The monitoring systems at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant have been broken by a worldwide hack. Systems usually used to monitor the area around the power station – which is still an active and dangerous area following the disaster in 1986 – are not working because of the cyber attack, Ukrainian authorities said. Those areas must now be monitored manually, according to a statement. The entire country of Ukraine is being hit by a sustained cyber attack that has hit some of its most important state and private infrastructure. Though the attack began in the country – and most of the damage is still being done there – it is rapidly spreading across the world, hitting firms across Europe and America.

When Jason Nichols joined GE Global Research in 2011, soon after completing postdoctoral work in organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, he anticipated a long career in chemical research. But after four years creating materials and systems to treat industrial wastewater, Nichols moved to the company's machine-learning lab. This year he began working with augmented reality. Part chemist, part data scientist, Nichols is now exactly the type of hybrid employee crucial to the future of a company working to inject artificial intelligence into its machines and industrial processes. Fifteen years ago, GE's machine operators and technicians monitored its aircraft engines, locomotives, and gas turbines by listening to their clanks and whirs and checking their gauges.

Boeing has invested in US-based company SparkCognition, which focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This is the latest investment by the Boeing HorizonX venture unit that was established earlier this year. With plans to test-launch self-flying passenger planes, Boeing expects that the investment could lead to applications that include AI-driven security for aerospace innovation. SparkCognition develops a cognitive, data-driven analytics platform for the safety, security and reliability of data technology for energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, finance, aerospace, defence, telecommunications and security sectors. Boeing chief technology officer and senior vice-president for engineering, test and technology Greg Hyslop said: "SparkCognition is at the forefront of a technological shift in machine learning and artificial intelligence that will revolutionise every aspect of industry.

Apple has acquired German eye tracking company SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI), MacRumors reported Monday. SMI has been working on eye-tracking and vision related technology since its inception in 1991. It became active in the virtual reality segment in 2016 when it announced an eye-tracking development kit for the HTC Vive VR headset. In the report, MacRumors cited the power of attorney signed by German law firm Hiking Kühn Lüer Wojtek giving power to Delaware-based shell company Vineyard Capital Corporation to represent it in all business related to the acquisition. Curiously, the agreement has been signed by Gene Levoff, Apple's vice president of corporate law, which indicates Vineyard Capital Corporation might be one of the shell companies owned by Apple that it uses to hide its acquisitions.

At Qucit we use geographic data collected from hundreds of cities on a daily basis. It is collected from many different sources, often from each city's open data website and used as inputs to our models. We can then predict parking times, bikeshare stations occupations, stress levels, parking fraud… Gathering it is a lot of fastidious work and we aim at automating it. In order to do so we want to get our data from a source available everywhere: satellite images. We now have a good enough precision to detect roads, buildings and we believe that single trees can be detected too. We tested our model on the SpaceNet images and labels, acquired thanks to the Spacenet Challenge. During this challenge the Topcoder Community had to develop automated methods for extracting building footprints from high-resolution satellite imagery. Non Intrusive Load Monitoring is the field of electrical consumption disaggregation within a building thus enabling people to increase their energy efficiency and reduce both energy demand and electricity costs. We will present to you this active research field and what are the learning challenges @Smart Impulse.

Austin-based SparkCognition, a startup focused on artificial intelligence, announced Monday that it has closed on $32.5 million in funding. Verizon Ventures led the Series B funding round with participating from The Boeing Company, through its Boeing HorizonX unit. "SparkCognition has pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to bring unparalleled advancements to many of the world's Fortune 1000 companies," Vijay Doradla, Director at Verizon Ventures, said in a news release. "We are thrilled to invest in SparkCognition again, and look forward to supporting the company as it continues to transform markets and the businesses of tomorrow." SparkCognition has created a data-driven analytics platform for Internet of Things applications with customers in energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, finance, aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and security.

SparkCognition, a fast-growing artificial intelligence company, recently announced the close of an initial $32.5 million series B funding round. The investment was led by Verizon Ventures with key participation from The Boeing Company, through its Boeing HorizonX unit. "SparkCognition has pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to bring unparalleled advancements to many of the world's Fortune 1000 companies," said Vijay Doradla, Director, Verizon Ventures. "We are thrilled to invest in SparkCognition again, and look forward to supporting the company as it continues to transform markets and the businesses of tomorrow." Ranked No. 20 in the 2017 CNBC Disruptor 50 list, SparkCognition has established itself as a machine learning technology leader with business-critical solutions in place for customers in energy, oil and gas, manufacturing, finance, aerospace, defense, telecommunications, and security.

Abstract--Power supply from renewable resources is on a global rise where it is forecasted that renewable generation will surpass other types of generation in a foreseeable future. Increased generation from renewable resources, mainly solar and wind, exposes the power grid to more vulnerabilities, conceivably due to their variable generation, thus highlighting the importance of accurate forecasting methods. This paper proposes a two-stage day-ahead solar forecasting method that breaks down the forecasting into linear and nonlinear parts, determines subsequent forecasts, and accordingly, improves accuracy of the obtained results. To further reduce the error resulted from nonstationarity of the historical solar radiation data, a data processing approach, including pre-process and post-process levels, is integrated with the proposed method. Numerical simulations on three test days with different weather conditions exhibit the effectiveness of the proposed two-stage model. Figure 1 The new added U.S. electric generation from 2010 to Q1 2016 [2].

Over the past few years we've developed artificially intelligent machines that can do many things that used to require human minds: understanding speech, diagnosing disease, checking the terms of a contract, designing a mechanical part from scratch, even coming up with new scientific hypotheses that are supported by subsequent research. As this new software is embedded in hardware we'll get self-driving cars, trucks, and combines; delivery and inspection drones; and robots of many kinds. These technologies are improving more quickly than even their creators would have predicted at the start of the decade, and the fact that the world's best players of both the Asian strategy game go and no limit heads up Texas hold-em poker are now AI systems indicates just how deeply they're encroaching into human territory. So shouldn't we be preparing ourselves for massive AI-induced technological unemployment? A widely cited 2015 analysis by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford University found that 47% of current jobs in the US were susceptible to computerization.

Regular readers of Futurism probably understand, by now, what it means when the word "smart" is affixed to any common piece of technology -- it means a serious upgrade, most likely with internet connectivity, the ability to process huge amounts of data, and probably even an artificial intelligence (AI) program of some kind. For example, a telephone lets you communicate with someone across great distances. A smartphone, on the other hand, lets you plug into the world's nervous system. One is a useful tool. The other is an indispensable facet of modern life.