Speech recognition is definitely one of the areas where artificial intelligence is showing its power and effectiveness. And what is the last thing that journalists, secretaries, and assistants wish to take care of? But whether for interviews or parliamentary reports, new AI-based applications emerge as useful support tools to let the machine do the boring part of the job and allow people to focus on more demanding and intellectually challenging tasks. In the next year, the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) is set to introduce HANS – AI system that will be a valuable ally to the work of lawmakers and employees of the Riigikogu. By deploying speech recognition, it will increase the efficiency and accuracy in transcripts of the sessions.

In its first year of operation, the Intelligent Towing Tank (ITT) conducted about 100,000 total experiments, essentially completing the equivalent of a PhD student's five years' worth of experiments in a matter of weeks. The automated experimental facility, developed in the MIT Sea Grant Hydrodynamics Laboratory, automatically and adaptively performs, analyzes, and designs experiments exploring vortex-induced vibrations (VIVs). Important for engineering offshore ocean structures like marine drilling risers that connect underwater oil wells to the surface, VIVs remain somewhat of a phenomenon to researchers due to the high number of parameters involved. Guided by active learning, the ITT conducts series of experiments wherein the parameters of each next experiment are selected by a computer. Using an "explore-and-exploit" methodology, the system dramatically reduces the number of experiments required to explore and map the complex forces governing VIVs.

Over half of NHS Trusts (52%) are already deploying artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, with 20% of them using them for clinical care, and 16% using them for clinical diagnosis, a Freedom of Information request has revealed. The data was obtained by a Freedom of Information request from cloud data services provider NetApp, with 61 Trusts responding, after the UK Government announced its investment in AI in the National Health Service (NHS). The request asked Trusts around their current and future use of AI-related technologies to deliver health services, and how mature their data infrastructures are in delivering successful AI projects. George Kurian, NetApp CEO and president, said: "Artificial intelligence has limitless potential in healthcare services and it's encouraging to see the technology being used in half of NHS Trusts. As healthcare moves towards preventative treatment and personalised medicines, artificial intelligence leaders in the NHS have a complex challenge to break through cultural and organisational barriers when it comes to providing healthcare professionals the access to data they require. "Progress is being made and the further deployment of AI-powered technologies – such as speech recognition and machine learning – will alleviate pressure on staff, accelerate innovation and reduce costs.

The findings show that it is widely recognised that artificial intelligence and the potential it offers are important. The survey also indicates that while a growing interest in artificial intelligence and its applications is evident in public employment services, the use of AI is still in its infancy. Very few EU Member States have a strategic plan for using artificial intelligence in public employment services. Services involving the matching of vacancies with jobseekers and those involving employee profiling are the most advanced. In Belgium, for example, artificial intelligence is used in the detailed profiling of private customers and for preparing employment forecasts.

Doctors won't be spared, as cutting-edge robotics will do some jobs more precise than they can. An ... [ ] older doctor with shaky hands and less-than-perfect eyesight will easily be replaced by a robot who doesn't take off Wednesday to golf. Just because you turn the page on the calendar, it doesn't mean that things will be radically different. History shows that most major events unfold slowly and then happen all of a sudden. The start of 2020 will continue the current trends that we are witnessing right now.

In April 2018, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a momentous decision. The agency's approval of IDx-DR, a diagnostic system developed by Iowa-based IDx Technologies for diabetic retinopathy, wasn't a revolutionary move on the face of it, but nevertheless marked an important inflection point in the delivery of modern healthcare. So why was the FDA's decision to award marketing clearance to IDx-DR so significant? As is increasingly the case in medical technology, the answer lies with artificial intelligence (AI). The IDx-DR software is driven by AI, and it's the first system approved to autonomously provide diagnostic assessments without the supervision of an expert clinician. The system involves capturing images of a patient's eye with a retinal camera – in this case the Topcon NW400 – that can be operated by any non-specialist staff member with a little training.

As the startup market has matured over the years, so too have the models for company acceleration and growth. New industries have unfolded to nurture seedling companies and develop them from conception through to launch and eventual exit. These models include accelerators, incubators, VCs, angels, and now the startup studio model is unfolding as a new approach to accelerating innovation. Accelerators for startups come in all flavors from broad-stroke cohorts such as Techstars or 500 Startups to more niche accelerators focusing on specific verticals such as IndieBio. After a competitive application process, accelerators will select a cohort of startup teams (ranging from 10-20).

Finland is offering a techy Christmas gift to all 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.

With respect to climate change, poaching, and encroachment on natural habitats, some animal populations have fared far worse than others. It's estimated that the populations of more than 4,000 species shrunk by 60% between 1970 and 2014, and a recent United Nations global assessment found that as many as 1 million species are at risk of extinction within the next decade. That's why Google has partnered with Conservation International and other organizations -- the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Map of Life, World Wide Fund for Nature, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Zoological Society of London, with support from Google's Earth Outreach program and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Lyda Hill Philanthropies. The goal is to help process one of the world's largest and most diverse databases of photographs taken from motion-activated cameras. As of today, the fruits of their labor is available through Google Cloud as a part of Wildlife Insights, an AI-enabled platform that streamlines conservation monitoring by expediting trap-camera photo analysis.

CIMON (The Crew Interactive Mobile Companion 2) has been busy working with astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The robotic assistant is now using a tone analyzer, detecting emotions during the current voyage. CIMON made its debut on the ISS in November of this year, with Space.com's "During the experiment, CIMON successfully found and recognized Gerst's face, took photos and video, positioned itself autonomously within the Columbus module using its ultrasonic sensors, and issued instructions for Gerst to perform a student-designed experiment with crystals. Weighing about 5 kilograms (11 lbs. on Earth), the 3D-printed robot designed jointly by the German space agency DLR, Airbus, and IBM works similarly to Apple's virtual assistant Siri or Amazon's Alexa. "If CIMON is asked a question or addressed, the Watson AI firstly converts this audio signal into text, which is understood, or interpreted, by the AI," explained IBM project lead Matthias Biniok in the statement. "IBM Watson not only understands content in context, [but] it can also understand the intention behind it." There is a great video here, of Gerst conversing with CIMON, and it shows the complexity of this fantastic technology. Especially regarding the amount of relevant information that it can store and relay to astronauts, making their jobs easier. The Watson team at IBM computing only added the tone analyzer to the standard set of Watson capabilities this week. However, CIMON 2 was added as a seventh crew member on SpaceX Dragon during a resupply mission last week. In addition to updated software, the robot also got a hardware upgrade, with enhanced sensitivity on its microphones, and a more advanced sense of orientation. The German Aerospace Center and Airbus are the other crew members for this CIMON project. "IBM is using its tone analyzer technology to analyze how CIMON converses with the astronauts.