What do Tuscan Chicken, Bourbon Pork Tenderloin and New Orleans Sausage all have in common? They're all new spice mix flavours that have been developed by the world's biggest spice firm using artificial intelligence (AI). But with taste such a subjective experience, can machines really do the job better than humans? And what does this mean for cultures that see spice as a clear token of identity? Spice giant McCormick, which sells spices to consumers but also develops flavours for the food industry, says it spent four years crunching through more than 40 years of flavour-related data, using machine learning to come up with new flavour combinations that human scientists might not have considered. After all, would you have thought of trying cumin on pizza?

This fall, Gabon was facing an odd and tenuous political situation. President Ali Bongo had been out of the country since October receiving medical treatment in Saudi Arabia and London and had not been seen in public. People in Gabon and observers outside the country were growing suspicious about the president's well being, and the government's lack of answers only fueled doubts; some even said he was dead. After months of little information, on December 9th, the country's vice president announced that Bongo had suffered a stroke in the autumn, but remained in good shape. Despite such assurances, civil society groups and many members of the public wondered why Bongo, if he was well, had not made any public appearances, save for a few pictures of him released by the government along with a silent video.

Acting on its aim to make the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics "the most innovative in history," organizers on Friday unveiled robots that will be deployed to assist spectators and staff during the games. The robots shown to reporters are to be used as part of the Tokyo 2020 Robot Project, as the games' organizers see the event as a chance to showcase how the country's robot technology focuses on practicality rather than just entertainment. The Human Support Robot and Delivery Support Robot, developed by Toyota Motor Corp., will be used in tandem to assist visitors using wheelchairs. HSR, a one-armed robot about a meter in height, can hold objects, pick things up off the ground and reach high up. It can move by itself or can be controlled remotely as it attends to people in wheelchairs, guiding them to their seats and helping carry items.

In new video game'The Division 2,' players explore Washington, D.C., which has been decimated by a virus. Draining the swamp pales in comparison to the problems facing the nation's capital in new video game "Tom Clancy's The Division 2." The White House is under attack. An enemy force occupies the Lincoln Memorial and a wrecked Air Force One has crashed at the foot of the U.S. Capitol. Chaos reigns as the result of a pandemic, which has left Washington decimated. In the role of an agent for the Strategic Homeland Division, the player is tasked with protecting the division's makeshift headquarters at the White House and assisting survivors to improve their ragtag existence.

US Senators Roy Blunt and Brian Schatz want to protect people's facial recognition data and make it much harder to sell now that information is treated as currency. The lawmakers have introduced the bipartisan Commercial Facial Recognition Privacy Act of 2019, which prohibits companies from collecting and resharing face data for identifying or tracking purposes without people's consent. The Senators have conjured up the bill because while facial recognition has been used for security and surveillance for decades, it's "now being developed at increasing rates for commercial applications." They argue that a lot of people aren't aware that the technology is being used in public spaces and that companies can collect identifiable info to share or sell to third parties -- similar to how carriers have been selling location data to bounty hunters for years. In addition to prohibiting companies from redistributing or disseminating data, the bill would also require them to notify customers whenever facial recognition is in use. FR technologies also need to undergo third-party testing prior to implementation to address accuracy and bias issues, seeing as they tend to have higher error rates when it comes to women and people of color.

South African-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) software & solutions veteran and founder of Cortex Logic – Dr. Jacques Ludik – has been awarded a premium accolade at Africa's Tech Week event, underlying a life dedicated to AI and Data Science Innovation. Ludik, an Africa-based smart technology entrepreneur and AI investor/ AI ecosystem builder, holds a PhD in Computer Science and has amassed 25 years' experience in the study and exploitation of AI & Data Science in real world applications. Ludik was formally a founder of Bennit AI, Mosaic, SynerG and CSense Systems, the latter being Africa's first AI company sold to General Electric in 2011. Over the course of his career Ludik has published a wide range of papers on AI, Advanced Analytics, Machine Learning and Data Science and is a big supporter of AI for social good. He is currently founder & CEO of Cortex Logic as well as founder & president of the Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa (MIIA).

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. As an artificial intelligence researcher, I often come across the idea that many people are afraid of what AI might bring. It's perhaps unsurprising, given both history and the entertainment industry, that we might be afraid of a cybernetic takeover that forces us to live locked away, "Matrix"-like, as some sort of human battery. And yet it is hard for me to look up from the evolutionary computer models I use to develop AI, to think about how the innocent virtual creatures on my screen might become the monsters of the future. Might I become "the destroyer of worlds," as Oppenheimer lamented after spearheading the construction of the first nuclear bomb?

For generations healthcare has been episodic – someone gets sick or breaks a bone, they see a doctor, and then they might not see another one until the next time they get sick or injured. Now, as emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence open up new possibilities for the healthcare industry in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, policymakers and practitioners are developing new ways to deliver continuous healthcare for better outcomes. Consumers already expect access to healthcare providers to be as smart and easy as online banking, retrieving boarding passes and making restaurant reservations, according to Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard J Tyson. Nearly three-quarters of Americans with health insurance (72%), for example, say it's important that their health insurance provider uses modern communication tools, such as instant message and two-way video. Innovative healthcare organizations such as Kaiser Permanente are listening.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Tokyo 2020 Olympics and Paralympics organizers launched their ambitious Robot Project on Friday, unveiling two of the robots designed to assist supporters, workers and athletes at the Games.

In July 2017, China's government published an ambitious policy paper, outlining how the country would become the world leader in AI by the year 2030. But by some measures China has already succeeded in this goal -- a decade ahead of schedule. A new study shows that China's output of influential AI research papers will soon overtake that of the US, the world's current number one in AI research. The finding suggests that China's plan to expand its AI capabilities with the help of generous government investment in both educational facilities and private industry is paying off. In terms of sheer volume of AI papers published each year, China surpassed America back in 2006, but critics have pointed out that quantity does not necessarily equal quality.