Chinese artificial intelligence startup iFlytek says it has developed AI-powered technology that can accurately identify a person by his or her voice, for use in law enforcement. The company expects to be able to roll out a voiceprint recognition system nationwide in two to three years, said Fu Zhonghua, the deputy head of iFlytek's research center here. The Chinese market for such technology has the prospect of becoming a driver of earnings growth for iFlytek, which has been hit with U.S. sanctions for its alleged role in China's internationally criticized treatment of Muslim minorities. "Because recordings are important evidence when it comes to phone scams, demand for voice recognition is growing," Fu told reporters at the lab. The voiceprint recognition tool harnesses iFlytek's strength in using AI to analyze data.

As the transformative potential of AI has become increasingly salient as a matter of public and political interest, there has been growing discussion about the need to ensure that AI broadly benefits humanity. This in turn has spurred debate on the social responsibilities of large technology companies to serve the interests of society at large. In response, ethical principles and codes of conduct have been proposed to meet the escalating demand for this responsibility to be taken seriously. As yet, however, few institutional innovations have been suggested to translate this responsibility into legal commitments which apply to companies positioned to reap large financial gains from the development and use of AI. This paper offers one potentially attractive tool for addressing such issues: the Windfall Clause, which is an ex ante commitment by AI firms to donate a significant amount of any eventual extremely large profits. By this we mean an early commitment that profits that a firm could not earn without achieving fundamental, economically transformative breakthroughs in AI capabilities will be donated to benefit humanity broadly, with particular attention towards mitigating any downsides from deployment of windfall-generating AI.

Soldiers are increasingly reliant on electronic devices in battle and scientists believe they have found a way to keep them charged without the need of an outlet. The US Army is working with Robotic Research LLC to design sensor fitted insoles that would generate electricity each time the wearer takes a step. The technology would not only power technology, but also allows commanders to track their soldiers in GPS-denied environments. Robotic Research LLC, a leading provider of autonomy and robotic technologies, was recently awarded a $16.5 million contract from the US Army to develop the sensors using its technology called WarLoc. The insole technology was found in a patent out of the Army's C5ISR Center, which will create electricity through the wearer's footsteps.

A stunning panorama of Mars shows the final resting place of NASA's Opportunity. The image is a series of 354 individual pictures snapped by the rover over a 29-day period before it shutdown completely and declared'dead' by the American space agency earlier this year. The desolate Martian landscape known as Perseverance Valley was the last thing the rover saw and now serves as its graveyard. The panorama is composed of 354 individual images provided by the rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, or sols (Martian days) 5,084 through 5,111. The panorama combines images from three different Pancam filters, which admit light centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). A stunning panorama of Mars shows the final resting place of NASA's Opportunity.

NASA's Spitzer Telescope captured an image of what looks like flames ripping through the black void of space. The picture highlights the Perseus Molecular Cloud, which is a massive collection of gas and dust that stretches over 500 light-years across. The fiery glow is a result of infrared radiation from warm dust and clusters of stars that'illuminate the surrounding clouds like the Sun lighting up a cloudy sky at sunset.' The Perseus Molecular Cloud is home to an abundance of young stars and is located on the edge of the Perseus Constellation. It contains over 10,000 solar masses of gas and dust covering an area of size by two degrees.

Star Wars-style lasers could help future space missions to accurately pinpoint the location of space junk in Earth's orbit and avoid deadly collisions. Millions of pieces of space junk are currently whizzing around the planet at around 20,000 miles per hour -- providing a threat to future rockets and space craft. However a new system based on neural networks has provided a better way to keep track of these hazardous objects with telescopes. The approach can detect debris as small as 3 feet wide and allow courses to be plotted to avoid them. Star Wars-style lasers could help future space missions to accurately pinpoint the location of space junk in Earth's orbit and avoid deadly collisions.

Finland is offering a techy Christmas gift to European Union citizens -- a free-of-charge online course in artificial intelligence in their own language, officials said Tuesday. The tech-savvy Nordic nation, led by the 34-year-old Prime Minister Sanna Marin, is marking the end of its rotating presidency of the EU at the end of the year with a highly ambitious goal. Instead of handing out the usual ties and scarves to EU officials and journalists, the Finnish government has opted to give practical understanding of AI to 1% of EU citizens, or about 5 million people, through a basic online course by the end of 2021. It is teaming up with the University of Helsinki, Finland's largest and oldest academic institution, and the Finland-based tech consultancy Reaktor. Teemu Roos, a University of Helsinki associate professor in the department of computer science, described the nearly $2 million project as "a civics course in AI" to help EU citizens cope with society's ever-increasing digitalization and the possibilities AI offers in the jobs market.

Health products powered by artificial intelligence, or AI, are streaming into our lives, from virtual doctor apps to wearable sensors and drugstore chatbots. IBM boasted that its AI could "outthink cancer." Others say computer systems that read X-rays will make radiologists obsolete. "There's nothing that I've seen in my 30-plus years studying medicine that could be as impactful and transformative" as AI, said Eric Topol, a cardiologist and executive vice president of Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif. AI can help doctors interpret MRIs of the heart, CT scans of the head and photographs of the back of the eye, and could potentially take over many mundane medical chores, freeing doctors to spend more time talking to patients, Topol said.

The term "artificial intelligence" in 2019 was catnip to investors. Back in March, London venture capital firm MMC published a report that found startups claiming to work in AI attracted as much as 50 per cent more funding compared to other companies. That same report also found that 40 per cent of European startups that were classified as artificial intelligence companies didn't actually use AI at all. IDC's Canadian ICT Predictions for 2020 report says venture capital funding will become a lot more selective. "Canadian adoption will be driven by what AI is demonstrably better than humans at: content identification and searching, image recognition, and transformation of unstructured to structured data," it says.

A rtificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most disruptive technologies of our generation. Media coverage of this disruption tends to focus on the more contentious ways in which organizations could use AI to get ahead. International concern has strengthened this focus: in July 2018, more than 2,000 researchers from 36 countries signed a pledge not to develop lethal autonomous weapons. In the same year, Google instigated a ban on developing AI software that could be used to make weapons. The move came after several employees resigned over the company's contract with the US Department of Defense to analyze remotely piloted aircraft videos. But this attention on autonomous weapons detracts from the main benefit AI brings to defense organizations: the ability to analyze data too vast for humans.