Siemens and German rail operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) revealed on Monday, October 11, the world's first driverless, fully automated train in the city of Hamburg. Richard Lutz, CEO of DB said, "with automated rail operations, we can offer our passengers a significantly expanded, more reliable and therefore improved service -- without having to lay a single kilometer of new track." Though several airports around the world have driverless monorail terminal shuttles and Paris has driverless metro trains, the new train by Siemens and Deutsche Bahn is the first fully automated train that can safely run on existing rail infrastructure alongside regular human-driven trains. In its statement, Siemens describes the new train as more efficient due to the use of artificial intelligence (AI), which helps the train stick to schedule and meet increased travel demand more efficiently than a human driver. Four of the trains will go into operation in northern Hamburg's S-Bahn rapid urban rail network and they will start carrying passengers in December.

New York (CNN Business)Amazon's vision for the future of home security includes drones flying over your roof, outdoor cameras that monitor for possible trespassers and cute robots patrolling indoors. During an invite-only press conference on Tuesday, the company showed off an autonomous, 20-pound dog-like robot named Astro with large, cartoon-y eyes on its tablet face and a cup holder. The robot -- not unlike an Alexa on wheels -- uses voice-recognition software, cameras, artificial intelligence, mapping technology and voice- and face-recognition sensors as it zooms from room to room, capturing live video and learning your habits. Amazon also announced a subscription service called Virtual Security Guard for Ring cameras. Ring, the smart doorbell and camera company it acquired in 2018 for $1 billion, will work with third-party professional monitoring companies, such as Rapid Response, to analyze a live feed from its outdoor cameras.

Bank of America announced on Wednesday that it has raised its U.S. minimum hourly wage to $21, the next step in the company's plans to increase the pay to $25 by 2025. With employees getting paid $21 per hour, their annualized salary comes out to $43,680. In May, the company announced that all of its U.S. vendors were required to pay their employees dedicated to the bank at or above $15 per hour. The change comes in the midst of labor shortages taking place all over the United States, as companies struggle to hire and retain employees, especially for lower wage jobs. The increase would put Bank of America at roughly three times the U.S. minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Olea Edge Analytics, an intelligent edge computing platform for the water utility industry, today announced the closing of $35 million in Series C funding led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate hiring across all departments and further develop their AI and edge computing-based solutions to help utilities manage water. A full suite of sensors combined with advanced analytics monitor and manage each component throughout the network, giving utility departments previously unavailable insights and recommendations on how to return their resources to optimal performance. Olea Edge Analytics has now raised a total of $50.6 million to help cities monitor and manage critical water assets, including large commercial and industrial meters, uncovering millions of dollars in recoverable revenue. "Cities and water utilities are facing tremendous challenges from all sides: financial, operational, hiring and more," Olea Edge Analytics CEO Dave Mackie said.

LoopMe, an outcomes-based platform, has launched a measurement solution, PurchaseLoop Measurement, which provides real-time consumer brand lift measurement and analytics for OOH advertising, according to a company press release. Designed for agencies, brands and publishers to measure media effectiveness throughout their campaigns, PurchaseLoop Measurement also provides analytics across media channels, including digital, CTV, digital audio. "Consumer behavior has changed rapidly over the past 18 months, creating new challenges as brands try to measure whether their advertising is moving the needle," Chris Swarbrick, managing partner - ad technology strategy and coordination at OMG UK, said in the release. "LoopMe provides a unique offering that leverages real-time machine learning and artificial intelligence to find consumers where they spend the most time -- on their mobile devices -- and measures advertising effectiveness across brand metrics in a quick and scalable way, even as the market becomes more fragmented. LoopMe is paving the way for the next wave of brand measurement solutions that secure a true 1-1 connection between brands and consumers."

Tech giant Google is going to try and make some of its software more environment friendly. In a slew of updates announced today, the company said software like Maps and Search will start showing results that are meant to steer people towards environment friendly options. For instance, users in the US will not only see the fastest route to a destination on Google Maps, but the app will also show the most fuel-efficient route. The company said it is using artificial intelligence (AI) and insights from the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to provide eco-friendly routes on Android and iOS versions of Maps. The feature is available only in the US right now and will come to Europe next year.

OpenBench, Inc., an emerging leader in AI-enabled small molecule discovery, entered into an agreement with HemoShear Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held clinical stage biotechnology company, to use the OpenBench virtual screening platform to identify novel, potent inhibitors of an undisclosed rare disease target. Under the terms of the agreement, OpenBench will receive payment for successful identification and experimental confirmation of novel chemotypes that meet HemoShear's potency and developability criteria. Financial terms were not disclosed. "We are excited to support HemoShear's efforts to identify clinically relevant therapeutic candidates for a rare disease with significant unmet patient need," said OpenBench CTO James Yoder. "We feel confident that the OpenBench technology will pair nicely with the HemoShear REVEAL-Tx platform to help identify potent, developable hits and optimize the likelihood of success for this HemoShear discovery program."

LEWES, Del., Oct. 05, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- John Snow Labs, the Healthcare AI and NLP company and developer of the Spark NLP library, today announced that it will enable free access to its enterprise-grade Annotation Lab and NLP Server software for all users. This announcement comes on the first day of the company's annual NLP Summit, a free online event that brings together the AI community to discuss the most important trends, use cases, and solutions advancing natural language processing (NLP). The Annotation Lab, a robust data labeling and AI/ML solution for teams, enables users to annotate documents, images, and videos. The software automatically trains models using active learning and transfer learning. The simple and efficient project-based workflow helps users leverage real-time analytics on productivity, dataset bias, inter-annotator agreement, and more.

The company announced today that it's making the Echo Show 10 devices in the US compatible with the popular video calling software. Users who have their calendars linked up to the Alexa will have their meetings started automatically while people who haven't done that can say, "Alexa, join my meeting" or "Alexa, join my Zoom meeting" to join one. This is the second Echo Show to gain Zoom access; the Echo Show 8 started supporting the videoconferencing platform in the US in December. The Echo Show 10's camera tracks users as they move throughout a room, meaning callers can see the screen no matter where they sit or stand. Presumably, this functionality will work with Zoom, putting it on par with other competitor devices like the Facebook Portal and Google Nest.

SAN FRANCISCO & NEW YORK & TEL AVIV, Israel--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gap Inc. (NYSE: GPS) has acquired the New York and Tel Aviv based start-up Context-Based 4 Casting Ltd. (CB4) that uses cutting-edge AI and machine learning tools to transform retail operations, increase sales and improve the customer experience through predictive analytics and demand sensing. "We believe artificial intelligence and machine learning will shape the future of our industry. Gap Inc. has experience working with CB4's world-class data scientists, so we understand the impact and the wide applications their science can have across sales, inventory and consumer insights, as well as its potential to unlock value and enhance the customer experience," said Sally Gilligan, Chief Growth Transformation Officer, and head of the Strategic Growth Office at Gap Inc. The deal was brokered by Gap Inc.'s Strategic Growth Office, a unit of the company that seeks out opportunities to fuel growth and accelerate new capabilities across its portfolio of brands. CB4's award-winning technology makes recommendations that support new sales and more satisfied customers.