Hundreds of Lithuanians contributed to a fundraiser to buy an advanced military drone for Ukraine in its war against Russia in a show of solidarity with a fellow country formerly under Moscow's rule. The target of 5 million euros ($5.4m) was raised in just three and a half days in Lithuania – a country of 2.8 million people – largely in small amounts to fund the purchase of a Byraktar TB2 unmanned aerial vehicle from Turkey. Laisves TV, a Lithuanian internet broadcaster, launched the fund-raising drive. "Before this war started, none of us thought that we would be buying guns. Something must be done for the world to get better," said Agne Belickaite, 32, who sent 100 euros as soon as the effort began last week.

Today, Motilent, the first company to specialise in the assessment of digestive diseases using AI medical image analysis, announces a total of  £1.2M National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funding to develop and roll out its  technology into more than 10 UK hospitals, including UCLH, Nottingham University Hospital and Frimley Park Hospital. Crohn’s Disease is a painful, debilitating inflammatory bowel condition that affects 115,000 people in the UK, with 33% diagnosed before age 21. Currently, anti-inflammatory medications are the standard of care. However, for the 40% who do not experience inflammatory symptoms, these medications are ineffective and can cause severe side effects, as well as costing the UK economy over £280 million every year. Currently, 69% of the UK population experiences persistent gut issues, […]

The day is coming--some say has already arrived--when artificial intelligence starts to invent things that its human creators could not. But our laws are lagging behind this technology, UNSW experts say. It's not surprising these days to see new inventions that either incorporate or have benefitted from artificial intelligence (AI) in some way, but what about inventions dreamt up by AI--do we award a patent to a machine? This is the quandary facing lawmakers around the world with a live test case in the works that its supporters say is the first true example of an AI system named as the sole inventor. In commentary published in the journal Nature, two leading academics from UNSW Sydney examine the implications of patents being awarded to an AI entity.

There isn't a day that goes by without hearing about some fascinating development in artificial intelligence research, whether that might be an AI that can process and produce language in a human-like way, or an AI that can unlock the mysteries folded up within a protein, or automatically make scientific discoveries. But in the headlong rush in the to find the next breakthrough, there are legitimate concerns that the competitive nature of the "AI race" might mean that things like safety and ethics are being inadvertently overlooked, resulting in phenomena like algorithmic bias, or an escalating AI arms race between rival military powers to build lethal autonomous weapons. All of these recent developments point to a need for better regulations when it comes to engineering and implementing AI. Of course, too much regulation might stifle innovation, but too little might also bring what could have been a preventable disaster. As an international research team from Teesside University, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and Université Libre de Bruxelles now suggest, AI can also be used to navigate this delicate balance by determining which types of AI research projects might need more regulation than others. "Whether real or not, the belief in such a race for domain supremacy through AI, can make it real simply from its consequences," wrote the team in a paper that was published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.

Islamabad: Seventy-five per cent work of Pakistan first high-standard artificial intelligence laboratory under CPEC at National University of Science and Technology (NUST) has been completed while the equipment installation is almost 100 per cent finished. At the beginning of this year, the laboratory under CPEC--Qingluan Artificial Intelligence Laboratory was officially established at NUST, with joint efforts of NUST and Guangzhou Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Research, development and customisation is currently underway. I would say work is almost finished to 75%." Muhammad Khubaib Shabbir, Deputy Director of China Study Centre of NUST told Gwadar Pro on Saturday. The lab has been put into full use, both students and teaching staff are keen on researching Pattern and Facial Recognition algorithms, the reporter learned. "Currently, Cogniser-V1 intelligent video analysis project-a pilot project with the Government of Pakistan, and a commercial project, namely GymBot are the main projects that are under development." "Ideally, Cognizer-V1 is one of the most sophisticated surveillance equipment, which has the capability of converting ordinary cameras and surveillance equipment into a Smart Equipment, using AI and Computer Vision Algorithms." "To put it simple, the Cognizer-V1 has the ability to sense the people who are lurking around in certain areas and generate warnings, regarding dangerous behavioral patterns such as suicide, or other suspicious activities." In the case of Pakistan, the country is blessed with a large number of artificial intelligence application scenarios and a huge market, thanks to its world's 6th largest population. Moreover, the country is never short on talents. However, challenges lie in the commercialisation of scientific achievements-- an important step which can be viewed as one of the sources for innovation. Due to the backward industrial conditions and obstruction of international exchanges during the epidemic, the progress of commercialization in Pakistani scientific research institutes has been extremely slow. "Our other key project, 'GymBot', can be a perfect example of science commercialization.

