Microsoft today announced that it would invest $1 billion in OpenAI, the San Francisco-based AI research firm cofounded by CTO Greg Brockman, chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, Elon Musk, and others, with backing from luminaries like LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman. In a blog post, Brockman said the investment will support the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) -- AI with the capacity to learn any intellectual task that a human can -- with "widely distributed" economic benefits. To this end, OpenAI intends to partner with Microsoft to jointly develop new AI technologies for the Seattle company's Azure cloud platform and will enter into an exclusivity agreement with Microsoft to "further extend" large-scale AI capabilities that "deliver on the promise of AGI." Additionally, OpenAI will license some of its technologies to Microsoft, which will commercialize them and sell them to as-yet-unnamed partners, and OpenAI will train and run AI models on Azure as it works to develop new supercomputing hardware while "adhering to principles on ethics and trust." "AI is one of the most transformative technologies of our time and has the potential to help solve many of our world's most pressing challenges," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Predicting protein structures from their sequences would aid drug design.Credit: Edward Kinsman/Science Photo Library The race to crack one of biology's grandest challenges -- predicting the 3D structures of proteins from their amino-acid sequences -- is intensifying, thanks to new artificial-intelligence (AI) approaches. At the end of last year, Google's AI firm DeepMind debuted an algorithm called AlphaFold, which combined two techniques that were emerging in the field and beat established contenders in a competition on protein-structure prediction by a surprising margin. And in April this year, a US researcher revealed an algorithm that uses a totally different approach. He claims his AI is up to one million times faster at predicting structures than DeepMind's, although probably not as accurate in all situations. More broadly, biologists are wondering how else deep learning -- the AI technique used by both approaches -- might be applied to the prediction of protein arrangements, which ultimately dictate a protein's function.

Facial recognition technology is the single biggest tool for authorities to keep an eye on suspected (and unsuspected) individuals; but thanks to Snowden leaks, it would appear that most of the victims of such technologies have been unsuspected users. The growing use of facial recognition technology at airports in the United States to its misuse in China to track minorities; it all raises serious concerns over user privacy and in particular, just how much do authorities know about you. See: One out of Two American Adults Part of the FBI's Facial Recognition Database For instance, in Southeast China, the police used facial recognition technology to locate and detain a suspect among a crowd of over 60,000 people. The incident occurred at a pop concert where the popular Hong Kong singer Jacky Cheung was performing, a concert attended by the suspected fugitive. The problem is that the same technology can be used to track and oppress anyone hiding from brutal regimes.

The proliferation of robotic warships could make naval warfare safer for human beings. But it also could have the unintended effect of reducing the threshold for military action. Recent events in the Strait of Hormuz underscore that danger. In the summer of 2019 U.S. and Iranian forces each shot down a surveillance drone belonging to the other side, escalating tensions that began with U.S. president Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the United States from the 2015 deal limiting Iran's nuclear program. "The immediate danger from militarized artificial intelligence isn't hordes of killer robots, nor the exponential pace of a new arms race," Evan Karlik, a U.S. Navy lieutenant commander, wrote for Nikkei Asian Review.

Sitting in a U.N. committee meeting in Geneva earlier this year in a session on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (aka killer robots), I was shocked to hear the American delegates claim that AI-powered automated warfare could be safe and reliable. Not only are they wrong, but their thinking endangers us all. It's the same logic that led to the Cold War, the nuclear arms race and the Doomsday Clock. I quit my job at a young, promising tech company in January in protest precisely because I was concerned about how the Pentagon might use AI in warfare and how the business I was part of might contribute to it. I have seen close up the perils of this unreliable but powerful technology, and I have since joined the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robotsto make sure that AI is used responsibly, even in cases of war.

An organization that won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for its work to eliminate nuclear weapons is sounding the alarm about the possibility of artificial intelligence leading to unintended wars. Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, is worried that hackers could breach A.I. technologies that are used in nuclear programs or that they could use A.I. to dupe countries into launching attacks. For example, deepfakes, or realistic-looking computer-altered videos, may be used to "create a perceived threat that might not be there," she warns, prompting governments to overreact. Fihn told Fortune that she wants to convene a meeting in the fall with nuclear weapons experts and some of the leading companies in A.I. and cybersecurity. Participants in the off-the-record event, she said, would produce a document that her group would use to inform governments and others about the danger.

Neuralink, the secretive neurotechnology startup of Elon Musk, revealed threads that can directly link a human brain to a computer. This development targets paraplegics to control computers via implantable devices in their brain. This potentially can improve how people communicate and think. The revolutionary tech giant Mr. Musk emphasized that the chip will help "preserve and enhance your own brain" and "ultimately achieve a sort of symbiosis with artificial intelligence" in a conference in San Francisco. Most of the entrepreneurs were revolutionary including online payments with PayPal, innovating the electric car industry through Tesla, and leading private space travel through SpaceX.

In the finance industry, firms run and thrive on innovations and customizations, which are derived from cutting-edge technologies. FREMONT, CA: Fintech is synonymous to innovations and high accessibility in the world of finance. Equipped with Artificial Intelligence (AI), the core purpose of fintech is enabling the masses to get benefits from the mainstream financial system. Being aware of these market dynamics, banking institutions are adopting AI and its applications. The range of AI applications are broad and lies across all industries ar several levels.

With the internet buzzing about the viral FaceApp, which uses AI to predict how anyone will look in 30 years, there's another service that will transform you into a work of art. If you've ever dreamed of how your portrait would look if it were painted by one of the great masters, this app is for you. AI Portraits uses information from over 45,000 15th-century masterpieces to help "paint" the portrait of any photo that's uploaded. While there are plenty of apps and filters that promise to make your photo into a work of art, AI Portraits distinguishes itself with its GAN models. Many services use style transfers that alter colors, but leave the facial lines untouched.

The rising prominence of artificial intelligence (AI) in our conversations, the way we work and do business, protect communities against crime and even the way news is reported to us on television is unprecedented. Its ability to learn and process massive amount of data far outstrips any other current technologies and will only continue to grow as we make greater strides in computer processing power and deep learning algorithms. In Singapore, the AI ecosystem is thriving with the emergence of start-ups, growing collaboration across sectors and the drive to develop capabilities and innovative solutions. A recent study by Microsoft and IDC Asia/Pacific estimated that AI will nearly double the rate of innovation and employee productivity improvements in Singapore by 2021, and the majority of people in Singapore believe that AI will either help to do their existing jobs better or reduce repetitive tasks. From manufacturing to healthcare, financial services and the public sector, the adoption of AI is pervasive with promise for powerful capabilities beyond our imagination.