Unity, a leading maker of game development tools, announced today that it's created a new, unprecedented type of video game: one designed not to be played by humans, but by artificial intelligence. The game is called Obstacle Tower, and it's a piece of software created to judge the level of sophistication of an AI agent by measuring how efficiently it can maneuver up to 100 levels that change and scale in difficulty in unpredictable ways. Each level is procedurally generated, so it changes every time the AI attempts it. With Obstacle Tower, and a $100,000 pool of prizes set aside for participants to claim as part of a contest, Unity hopes it can provide AI researchers with a new benchmarking tool to evaluate self-learning software. "We wanted to give the researchers something to really work with that would to an extreme degree challenge the abilities of the AI systems that are currently in research and development around the world," Danny Lange, Unity's vice president of AI and machine learning, told The Verge.

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jan. 25, 2019 -- Guavus, a Thales company and pioneer in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based analytics, announced today that it has acquired SQLstream, a real-time streaming analytics company based in San Francisco, CA. The acquisition enables Guavus to expand its offering, providing communications service providers (CSPs) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) customers access – at the network edge – to real-time, cloud-enabled streaming analytics to address their growing big data needs. "With our integrated solutions, CSPs to IIoT customers will be able to take advantage of something that's radically different as we deliver AI-powered analytics from the network edge to the network core. With this solution, our customers can now analyze their operational, customer, and business data anywhere in the network in real time, without manual intervention, so they can make better decisions, provide smarter new services, and reduce their costs," said Guavus CEO, Faizel Lakhani. "In a world facing exponential growth in the volume of data coming from increasingly connected network devices and IIoT-based sensors, the inclusion of SQLstream's industry-leading technology opens up huge new opportunities for our customers and our partners. Their disruptive technology allows customers to interactively inspect and curate streaming data for analytics at the edge. We're excited to have the SQLstream team onboard," said Lakhani.

Back in 2002, movie director Steven Spielberg and automaker Lexus worked together to create a vehicle that predicted what cars might be like in the year 2054. That car, the Lexus CS 2054, was "driven" in Minority Report by actor Tom Cruise; driven in quote marks because the car actually drove itself. But while such vehicles weren't expected until the middle of this century, a research project undertaken by Leasing Options, a British vehicle-leasing company, says that Lexus CS 2054-like cars will be on the road by 2027. "Who would have thought that 2027, just eight short years away, could be the year we see the Lexus 2054 from Minority Report become commercially available," the company said in its news release last month. "That's a whole 27 years earlier than Spielberg had predicted, seeing as the film was set in 2054."

Investment in artificial intelligence: Porsche has invested in startup "Urgent.ly". The American company sees itself as the leading global platform for mobility and roadside assistance. The financing round amounted to 21 million U.S. dollars (18.5 million euros). Alongside "Porsche Ventures", other companies obtained shares in Urgent.ly, The U.S. startup's platform supports roadside assistance services in North America, Europe and Asia.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Dec. 17, 2018--Machine-learning research published in two related papers today in Nature Geosciences reports the detection of seismic signals accurately predicting the Cascadia fault's slow slippage, a type of failure observed to precede large earthquakes in other subduction zones. Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers applied machine learning to analyze Cascadia data and discovered the megathrust broadcasts a constant tremor, a fingerprint of the fault's displacement. More importantly, they found a direct parallel between the loudness of the fault's acoustic signal and its physical changes. Cascadia's groans, previously discounted as meaningless noise, foretold its fragility. "Cascadia's behavior was buried in the data. Until machine learning revealed precise patterns, we all discarded the continuous signal as noise, but it was full of rich information. We discovered a highly predictable sound pattern that indicates slippage and fault failure," said Los Alamos scientist Paul Johnson. "We also found a precise link between the fragility of the fault and the signal's strength, which can help us more accurately predict a megaquake."

Bing has been blocked in China, Microsoft has said. The outage makes the search engine the latest of a whole host of foreign technologies to be taken down by China's "great firewall", which controls what people can see from within the country. Bing was the only major foreign search engine available in the country. "We've confirmed that Bing is currently inaccessible in China and are engaged to determine next steps," the company said in a statement. It is the U.S. technology giant's second setback in China since November 2017 when its Skype internet phone call and messaging service was pulled from Apple and Android app stores.

Recent flight stoppages involving remote-controlled drones have highlighted the potential for self-flying vehicles to interfere with existing commercial aviation. The autonomous airborne vehicles under development generally take off and land like a small helicopter that could carry a handful of passengers. They would shuttle between predetermined sites, such as building rooftops. Boeing said its electric-powered concept demonstrator, designed to have a range of 50 miles, flew for the first time on Tuesday in Manassas, Va. The 30-foot-long, 28-foot-wide aircraft took off, hovered and landed, the company said.

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 23, 2019--Artificial intelligence enable machines to better understand the surrounding context, giving them the ability to recognise sight, sound and speech. This is made possible by machine learning algorithms. A current study by Reply, conducted with the trend platform SONAR, shows which trends are still relevant in this area. The study highlights some aspects of the future potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Complex algorithms, Edge Computing tools that reduce latency periods and AI-specific hardware are yielding many new products and services for mobile computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Human-machine Interfaces.

ObEN Inc., a Pasadena-based artificial intelligence (AI) company, signed new entertainment partnerships and launched new celebrity-based Personal Artificial Intelligence avatars as part of its continued expansion into China's market. ObEN announced its official Chinese name roughly translating to "Celebrity Crew," in a nod to its growing presence in the country's entertainment industry, according to a Jan. 22 press statement. The new name also celebrates the Lunar New Year, when the company plans to release several new celebrity avatars created for the Chinese market. In December, ObEN collaborated with the Chinese music group SNH48 on the world's first human-PAI song and music video. Using its proprietary full-stack AI technology, ObEN created avatars for six of the group's most popular members.

The majority (80%) of workers are interested in gaining more artificial intelligence (AI) skills, but employers aren't taking the steps to teach them, according to a Genpact report released on Monday. While more than half (53%) of senior executives claim they reskill employees, only 35% of workers said reskilling opportunities are actually available, the report found. Use of AI is rapidly growing in the enterprise, with digital transformation spending predicted to hit $2 trillion by 2022. Previously, consumers held fear and doubt about AI infiltrating their lives, afraid robots would take over their jobs. However, recent research predicts that AI won't take jobs, but will actually create new jobs and support human workers.