Marketers are increasingly using AI to streamline workflows and automate monotonous tasks. According to an Adobe survey, about 15 percent of agencies are already using some form of machine learning, and 31 percent are planning to adopt it by the end of 2019. London-based Adthena is hoping to lure some of those soon-to-be customers with its AI-driven search marketing intelligence platform. Roughly seven years after its founding and a year after it established a presence in the U.S., the company is today announcing that it has raised $14 million in a series A funding round led by Updata Partners, bringing its total venture capital raised to $18.1 million. Founder and CEO Ian O'Rourke says the funds will be used to accelerate the company's stateside and global growth and to "strengthen" product development as it prepares to launch new channels.

Nuro, a self-driving car company founded by two former Google employees, today announced that it's expanding its driverless delivery partnership with grocery giant Kroger to a new market: Houston. This follows pilots in Scottsdale, Arizona that kicked off in August, first with a fleet of modified Toyota Priuses and then with Nuro's custom vehicle, R1. In Houston, Nuro will service four zip codes -- 77401, 77096, 77005, and 77025 -- near two Kroger locations, one on 10306 South Post Oak Road and other off of 5150 Buffalo Speedway. Customers within range will be able to place autonomous same-day or next-day delivery orders via Kroger's website or app seven days a week (based on slot availability) later this spring, for a flat price of $5.95. Once an order is placed, store employees will load the groceries into one of several compartments in Nuro's thin, stout R1, which packs a proprietary mix of laser sensors, cameras, and computers. The vehicles top out at a speed of 25 miles per hour and are fully driverless, although for now escorted by human-driven cars.

Artificial intelligence has been fascinating to the human imagination since the term was first used by the first science fiction writers. The roots of the concept of "artificial intelligence" must be sought deep in the ancient world, where folklore, legends and myths in almost every culture spoke of artificially created creatures endowed with supernatural intelligence, consciousness or other human qualities. The only factor uniting the myths of the whole world is that artificial intelligence was always created by a man so passionate about his work that his brainchild went beyond the boundaries of matter and turned into life, sometimes surpassing man. Now we are standing at the crossroads of history, where two progressive technologies are beginning to merge and produce an absolutely new phenomenon. At first glance, the apparent antithesis of AI, the blockchain technology, exploded on the global technology arena as progress in technological constraints; a revolution that announced the creation of completely new industries and new perspectives.

One afternoon in August 2010, in a conference hall perched on the edge of San Francisco Bay, a 34-year-old Londoner called Demis Hassabis took to the stage. Walking to the podium with the deliberate gait of a man trying to control his nerves, he pursed his lips into a brief smile and began to speak: "So today I'm going to be talking about different approaches to building…" He stalled, as though just realising that he was stating his momentous ambition out loud. And then he said it: "AGI". AGI stands for artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical computer program that can perform intellectual tasks as well as, or better than, a human. AGI will be able to complete discrete tasks, such as recognising photos or translating languages, which are the single-minded focus of the multitude of artificial intelligences (AIs) that inhabit our phones and computers. But it will also add, subtract, play chess and speak French. It will also understand physics papers, compose novels, devise investment strategies and make delightful conversation with strangers. It will monitor nuclear reactions, manage electricity grids and traffic flow, and effortlessly succeed at everything else. AGI will make today's most advanced AIs look like pocket calculators. The only intelligence that can currently attempt all these tasks is the kind that humans are endowed with. But human intelligence is limited by the size of the skull that houses the brain. Its power is restricted by the puny amount of energy that the body is able to provide. Because AGI will run on computers, it will suffer none of these constraints. Its intelligence will be limited only by the number of processors available.

Police in the western Indian state of Gujarat detained 10 teenagers for breaking a newly announced ban on playing the online video game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) – the forerunner of global smash Fortnite. The ban was announced last week by local authorities to combat what they called the spread of "violent traits" in kids playing the game. The detained teenagers were taken into custody but later released with a warning, said Manoj Agrawal, police commissioner of Rajkot city in Gujarat on Thursday. "Due to these games, the education of children and youth are being affected and it affects the behaviour, manners, speech and development of the youth and children," an order by local police dated 6 March said. Police in Gujarat have not banned Fortnite, a popular rival to PUBG developed by US-based Epic Games.

A Google employee has broken the Guinness World Record for calculating pi to the most number of digits, just in time for Pi Day on 14 March – or 3.14. Pi – the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter – is an irrational number, meaning there's no end to how many digits can be calculated. We'll tell you what's true. You can form your own view. The engineer said it had been her dream since she was a child to break the world record for Pi.

This annotated image is a cropped version of the last 360-degree panorama taken by the Opportunity rover's Pancam from May 13 through June 10, 2018. This annotated view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see. A set of newly released photos shows what NASA's Mars rover Opportunity was looking at just before the killer dust storm hit. That storm boiled up in May 2018 and engulfed Opportunity shortly thereafter. The solar-powered robot couldn't get enough sunlight to recharge its batteries, and it went silent on June 10.

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If you became concerned about a mole on your back -- perhaps it had become painful or looked unsightly -- your doctor might decide to remove it and have it evaluated. She'd send it to a pathology lab, where a sample of the tissue would be prepared in the form of a slide. It would then be sent to a pathologist, who would examine the slide to determine whether the tissue had any problematic elements, like cancer. After taking a look, the pathologist might ship it to a specialist at another lab for a second opinion. Each time the slide is moved, it is packed up and shipped to a different address.

BUENOS AIRES – Artificial intelligence can facilitate trade negotiations and add one additional percentage point of growth to Latin American and the Caribbean economies, according to a study by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The study – put together by the IDB's Institute for the Integration of Latin America and the Caribbean (INTAL) – predicts artificial intelligence could boost regional GDP in the mid-term to 4 percent from current 3 percent projections. Brazil, for instance, could grow 4.1 percent a year instead of 3.2 percent. Colombia's economy could hit 4.5 percent growth instead of 3.7 percent. Overall, economic growth of countries that embrace artificial intelligence is expected to be 25 percent higher, on average, than those that do not, the report finds.