A pioneering new clinical trial on a drug that could potentially help millions of men with prostate cancer, is under way in Derry. Tumour samples from men being treated locally are being collated to test the drug's effectiveness at the Clinical Transitional Research and Innovation Centre (C-TRIC), labs on the Altnagelvin Hospital site. The new trials are the result of a partnership with American pharmaceutical company Lantern Pharma and the PRAISE (prostate cancer artificial intelligence study using ex vivo models) trial is using artificial intelligence to test a cancer drug called LP-184 to predict which types of tumours are sensitive to it. The company said the groundbreaking work, which is partially funded by Invest NI, does not involve human or animals trials due to the use of AI. The new project will help guide future cancer research and clinical trials and early indications suggest there could also be benefits for research into the treatment of ovarian and liver cancer.

Ott Velsberg, Estonia's fresh-faced, 28-year-old chief data officer, is on a mission put AI into every part of the country's public services, from healthcare to education and job centres. "The aim is to make government more proactive and responsive to people's life-events," says Velsberg. Instead of citizens having to apply for things like driver's licences and school places, he envisions a system where public bodies can anticipate and preemptively respond to the needs people have at different stages of their life. "We're not telling people what to do. That might happen in China but not in Estonia, or in Europe as a whole."

Over the past two decades, the philosopher David Chalmers has established himself as a leading thinker on consciousness. He began his academic career in mathematics but slowly migrated toward cognitive science and philosophy of mind. He eventually landed at Indiana University working under the guidance of Douglas Hofstadter, whose influential book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" had earned him a Pulitzer Prize. Chalmers's dissertation, "Toward a Theory of Consciousness," grew into his first book, "The Conscious Mind" (1996), which helped revive the philosophical conversation on consciousness. Perhaps his best-known contribution to philosophy is "the hard problem of consciousness" -- the problem of explaining subjective experience, the inner movie playing in every human mind, which in Chalmers's words will "persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained."

Our Innovation Analysts recently looked into emerging technologies and up-and-coming startups in Industry 4.0. As there is a large number of startups working on a wide variety of solutions, we decided to share our insights with you. This time, we are taking a look at 5 promising artificial intelligence (AI) solutions. For our 5 picks of artificial intelligence startups, we used a data-driven startup scouting approach to identify the most relevant solutions globally. The Global Startup Heat Map below highlights 5 interesting examples out of 214 relevant solutions. Depending on your specific needs, your top picks might look entirely different.

Years ago, a mobile app for email launched to immediate fanfare. Simply called Mailbox, its life was woefully cut short -- we'll get to that. Today, its founders are back with their second act: An AI-enabled assistant called Navigator meant to help teams work and communicate more efficiently. With the support of $12 million in Series A funding from CRV, #Angels, Designer Fund, SV Angel, Dropbox's Drew Houston and other angel investors, Aspen, the San Francisco and Seattle-based startup behind Navigator, has quietly been beta testing its tool within 50 organizations across the U.S. "We've had teams and research institutes and churches and academic institutions, places that aren't businesses at all in addition to smaller startups and large four-figure-person organizations using it," Mailbox and Navigator co-founder and chief executive officer Gentry Underwood tells TechCrunch. "Pretty much anywhere you have meetings, there is value for Navigator."

This seems like an obvious one, but with so many potential areas for AI exploration, starting with the right projects--and stakeholders--is crucial for long-term success. First and foremost, the process of identifying and selecting use cases shouldn't be driven by technology alone. That is, you don't want to think about AI solely in terms of where you can apply natural language processing, for example, or how you can leverage a labeled data set. Instead, ask where you seek to increase productivity or derive new value. Going through the questioning exercise above with the various leaders who may own or touch AI, such as the chief information officer, chief digital officer, chief data scientist, and other specialists (see #3), will enable you to identify where to start.

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today said it will offer a new course on the openSAP platform that focuses on the ethical implications when developing and interacting with artificial intelligence (AI). Creating Trustworthy and Ethical Artificial Intelligence, offered June 25 through July 24, is geared toward all leaders, professionals, developers and general users of AI technology. "The potential for AI and machine learning is great, and the technology has already had significant impact in automating tasks and efficiently analyzing data sets," said Bernd Welz, chief knowledge officer, SAP. "As this technology continues to evolve and becomes further engrained in our society, it's important that we take the necessary steps to ensure that its development and continued application are carried out in an ethical way. Through this course, we're showing learners how they can keep ethics in the forefront when developing AI- and machine learning–enabled technologies."

Digital Transformation is changing the way both Defence and commercial organisations are operating in the maritime, land and air environments. Artificial Intelligence, Machine speed decision making and Virtual, Augmented and Mixed reality visualisation tools will all be part of our digital offers in the future. Thales is looking to rapidly assess these new technologies and build collaborative relationships with best of breed partners from wider markets by conducting a Maritime Pioneers day on the 24th June 2019 at the Digital Catapult in London. Thales reviewed 21 applications from some of the UK's brightest and best start-ups and scale-ups in digital technologies, down selecting the six that responded most closely to the criteria, and whose products and expertise impressed the selection panel the most. Thales is exploring novel approaches to strategic decision-making, assessing tools and techniques that are applicable and scalable across all domains.

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously replied, "Because that's where the money is". And so much of artificial antelligence evolved in the United States – because that's where the computers were. However with Europe's strong educational institutions, the path to advanced AI technologies has been cleared by European computer scientists, neuroscientists, and engineers – many of whom were later poached by US universities and companies. From backpropagation to Google Translate, deep learning, and the development of more advanced GPUs permitting faster processing and rapid developments in AI over the past decade, some of the greatest contributions to AI have come from European minds. Modern AI can be traced back to the work of the English mathematician Alan Turing, who in early 1940 designed the bombe – an electromechanical precursor to the modern computer (itself based on previous work by Polish scientists) that broke the German military codes in World War II.

Evisort, an artificial intelligence (AI) technology company, today announced the appointment of legal tech veteran Alexander Su (Alex) as its Director of Business Development. Su previously led the sales team at Logikcull, an eDiscovery automation company that grew revenue from 0 to $10M in just 19 months. Su's move is the latest in a recent trend of leadership talent being drawn to Evisort due to its explosive growth this year. Over the past decade, Su has been uniquely positioned to observe the evolution of legal technology. Earlier in his career, Su managed numerous discovery workflows as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell.