London March 10, 2021 – Using blockchain to democratize machine learning, GNY today launched the world's first blockchain providing access to powerful machine learning functionalities on a secure and collaborative decentralized platform. Empowering businesses and organizations to solve large and complex problems, GNY's Mainnet will enable users to utilize its blockchain architecture to run machine learning analysis of any type of data – from financial records to public health information – without risking sensitive data theft. The Mainnet launches with 5 machine learning use cases, which will expand to dozens by the end of 2021 and eventually hundreds. The launch comes after 18 months of development and rigorous testing. To demonstrate its potential impact, one GNY test revealed how researchers could use Mainnet to set up a private blockchain to run comparative analysis of daily COVID-19 mortalities from individual cities.

Singles looking for love now have the option to declare their vaccination status. San Francisco-based dating app Coffee Meets Bagel is adding a Vaccine Status to its dating profile this week allowing singles to declare if they've received the COVID-19 vaccination, the company announced Thursday. Coffee Meets Bagel has a new vaccination feature on its app that lets users declare where they are in the process. Daters will be able to select from one of five responses to add to their dating profile: fully vaccinated, waiting on an additional dose, planning to get vaccinated, not getting vaccinated or prefer not to say, the company said. Users can edit responses at any time depending on their status.

In September, Timnit Gebru, then co-leader of the ethical AI team at Google, sent a private message on Twitter to Emily Bender, a computational linguistics professor at the University of Washington. "Hi Emily, I'm wondering if you've written something regarding ethical considerations of large language models or something you could recommend from others?" she asked, referring to a buzzy kind of artificial intelligence software trained on text from an enormous number of webpages. The question may sound unassuming but it touched on something central to the future of Google's foundational product: search. This kind of AI has become increasingly capable and popular in the last couple years, driven largely by language models from Google and research lab OpenAI. Such AI can generate text, mimicking everything from news articles and recipes to poetry, and it has quickly become key to Google Search, which the company said responds to trillions of queries each year. In late 2019, the company started relying on such AI to help answer one in 10 English-language queries from US users; nearly a year later, the company said it was handling nearly all English queries and is also being used to answer queries in dozens of other languages.

Rental real estate platform Zumper is bringing artificial intelligence to the rental platform space. The company announced on Thursday the release of'PowerLeads AI,' a new artificial intelligence product it's developed that will analyze renter behaviors in order to predict the likelihood of a particular renter signing a lease for a specific apartment. Cultivating rental leads can be tricky -- renters are often in a more uncertain position financially, and may be renting in a particular city because they just want to test the waters, or are hoping to move elsewhere in the future. With the launch of PowerLeads AI, Zumper hopes to reduce some of the uncertainty surrounding renter prospects. "Leasing consultants report current industry methods for managing leads are not only highly inefficient and frustrating, they're also one of the industry's most significant challenges," a press release from Zumper states.

ClearScale, a leading cloud systems integrator and Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Consulting Partner, announced today that it has achieved AWS Machine Learning Competency status in the new Machine Learning Operations (ML Ops) category. This designation recognizes that ClearScale has demonstrated deep experience and expertise in building or integrating ML solutions on AWS. AWS Partners recognized as part of the AWS Machine Learning Competency expansion help customers take advantage of intelligent solutions, from creating, automating, and managing end-to-end ML workflows to modernizing applications with machine intelligence. AI and ML driven applications are maturing rapidly and creating new demands on enterprises. AWS is keeping pace and continuously evolving AWS Competency Programs to provide customers an ability to engage enhanced AWS Partner technology and consulting offerings.