When most people think of blockchain, they think financial transactions. While crypto and tokens garner the lion's share of news, blockchain, and in particular smart contracts and more recent Web3 innovations, are becoming an indispensable part of the world's transition to clean energy. In a way, energy has evolved to become more adaptable to working with blockchain. Decentralization is at the core of Web3 and blockchain technologies – there are many players, in many locations, who interact but aren't centrally controlled. As keen followers of energy and clean technologies will know, the last five years has seen an exponential increase in the decentralization of power.

With AI revealing, in its discreet setting ofcourse (we are indeed quite far from AGI -Artificial General Intelligence), a new dimension of reality and a new understanding of logic it is but incumbent for policy makers dealing with national security to be not only be aware but actively involved. Knowledge was expected to be bring humanity together but AI -functioning within its discreet settings that is going to guide strategic decisions, is creating national interest silos of intelligence controlled and dictated by AI. Defence establishments across the world are expected to'blindly' follow decisions since they are incapable to scrutinize these. Secondly, because of the acute awareness that AI has access to intelligence and pattern logic that humans are incapable to decipher nor anticipate, and lastly, the matter of urgency and reluctance to take human responsibility when facing higher intelligence and stakes of national security. For these very reasons there is a call for international moratorium on AI. Then there are other emerging technological challenges like quantum technology and biotechnology, both these will have serious implication on national security.

Artificial intelligence has been talked about for years, but is it really close to taking over the world? Could you rely on it to manage your business? "Maybe you're using artificial intelligence without knowing that," said Iva Ignjatovic. "AI is pretty much everywhere. Even search engines predict the full search item."

Today is your EE Times Weekly Briefing for the week ending May 24. The biggest story in electronics this week affects almost everyone in the high-tech industry – from Huawei to Google to Infineon – to chip companies, circuit board suppliers – essentially the entire supply chain. The Trump Administration this week took steps that will certainly isolate Huawei and possibly cripple it. What was once delicately framed as a "trade tension" between the two nations has officially turned into an all-out-trade war, affecting not just the electronics industry, but nearly every other commercial segment around the world – from farming to aeronautics. This past week EE Times launched a Special Project that zeroed in on damage done during the trade conflict already.

If business wants to use AI at scale, adhering to the technical guidelines for responsible AI development isn't enough. It must obtain society's explicit approval to deploy the technology. Six years ago, in March 2016, Microsoft Corporation launched an experimental AI-based chatbot, TayTweets, whose Twitter handle was @TayandYou. Tay, an acronym for "thinking about you," mimicked a 19-year-old American girl online, so the digital giant could showcase the speed at which AI can learn when it interacts with human beings. Living up to its description as "AI with zero chill," Tay started off replying cheekily to Twitter users and turning photographs into memes. Some topics were off limits, though; Microsoft had trained Tay not to comment on societal issues such as Black Lives Matter. Soon enough, a group of Twitter users targeted Tay with a barrage of tweets about controversial issues such as the Holocaust and Gamergate. They goaded the chatbot into replying with racist and sexually charged responses, exploiting its repeat-after-me capability. Realizing that Tay was reacting like IBM's Watson, which started using profanity after perusing the online Urban Dictionary, Microsoft was quick to delete the first inflammatory tweets. Less than 16 hours and more than 100,000 tweets later, the digital giant shut down Tay.