The Project PAI Foundation is excited to announce the launch of the PAI Mainnet – its independent blockchain platform that allows users worldwide to create, own, and manage their own digital identity and data, allowing everyone to participate in a new globalized AI economy. This press release features multimedia. Project PAI's vision is to enable everyone in the world to create their own Personal AI (PAI), an intelligent digital avatar that looks, sounds, and behaves like them. The core technology for these intelligent avatars is powered by ObEN, a leading artificial intelligence company based in Los Angeles, CA. As an early adopter of Project PAI, ObEN uses blockchain to secure and authenticate the PAI's created by the users of its applications.

Baidu marked volume production of Apolong autonomous buses, developed with Chinese busmaker King Long and using Apollo autonomous driving software, for commercial operation in cities including Beijing, Shenzhen, Pingtan and Wuhan, the company said at its developer conference in Beijing on July 4, 2018. Intel is getting a big opportunity to show off advanced vision technology and software from its Mobileye unit by partnering with Baidu's Apollo, the Chinese tech giant's autonomous driving consortium. Working with Mobileye, Baidu will integrate the Israeli company's Responsibility Sensitive Safety software into both its open-source Apollo platform shared with partner companies and commercial Apollo Pilot programs, Intel said in a statement. Baidu will also use Mobileye's camera-based surround computer vision system for automated vehicles being developed for the Chinese market. "Our team recognizes the value and critical role that Mobileye's RSS model plays in safely deploying autonomous driving," Weihao Gu, general manager of Baidu's Intelligent Driving Unit, said in a statement.

Groupe PSA and Inria today announced the creation of an OpenLab dedicated to artificial intelligence. The studied areas will include autonomous and intelligent vehicles, mobility services, manufacturing, design development tools, the design itslelf and digital marketing as well as quality and finance. "Artificial intelligence will quickly become an efficiency factor for the group. The OpenLab will work on artificial intelligence algorithms enabling autonomous vehicles to drive in complex environments for example. It will also work on predictive maintenance, powertrain design optimisation and the modelling of complex systems such as cities, to offer mobility services adapted to people's needs" said Carla Gohin, Groupe PSA's Vice President for Research and Advanced Engineering. Inria's project teams will participate in this OpenLab bringing their high-level algorithmic expertise as part of a fruitful dialogue with Groupe PSA's experts on all the identified topics.

On the afternoon of July 4th, the AI World 2018 was held in the Press Office of Shanghai municipal government. At the press conference, Wu Qing, Deputy Mayor of Shanghai introduced the conference. AI World 2018 will be held in Shanghai from September 17 to 19 of this year by National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Internet Information Office, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Shanghai Municipal People's Government with the approval of the State Council under the background of the historic exchange of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change and the high-quality development demand in China. The conference, with the theme of "New Era of Artificial Intelligence," with the "High-end, Internationalized, Professionalized and Marketable" policy, consists of forum summit, special activities, display applications and innovation competitions, focusing on the combination of "investment in production, learning and research". With the theme of "enlightening intelligence and setting sail for the future," the competition, based on globalization, specialization and high end, aims to encourage artificial intelligence, accelerate the talents, find excellent projects, and expand the international influence of China's artificial intelligence.

Baidu today unveiled a new chip for AI, joining the ranks of Google, Nvidia, Intel, and many other tech companies making processors especially for artificial intelligence. Kunlun is made to handle AI models for edge computing on devices and in the cloud via datacenters. The Kunlun 818-300 model will be used for training AI, and the 818-100 for inference. Baidu began working with field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips especially designed for deep learning in 2011, the company said. Kunlun is about 30 times faster than the first FPGA chip from Baidu and is able to achieve 260 tera-operations per second (TOPS) and 512 GB/second memory bandwidth, a company spokesperson told VentureBeat in an email.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., July 2, 2018 – International Data Corporation (IDC) today published an IDC Innovators report profiling five technology providers that are considered key emerging vendors in the conversational AI platforms market. The five companies named as IDC Innovators are Personetics, Kore.ai, Conversational AI platforms are used to build applications that answer questions, provide advice and/or recommendations using natural language processing and other dialog related technologies. The market for intelligent conversational assistance is growing rapidly, fueled by the use and acceptance of consumer tools like Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, and Amazon's Alexa. To date, there are dozens of supplier companies seeking to address these emerging interface opportunities with new companies emerging in the marketplace every day.

Baidu marked volume production of Apolong autonomous buses, developed with Chinese busmaker King Long and using Apollo autonomous driving software, for commercial operation in cities including Beijing, Shenzhen, Pingtan and Wuhan, the company said at its developer conference in Beijing on July 4, 2018. Intel is getting a big opportunity to show off advanced vision technology and software from its Mobileye unit by partnering with Baidu's Apollo, the Chinese tech giant's autonomous driving consortium. Working with Mobileye, Baidu will integrate the Israeli company's Responsibility Sensitive Safety software into both its open-source Apollo platform shared with partner companies and commercial Apollo Pilot programs, Intel said in a statement. Baidu will also use Mobileye's camera-based surround computer vision system for automated vehicles being developed for the Chinese market. "Our team recognizes the value and critical role that Mobileye's RSS model plays in safely deploying autonomous driving," Weihao Gu, general manager of Baidu's Intelligent Driving Unit, said in a statement.

Planck Re, a startup that wants to simplify insurance underwriting with artificial intelligence, announced today that it has raised a $12 million Series A. The funding was led by Arbor Ventures, with participation from Viola FinTech and Eight Roads. Co-founder and CEO Elad Tsur tells TechCrunch that the capital will be used to expand Planck Re's product line into more segments, including retail, contractors, IT and manufacturing, and grow its research and development team in Israel and North American sales team. The Tel Aviv and New York-based startup plans to focus first on its business in the United States, where it has already launched pilot programs with several insurance carriers. Tsur says that Planck Re's clients generally use it to help underwrite insurance for small to medium-sized businesses, including business owner policies, which cover property and liability risks, and workers' compensation. Founded in 2016 by Tsur, Amir Cohen and David Schapiro, Planck Re poses its technology as a more efficient and accurate alternative to the lengthy risk assessment questionnaire insurers ask clients to fill out.

Planck Re announces their first funding round of $12M to empower commercial insurers by generating insights that streamline the commercial underwriting process – enabling insurers to instantly and accurately underwrite any policy. The round was led by Arbor Ventures and includes Viola FinTech and Eight Roads. Founded in 2016, Planck Re is pioneering the commercial insurance data industry, providing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven data platform. Leveraging deep industry expertise and breakthrough data science, Planck Re streamlines the commercial underwriting process by aggregating small and medium businesses' digital footprint to help insurers acquire a comprehensive understanding of customer risk. The end result is a frictionless underwriting process with greater insurance carrier visibility into risk factors, leading to improved conversion, retention and reduced loss ratios.

Somewhere in the spare room of a home in the US or overseas, a recent high school grad and soon to be member of the Class of 2022 at a school like Stanford or Georgia Tech is gathering up the clothes, gadgets, and dorm room basics that they will need for freshman year. Four years after that traumatic (for the parents) drop-off day, that skinny but brilliant freshman will graduate and join a six-person start-up company, where he or she will play an integral part in building the game-changing technology that you and your organization will use just a few years later. We can't tell you which freshmen are on the way to cashing out their stock options or which companies they will work for, but we can get a glimpse of key information technologies that might be available in the somewhat shorter term. Some of the companies and technologies that will be in the must-have category are pulling in venture capital investments today. This is the first in an occasional series of roundups of just a few of the noteworthy startup reporting investments.