Up to £23 million in government funding will create more AI and data conversion courses, helping young people from underrepresented groups including women, black people and people with disabilities join the UK's world-leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) industry. Up to two thousand scholarships for masters AI conversion courses, which enable graduates to do further study courses in the field even if their undergraduate course is not directly related, will create a new generation of experts in data science and AI. The UK has a long and exceptional history in AI, from codebreaker Alan Turing's early work through to London-based powerhouse DeepMind's pioneering research which will enable quicker and more advanced drug discovery. AI underpins the apps which help us navigate around cities, stop online banking fraud and communicate with smart speakers. The UK is ranked third in the world for private venture capital investment into AI companies (2019 investment into the UK reached almost £2.5 billion) and is home to a third of Europe's total AI companies.

The European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), the leading European Artificial Intelligence (AI) association with a focus on scientific excellence, is developing an ambitious project to create a multicentric European AI lighthouse. It has presented such a vision to members of the European Parliament and relevant stakeholders, asking for their support. In an official statement, ELLIS argues in favour of this decentralised model for several key reasons, such as the flexibility and versatility arising from having a network of research units; the promotion of one of Europe's key assets, its diversity; an increased ability to attract and retain talent; and the support of the adoption of AI advances and the subsequent wealth generation in several European regional ecosystems. These advantages would not exist if there were a single research centre or AI lighthouse for all of Europe. Nuria Oliver, Scientific Director and co-founder of the Alicante ELLIS Unit Foundation and Vice-President of ELLIS Europe, has emphasised the importance of this vision to "turn Europe into an AI world power through the development of strong regional ecosystems". From ELLIS Alicante, a foundation promoted by the Generalitat Valenciana (Regional Government of Valencia), Oliver says that "instead of working as independent bodies, the cross-cutting nature of AI emphasises the importance of working with such a multi-centric approach.

Sony Corp. announced today that it has created an artificial intelligence that can get the better of humans when playing the simulation game "Gran Turismo," which could have implications in the future for self-driving technology. AI has already mastered such games as "Go" and chess, and according to Sony, it took just two days of training for the technology Gran Turismo Sophy or GT Sophy to leave human players in the dust. At the two-day mark it was beating 95% of the best human players, and in the following days kept shaving time from its previous results. Sony said the AI mastered a number of tracks, not only by figuring out when to slow down or accelerate but using tactics such as when the time is right to get in behind a car and use the slipstream. When it became obvious that the car wasn't using a good racing line, it would change to another line.

Sony Group Corp. said on Wednesday it had created an artificial intelligence agent called Gran Turismo Sophy (GT Sophy) that was able to beat world's best drivers of the PlayStation racing simulation game Gran Turismo. To get GT Sophy ready for the game, different units of Sony brought in fundamental AI research, a hyper-realistic real world racing simulator, and infrastructure for massive scale AI training, the company said in a statement. The AI first raced against four top Gran Turismo drivers in July, learned from the race and outperformed the human drivers in another race in October. "It took about 20 PlayStations running simultaneously for about 10 to 12 days to train GT Sophy to race from scratch to superhuman level," said Peter Wurman, director of Sony AI America and the leader of the team who designed the AI. While AI had been used to defeat humans in the games of chess, mahjong and go, Sony said the difficulty in mastering race car driving was the many decisions that need to be made in real time.

One of the stars of the working-out-from-home boom is struggling. Peloton won't go quietly though and is making some big changes. The company will replace the CEO and co-founder, John Foley, who will become executive chairman, with former Spotify COO Barry McCarthy reportedly set to step into his shoes. While Foley is sticking around, the company is cutting around 2,800 corporate positions -- these won't include Peloton's instructors who lead its live classes. The company said in a press release about the lay-offs that its "monthly membership will be complimentary for impacted team members for an additional 12 months."

