Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car unit, is set to buy thousands more Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans, the companies announced today. The deal, made between Google's parent company Alphabet and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, is set to expand Waymo's fleet, with first deliveries beginning at the end of 2018. The self-driving, ride-hailing service says the additional vehicles will support Waymo as it expands to more cities across the US, with its first publicly-offered service set to launch in Phoenix, Arizona later this year. Waymo recently unveiled a self-driving minivan that it hopes could revolutionise the way we travel. It showed off the technology at the closely-guarded'fake town' dubbed The Castle, 120 miles southeast of San Francisco The number of purchased vehicles has not been disclosed by either party, nor has the value of the deal, but since Fiat Chrysler's recommended starting retail price for the 2018 Fiat Chrysler hybrid is set at $39,995, and if Waymo's order is in the 1000s, the deal is worth at least $40 million.

The "AI for Everyone" Challenge enables companies, organizations or individuals using AI to solve critical problems in their industry of choice. "When I first used CrowdFlower as a customer in 2010, it was for disaster response that involved both Human and Machine Intelligence. So, the'AI for Everyone' winners are working on problems that are very close to my heart," said Robert Munro, CrowdFlower CTO. "The breadth and depth of the researchers collaborating on identifying hate speech is impressive, and it's a delight to support the ambitious LanguageNet database that will help bring AI to more languages." The first winning proposal from this round has been awarded to a group of academics, professors and Ph.D candidates hailing from elite universities across the world (Cornell University, University of Michigan, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Rochester and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) who came together as a team to submit for the challenge.

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing has unveiled the next stage in its artificial intelligence (AI) efforts with the opening a new AI research lab in Beijing. The move comes one month after the company announced a fresh $4 billion in funding, taking the company's total inbound investment to nearly $20 billion since its inception. At the time, the company said that it planned to use the cash to increase its push into AI and support its global expansion. At a launch event in Beijing today, Didi Chuxing said that its new AI Labs was set up to "push the boundaries of transportation innovation," working in conjunction with the AI hub it launched in Silicon Valley last March. Indeed, the U.S. has emerged as a key area of focus for Chinese technology companies looking to expand their AI initiatives, with internet giant Baidu opening a Silicon Valley arm dedicated to self-driving cars back in 2016, before expanding its presence in the area with a new AI research base a year later.

All today's commercial drones use GPS, which works fine above building roofs and in high altitudes. But what, when the drones have to navigate autonomously at low altitude among tall buildings or in the dense, unstructured city streets with cars, cyclists or pedestrians suddenly crossing their way? Until now, commercial drones are not able to quickly react to such unforeseen events. Researchers of the University of Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research NCCR Robotics developed DroNet, an algorithm that can safely drive a drone through the streets of a city. Designed as a fast 8-layers residual network, it produces two outputs for each single input image: a steering angle to keep the drone navigating while avoiding obstacles, and a collision probability to let the drone recognise dangerous situations and promptly react to them.

Alibaba Holdings Ltd.-backed artificial intelligence start-up SenseTime Co. will build an innovation center in Shenzhen in southern Guangdong province after coming to an agreement with a real estate developer in the city. The firm, also headquartered in the city, will cooperate with China Merchants Shekou Industrial Zone Holdings Co. on construction and use the center to develop innovations related to AI, Internet of Things and Big Data, the company said in a press briefing yesterday. China Merchants Shekou will provide resources including services, equipment, technology and personnel, while SenseTime will create an AI platform for enterprises located in China Merchants Shekou industrial parks. The two parties will also work together on promoting practical applications of AI technology in the healthcare sector among others. Founded in 2014, Sensetime specializes in AI technology research and development related to facial recognition, driving automation and medical imaging products.

Halo announced today the worldwide release of HaloBoost, Halo's proprietary demand forecasting engine that leverages proven Machine Learning algorithms. HaloBoost combines Machine Learning methods to improve forecast accuracy over time, a high-speed modeling workflow to improve analyst productivity and knowledge discovery, and a simple, scalable method to introduce external factors like pricing, promotion, social media, and weather predictors. "Manufacturers, Distributors, and Retailers have been seeking tools that can provide simplification in the forecasting process to improve accuracy and throughput, and we've responded by introducing our most powerful modeling engine, HaloBoost . Traditional approaches are limited in their ability to maximize forecast accuracy without significant analyst effort across broad and sparse data dimensions such as regions, points-of-sale, and SKU-level granular forecasts. Our proprietary modeling workflow effectively uses the computer to simulate a large team of forecast experts, working in real-time, to find the best result across a broad range of forecast scenarios," said Bill Panak, Ph.D. Vice President of Data Sciences, Halo.

Facebook has a new executive coming on to unify its research efforts in the field of artificial intelligence. Former IBM exec Jérôme Pesenti will be taking the lead at Facebook's AI research (FAIR) arm, Quartz reports. Yann LeCun, who previously held the lead role, will be shifting to a more research-focused role where he will continue to drive the scientific agenda of FAIR in his new role as chief AI scientist, a Facebook spokesperson tells TechCrunch. The division now has 130 employees, and one of Pesenti's tasks will be leading the group as it further scales. In September, Facebook announced the opening of a FAIR lab in Montreal and just a few days ago, the company announced plans to double the size of its Paris AI research team to 100 people by 2022.

CHENNAI: Federal Bank & Niki.ai on Saturday announced the launch of a chatbot-based virtual assistant on FedMobile, the bank's mobile banking application. The bank has partnered with Niki.ai for powering the artificially intelligent bot. The chatbot feature offers mobile recharges, hotel room/ bus ticket reservation, household bill payments (electricity, water, DTH, data card, landline, broadband, gas), movie booking, events booking and cab booking. A user who wants to do a mobile recharge will simply have to type on the app "recharge my mobile number for Rs 100." The intelligent chatbot will pick up automatically the mobile number, identify the mobile operator and display the details for the user's confirmation.

Along with creating a dedicated AI team at Google France, the company is also expanding its workforce by 50 percent and opening four hubs that will provide free digital literacy training to the residents of France. But Google isn't the only company growing its AI presence. While Facebook already has an AI lab in the country, it announced today that it would put €10 million towards accelerating AI innovation in France. That money will be used for scholarships, funding servers and open datasets that public institutions can use and adding 30 additional fellowship positions to Facebook AI Research Paris' PhD program. The French team will also double from 30 to 60 people.

Google announced today that it's expanding its AI research efforts, setting up a new research team in France that will work with the country's AI research community on issues ranging from health to the environment. Google says the team's work will be published and any code it produces will be open source. Along with creating a dedicated AI team at Google France, the company is also expanding its workforce by 50 percent and opening four hubs that will provide free digital literacy training to the residents of France. While Facebook already has an AI lab in the country, it announced today that it would put €10 million towards accelerating AI innovation in France. That money will be used for scholarships, funding servers and open datasets that public institutions can use and adding 30 additional fellowship positions to Facebook AI Research Paris' PhD program.