OXFORD, ENGLAND - Wearing a white blouse and her dark hair hanging loose, Ai-Da looks like any artist at work as she studies her subject and puts pencil to paper. But the beeping from her bionic arm gives her away -- Ai-Da is a robot. Described as "the world's first ultra-realistic AI humanoid robot artist," Ai-Da opens her first solo exhibition of eight drawings, 20 paintings, four sculptures and two video works next week, bringing "a new voice" to the art world, her British inventor and gallery owner Aidan Meller said. "The technological voice is the important one to focus on because it affects everybody," he said at a preview. "We've got a very clear message we want to explore: the uses and abuses of AI today, because this next decade is coming in dramatically and we're concerned about that and we want to have ethical considerations in all of that."

Speculation within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party over a possible extension of the current regular Diet session, a move that could result in a double election this summer, has grown ahead of the scheduled end of the 150-day session on June 26. The speculation has grown because the government is moving to submit a bill to revise the law on national strategic special zones in order to realize "super cities" where cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence will be fully utilized. It's believed that it will be difficult to pass the legislation during the ongoing session without an extension. The move and the possible extension is apparently aimed at setting the stage for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to dissolve the House of Representatives and arrange an election for the same date as that of a triennial election this summer for the House of Councilors. Opposition parties, as well as Komeito, the coalition partner of the LDP, are cautious over the possibility of a double election.

LAS VEGAS - Amazon.com Inc. has new drones that in coming months will deliver packages to customers in 30 minutes or less, a step toward a goal that has eluded the retailer for years. The new drone takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter, is more stable than prior models and can spot moving objects better than humans can, making it safe, Jeff Wilke, the chief executive of the company's consumer business, said at the company's "re:MARS" conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Wilke did not say where customers might see the drone in action, but Amazon made its first customer delivery by drone in the United Kingdom in 2016. For years, the world's largest online retailer has promised that packages would be landing on shoppers' doorsteps via these small aircraft, but hype around the service has long outpaced reality. The company has worked to ensure that hard-to-see wires would not trip up its vehicles, for instance, and it has faced tough regulations limiting commercial flights, particularly in the United States.

The City of Prague has announced it will compete to become one of Europe's centres of excellence in artificial intelligence (AI). The city's plan follows the European Commission's call for a European Network of AI Excellence Centres which the Commission will fund with €50 million in 2020. "We want to be the centre for AI but we know that we are not the only ones," Jaromír Beránek, Deputy of the Prague City Assembly and Head of the IT and Smart City Committee told Cities Today. "We want to compete with European and world cities like Montreal which is also very renowned for building AI technologies." Beránek said that although the push has been inspired by the Commission's call, the city was already looking for a specialised skill for Prague, noting that the neighbouring cities of Brno and Libež are world renowned in microscopy and nano technology.

Two new UCL Pro-Vice-Provosts, for London and for Artificial Intelligence, have been appointed to strengthen the delivery of the institutional strategy, UCL 2034. Professor Alan Thomson, Dean of Brain Sciences, will serve as Pro-Vice-Provost (London), and Professor Geraint Rees, Dean of Life Sciences, will serve as Pro-Vice-Provost (Artificial Intelligence). As Pro Vice-Provost (London), Professor Thompson will lead and coordinate UCL's activities to consolidate and advance its position as London's global university – in, of and for London. Professor Thompson says: "This is a great opportunity to raise the profile of UCL in London and to underline how London benefits from UCL and, in turn, how UCL benefits from being at the very heart of London. I am delighted to be taking on this role and look forward to engaging with everyone working in this space in UCL and beyond to achieve these objectives."

In October of 2018, Christie's auctioned off the first work of art ever created by an algorithm. The painting, titled Edmond de Belamy, was a portrait of a gentleman dressed in black. It was expected to sell for around $10,000, and instead garnered a staggering $432,500. Just a few months before that, Nature Morte, a contemporary art gallery in New Delhi, held an exhibition that featured seven artists working with artificial intelligence. AI-written novels, choreographers predicting dance sequences, and other forms of machine learning are also being readily explored within the creative arts.

In a series of "groundbreaking first" the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore successfully delivered and transplanted a donor kidney into a patient using an unmanned drone to transport the donated organ. Within a matter of months, your future Amazon orders could be delivered by a self-driving drone. Officials with the online shopping giant unveiled the latest Prime Air drone design Wednesday at Amazon's re:MARS Conference (Machine Learning, Automation, Robotics and Space) in Las Vegas. "We've been hard at work building fully electric drones that can fly up to 15 miles and deliver packages under five pounds to customers in less than 30 minutes," Jeff Wilke, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer, wrote in a blog post Wednesday. "And, with the help of our world-class fulfillment and delivery network, we expect to scale Prime Air both quickly and efficiently, delivering packages via drone to customers within months."

A new demonstration of Boston Dynamics' Spot Mini proves humans shouldn't anticipate a robo-dog uprising anytime soon. During Amazon's inaugural Re:MARS conference in Las Vegas, a four-legged robo-dog was paraded around the stage, to show off its impressive ability to climb stairs, grab things and navigate objects. As it turns out, the Spot Mini isn't the most graceful machine, however, as the robo-dog took a tumble on stage in front of a live audience. Boston Dynamics brought out Spot not just to show off its advanced capabilities, but also to announce that the device is almost ready for commercial release. During a demonstration, the Spot robot suddenly began flailing and crashed to the floor with a thud, generating a concerned'Uh oh' out of Marc Raibert, CEO of Boston Dynamics. Raibert explained that the machine had failed and would take a few minutes to recover.

Furniture giant, IKEA, is looking to court gamers and people living in cramped spaces with a new wave of robotic furniture and niche e-sport accessories. The Swedish furniture and home accessory giant has always been known for its clean modern aesthetics, but for customers in Hong Kong and Japan that modern style will also be functionally futuristic. Rognan, as the company has dubbed it, is a robotic storage unit that can move from side-to-side using a remote touch pad and is able to dispense space-consuming furniture on-demand, including a couch, a bed, and a desk. IKEA's new robot storage unit is designed to help people maximize space in urban apartments -- many of which are not known for their ample room Aside from adding a bit of sci-fi flare to one's apartment, the unit, which was developed in partnership with furniture startup Ori Living, is actually designed to solve a problem in many urban apartments -- space, or the lack thereof. 'More and more people are living and moving into cities where approximately an extra 1.5 million people join the urban population every week,' said IKEA. 'With Rognan as a robotic furniture solution for small space living, people will be able to turn small spaces into smart spaces that have all the comfort and convenience of a home.'

When it comes to managing the development of machine learning models, git just doesn't get it. This is the lesson learned by Max Humber, a data scientist with the Canadian finance company Wealthsimple, an insight that he shared in a talk at this year's Anaconda annual user conference, AnacondaCon, held in Austin, Texas. "Git manages for code, it is not really great for managing model parameters," he said. Finding the best model, and tuning it accordingly involves a lot trial-and-error. Much of it involves swapping models in and out of the code, then adjusting the parameters.