Cimon, the world's first AI-powered astronaut assistant, has returned to the International Space Station--this time with a heightened ability to analyse human emotion. The objective, according to the researchers who fine-tuned the robot after its first successful mission aboard the spacecraft, is to transform Cimon from a scientific assistant into "an empathetic companion". As was the original Cimon, which spent 14 months in space, the new and improved Cimon-2 is a joint project by IBM, Airbus and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Cimon-1 returned to Earth from the International Space Station (ISS) in August. Cimon-2 is heading back to the space station on a SpaceX rocket that launched 4 December from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

ALICANTE has been named the Spanish base for the European artificial intelligence investigation centre. The provincial capital will now become part of the European Lab for Learning & Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) network, which aims to give the competitive edge over the US and Asia in terms of IA, and which is made up of some 20 centres in 10 European nations and Israel. The news Alicante had been chosen was made public this week in Vancouver at a gathering of the international scientific community. Valencia government president Ximo Puig maintained the approval of Alicante's candidacy was the result of his administration's backing for the idea that "the Valencian Community, and Alicante in particular, becomes a reference point in southern Europe for investigation into new technology and in an inclusive IA, centred on people and which increases the productivity of the socio-economic structure." It is, Puig said, "a great opportunity to attract excellent talent to the Valencian Community and to Alicante, and well as to highlight the value of what we already have."

As we come towards the end of the year, industry experts discuss how the clinical research market has evolved and how they are looking to prepare for the challenges to overcome in 2020. The past year saw CluePoints, a software developer providing clinical trial monitoring services, build on its agreement with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to provide its services supporting the regulator's oversight of the clinical trial market. Asked about how market demands have shifted since 2018, the company's CCO, Patrick Hughes pointed to the ICH E6 (R2) good clinical practice (GCP) guidance, which'became a reality' for sponsors and clinical research organizations (CROs). As a result, this made 2019, "the year in which we have seen the biggest momentum shift across the industry in the adoption of a risk-based approach to trial management," Hughes said. Risk-based quality management in clinical trials focuses on identifying the most important compliance risks in a study and setting them as a priority in order to prevent and avoid potential disruptions.

Europe will find it difficult to achieve many of its goals, such as the Green Deal, without AI. And without a fully developed, multi-party 5G ecosystem, Europe will fall further behind, writes Abraham Liu. Abraham Liu is Huawei's Chief Representative to the EU Institutions Over the past few months, Huawei has been the target of some pretty harsh attacks by a foreign administration on its reputation, trust, and its reliability. But these attacks are also attacks on Europe's ability to choose its own digital destiny. The 5G and ICT industry supply chain is one of the most integrated supply chains in the world. Ours is truly a global industry.

A new CIMON for the International Space Station (ISS): CIMON-2 (Crew Interactive MObile companioN) lifted off on its journey into space on 5 December 2019. This modified version of the astronaut assistant has been equipped for new tasks and was developed and built in Germany. Like its predecessor, CIMON-2 will be deployed in the Columbus European research module. CIMON is a free-flying, spherical technology demonstrator for human-machine interaction and features artificial intelligence. "CIMON-1 – our prototype – landed back on Earth on 27 August 2019 after spending 14 months on the ISS, and has now arrived at Airbus in Friedrichshafen," says Dr Christian Karrasch, CIMON Project Manager at the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) Space Administration in Bonn.

Me: "Alexa, tell me what will happen in 2020." Amazon AI: "Here's what I found on Wikipedia: The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship…[continues to read from Wikipedia]" Me: "Alexa, give me a prediction for 2020." Amazon AI: "The universe has not revealed the answer to me." Well, some slight improvement over last year's responses, when Alexa's answer to the first question was "Do you want to open'this day in history'?" As for the universe, it is an open book for the 120 senior executives featured here, all involved with AI, delivering 2020 predictions for a wide range of topics: Autonomous vehicles, deepfakes, small data, voice and natural language processing, human and augmented intelligence, bias and explainability, edge and IoT processing, and many promising applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies and tools. And there will be even more 2020 AI predictions, in a second installment to be posted here later this month. "Vehicle AI is going to be ...

At the last Democratic presidential debate, the technologist candidate Andrew Yang emphatically declared that "we're in the process of potentially losing the AI arms race to China right now." As evidence, he cited Beijing's access to vast amounts of data and its substantial investment in research and development for artificial intelligence. Yang and others--most notably the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which released its interim report to Congress last month--are right about China's current strengths in developing AI and the serious concerns this should raise in the United States. But framing advances in the field as an "arms race" is both wrong and counterproductive. Instead, while being clear-eyed about China's aggressive pursuit of AI for military use and human rights-abusing technological surveillance, the United States and China must find their way to dialogue and cooperation on AI.

After adjusting your search parameters, press Enter on your keyboard or click on the red magnifying glass to run your query again. Murdoch plan to reunite Fox with News Corp. finds few fans Several analysts said the potential recombination is unlikely to solve one of the key problems facing Fox and News Corp. -- low valuations relative to their peers. Norah O'Donnell will become anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News and Gayle King is getting two new morning show co-hosts as CBS News seeks to boost the programs' ratings and put a tumultuous, scandal-scarred period behind it. In February, the YourNewsWire page on Facebook was at its peak popularity, boosted by its salacious post claiming that Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, was Fidel Castro's love child. Brian Ross, the veteran ABC News investigative correspondent who embarrassed the network late last year with an on-air report suggesting former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had been told by President Donald Trump to make contact with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign for the Oval...

Does artificial intelligence pose a major threat or are the dangers overblown? "If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. "I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess like what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence.

As wildfire season raged in California this fall, a startup a few states away used artificial intelligence to pinpoint the location of blazes there within minutes -- in some cases far faster than these fires might otherwise be noticed by firefighters or civilians. Santa Fe-based Descartes Labs, which uses AI to analyze satellite imagery, launched its US wildfire detector in July. The company's AI software pores over images coming in roughly every few minutes from two different US government weather satellites, in search of any changes -- the presence of smoke, a shift in thermal infrared data showing hot spots -- that could indicate a fire has ignited. Descartes is testing its detector by sending alerts to select forestry officials in its home state of New Mexico and told CNN Business its wildfire detector has spotted about 6,200 total thus far. The company says it can often detect these fires when they're just about 10 acres in size.