Leading UAE-based smart and green facilities management (FM) company Farnek has launched a new smart FM technology solutions company, HITEK, under the leadership of managing director, Javeria Aijaz, who was previously senior Director – Technology & Innovations at Farnek. Developed in-house, the HITEK solution 4.0, was originally launched in Q3 last year, connecting people, assets and spaces from multiple remote sites, using intelligent analytical platforms, for cleaning, security and maintenance, so they could be smartly centrally managed and monitored by utilising the Internet of Things (IoT), Building Management Systems (BMS), Cloud, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) based technologies. Commenting, Markus Oberlin, CEO at Farnek said: "After developing the HITEK brand as a cutting-edge technological FM proposition, we received enquiries from both our customers, trade associations and government departments, as well as other industry peers. "It soon became apparent that there was huge potential for this innovative solution. Because HITEK can integrate with any existing technologies like BMS, built on open protocol, HITEK can now activate a variety of bespoke, white-labelled portfolio solutions, to building managers and FM professionals, as well as other FM consultancies, linking smart buildings with a digitally connected workforce.

TUSTIN, Calif., February 07, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tarry Singh joins Marktechpost as an Advisory Board Member. Tarry Singh is Chairman, CEO, and AI Researcher of AI company Real AI Inc and deepkapha AI Research Lab. Tarry has over 25 years of experience working with data and has advised CxOs of global organizations to set up data-driven organizations from scratch. Tarry invests in AI and Web3 startup and scaleup ventures, speaks regularly at global AI leadership summits worldwide, and conducts workshops on a regular basis with his team of capable scientists. This press release features multimedia.

Reliance on multiple data points, from historic prices and trends to property ownership data, is nothing new. However, the data that we use to make our housing choices have become increasingly sophisticated. Quantarium's valuation models provide property valuations through a self-learning AI engine. Quantarium's advances in Computer Vision (CV) technology is allowing AVM to transcend historical constraints; understanding their journey and the impact of AI is critical to the future of real estate. Quantarium is a leading producer and purveyor of value-added data in residential real estate. Their data and analytics scientists and experts illustrated great innovation in their approach to building the industry's leading RE data lake, so it is a team-wide validation to receive this distinction.

Digitalisation is a strategic priority for public healthcare policy: major innovations in medicine are expected from the development of IT tools and the generalisation of digital models, which will contribute to improving the efficiency of healthcare systems and services, writes Inria in this press release.. In order to guide the digital transition of this sector in the Lyon region, Inria and the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL), the second largest hospital centre in France after AP-HP (Paris), are pooling their expertise to create a centre for the development of artificial intelligence and a joint project team dedicated to digital models for neuroscience. On July 2021, the two bodies signed a "memorandum of understanding", prior to concluding a framework agreement for tripartite collaboration (Inria / HCL / Claude Bernard–Lyon 1 University), thus officialising the details of this shared ambition. "The signing of a large-scale partnership between Lyon Public Hospitals and Inria testifies to the firm positioning of the University Hospital and its academic partners with regard to digital healthcare", says Raymond Le Moign, Managing Director of Hospices Civils de Lyon. "For the last ten years, the application of digital science in the healthcare sector has been a key focal point for Inria. Almost a third of its teams lead research which opens opportunities in this field", according to Hugues Berry, senior researcher in molecular neuroscience and Deputy Scientific Director at Inria.

The U.S. Department of Defense officially adopted a series of ethical principles for the use of Artificial Intelligence today following recommendations provided to Secretary of Defense Dr. Mark T. Esper by the Defense Innovation Board last October. The recommendations came after 15 months of consultation with leading AI experts in commercial industry, government, academia and the American public that resulted in a rigorous process of feedback and analysis among the nation's leading AI experts with multiple venues for public input and comment. "The United States, together with our allies and partners, must accelerate the adoption of AI and lead in its national security applications to maintain our strategic position, prevail on future battlefields, and safeguard the rules-based international order," said Secretary Esper. "AI technology will change much about the battlefield of the future, but nothing will change America's steadfast commitment to responsible and lawful behavior. The adoption of AI ethical principles will enhance the department's commitment to upholding the highest ethical standards as outlined in the DOD AI Strategy, while embracing the U.S. military's strong history of applying rigorous testing and fielding standards for technology innovations."