Montreal-based Heyday announced today that it has raised $6.5 million Canadian ($5.1 million in US dollars) in additional seed funding. Co-founder and CEO Steve Desjarlais told me that the startup's goal is to allow retailers to support more automation and more personalization in their online customer interactions, while co-founder and CMO Etienne Merineau described it as an "all-in-one unified customer messaging platform." So whether a customer is sending a message from Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Google's Business Messages or just via email, Heyday brings all that communication together in one dashboard. It then uses artificial intelligence to determine whether it's a customer service or sales-related interaction, and it automates basic responses when possible. Heyday chatbots can provide order updates or even recommend products (it integrates with Salesforce, Shopify, Magento, Lightspeed and PrestaShop), then route the conversation to a human team member when necessary.

XAPP AI announced today that it has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Machine Learning Competency status in the new Applied Artificial Intelligence (Applied AI) category. This designation recognizes that XAPP AI has demonstrated deep experience and expertise in building or integrating machine learning (ML) solutions on AWS. XAPP AI Conversational Self Service for Contact Center Intelligence (CSS4CCI) is designed to help customers succeed quickly with intelligent AWS ML services by automating knowledge capture for turnkey solutions in less than 60 minutes, and then scale their solutions without limits via Optimal Conversation Studio (OC Studio). AI driven applications are maturing rapidly and creating new demands on enterprises. AWS is keeping pace and continuously evolving AWS Competency Programs to provide customers an ability to engage enhanced AWS Partner technology and consulting offerings.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the national trade association for the digital media and marketing industries, is focusing its AI Standards Working Group to develop artificial intelligence (AI) standards, best practices, use cases, and terminologies in an effort to scale AI and enable the industry on its full potential. The group is newly co-chaired by IBM Watson Advertising and Nielsen. The first release of 2021, "Artificial Intelligence Use Cases and Best Practices for Marketing," will help executive leaders, marketers, and technologists get the most from AI, and do it responsibly. Created for those already working with AI or looking to leverage it in their business, this guide draws directly from the real-world experience of co-chairs IBM Watson Advertising and Nielsen as well as top publishers, agencies, and ad tech companies in the industry. It's not an ivory tower overview of AI: it's a specific guide for what to do for executives that are in the thick of it.

GUANGZHOU, China,--(BUSINESS WIRE)--XPeng Inc. ("XPeng" or the "Company", NYSE: XPEV), a leading Chinese smart electric vehicle ("Smart EV") company, today announced the launch of a long-distance navigation-assisted autonomous driving expedition from March 19 to 26, 2021, covering a total distance of 3,675 km across six provinces in China. The performance of XPeng's newly released autonomous driving assistance function - Navigation Guided Pilot (NGP) - will be fully tested in 3,145 km of highway driving, starting from Guangzhou, all the way north to Beijing. The Xpeng P7 Premium version, equipped with XPILOT 3.0 which supports the NGP function, will be driven by members of the media and third parties during the 7-day drive expedition, the longest driving challenge to date for an autonomous driving assistance function in mass-produced models in China. The total distance of 3,675 km consists of about 3,145 km of highways, where the key functionalities and reliability of the NGP, including automatic highway ramp entering and exiting, automatic switching of highways and optimization of lane choices, automatic lane changing, overtaking and speed limit adjustment, will be fully tested by the press and third parties. The frequency of human driver intervention, and the success rate for the functions listed above, are among the key indicators to be tested in these sophisticated driving scenarios on China's highways. Over the course of 7 days, the fleet of P7s will drive across 10 cities in China in six provinces, starting from Guangzhou, to Shantou, Quanzhou, Wenzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing, Qingdao, Jinan, finishing in Beijing.

The demand for hydroponics is likely to surge in the near future because of their ability to provide better crop yields in a lesser time period, control soil borne pathogens, and nutrient availability in the system. Apart from that, the increasing global population and reduction in the number of agricultural lands is slowly surging concerns about food security. Hence, governments of various countries are taking initiatives to encourage farmers to adopt unique agricultural practices. Aquiculture is one such intelligent crop production technique that is enabling farmers to grow crops faster than conventional methods. Also, rising R&D activities by companies to enhance productivity is expected to propel the hydroponics market growth in the near future.