys effortlessly leaping from tree to tree. Their tails not only serve as an additional limb for grasping branches but also help them reposition their bodies mid-flight for a safe landing by shifting the monkey's center of balance as it moves. The Arque tail, as it's been named, does essentially the same thing for humans, although leaping from the highest branches of a tree isn't recommended just yet.

This morning AI-enabled handheld ultrasound startup Exo landed $35 million in Series B funding. The new infusion of cash was led by Intel Capital with participation from Applied Ventures, Bold Capital, Creative Ventures, Longevity Vision Fund, Magnetar Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, OSF Healthcare, Rising Tide Fund, Sony Innovation Fund and Wanxiang Healthcare Investments. The Redwood City, California-based startup is developing a portable ultrasound that is able to create a 3D image. The company is combining nano-materials, sensor technology and advanced signal processing and computation to create the technology. The new money will be put towards developing the product and helping the startup go through regulatory channels.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NasdaqGS:NUAN) has named the board of directors for its automotive spin-off company, Cerence Inc. Arun Sarin, former CEO of Vodafone, will be appointed Cerence Chairman of the Board when the spin-off is completed on October 1, 2019. Also named to the board is Sanjay Dhawan, who previously served as president of the Connected Services Division and chief technology officer of Harman Industries International since 2015. According to the press release, "Dhawan brings a deep understanding of AI and machine learning applications, with a focus on developing solutions at the intersection of devices, sensors, cloud solutions and data integration". "For Cerence's future Board of Directors, we have assembled a group of highly talented leaders who bring a variety of meaningful, deep talent and expertise. As Nuance prepares to spin the automotive business into Cerence, the extensive knowledge, unique insights, and proven success of this board will serve Cerence and its shareholders well and will be integral to the company's bright future."

As reported in this article Marco Taisch, professor at the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano and head of the Industry 4.0 Observatory, says that "With industry 4.0 "it is not true that the worker is more exploited, but is ennobled. In plant 4.0 the operator has been ennobled of his activity, because the low-level manual work is done by the machines and he does a cognitive work. Industry 4.0 is cognitive automation". It is clear that "roles change and this requires more skills", therefore, "we need to understand that the ennobling of work goes through training," explains the professor, highlighting that "we need to work on reskilling and upskilling of workers. Another aspect concerns the protection of jobs: "I do not doubt that the workers are scared and I can understand that there is a perception of threat", but "the companies that have implemented the digital transformation have become more competitive and have hired people," Taisch notes, taking as examples South Korea and Germany.

In this episode, we're joined by Alex Lakatos, a litigation partner at Mayer Brown in Washington, DC. Alex is an example of a successful attorney at a thriving firm who is pushing himself to become an expert in the brand new area of artificial intelligence in financial services, lending, and credit. Alex organizes and speaks on AI in financial services symposia and events and discusses regulation of new AI technologies, AI-bias and the liability flowing from it, and how attorneys will interact with and shape AI in the near future.

The Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy initiative explores the growing use of artificial intelligence in the business landscape. The exploration looks specifically at how AI is affecting the development and execution of strategy in organizations. The initiative researches and reports on how AI is spurring workforce change, data management, privacy, cross-entity collaboration, and generating new ethical challenges for business. It looks at new risks and threats in dependency, job loss, and security. And it seeks to help managers understand and act on the tremendous opportunity from the combination of human and machine intelligence.

DeepMind has joined the ranks of those using AI to save fragile wildlife populations, and it's doing that on a grand scale. The company is partnering with conservationists and ecologists on a project that uses machine learning to speedily detect and count animals in "millions" of photos taken over the past nine years in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. Where it normally takes up to a year for volunteers to return labeled photos, DeepMind has developed a model that can label most animals at least as well as humans while shortening the process by up to nine months That's no small challenge when animals seldom cooperate with motion-sensitive cameras -- the AI can recognize out-of-focus cheetahs or fast-moving ostriches. The technology should also be viable in the wild. DeepMind is developing a pre-trained version of its AI model that would need only "modest" hardware and little internet connectivity -- important when a powerful computer and fast internet access could be disruptive to wildlife and expensive to deploy.

They are operated by Google technology and were linked to GPS satellite navigation technology. The route was programmed into the GPS navigation system. The car is able to drive without human assistance. It is fitted with video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder. Google already used normal cars to map out the predetermined journey so that the car would be able to get from A to B. Google already used normal cars to map out the area of the predetermined journeys around the city of California.

The plans, for the U.K. National Health Service (NHS), were announced by Health Secretary Matt Hancock who indicated that said AI has "enormous power" to improve care, save lives and ensure doctors had more time to spend with patients. Al will be used for a range of activities, from diagnosing patients, gaining new insights into diseases, and for improving how hospitals operate. In doing so, he announced that £250 million ($3 million) will be ring fenced from the health budget for health related artificial intelligence projects. The new AI lab will sit within the new NHS digital health unit, NHSX. Academics, specialists and technology companies will work within the laboratory to develop different strands of health technology.