Fourteen UK universities have been named as hosts for artificial intelligence doctoral training centres, as it was announced that government and industry spending of £370 million will create 2,700 new PhD places in biosciences and AI research in the country. Ministers said that there would be £100 million of government funding for AI Centres for Doctoral Training, along with £78 million from industry and £23 million from universities, providing 1,000 new PhD places over the next five years. Although the funding had been announced in 2018, it has now been confirmed which universities will host the first 200 students through the centres for doctoral training. UCL has secured two centres, while Swansea University is also among the hosts. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said in the announcement that the new doctoral students would "study AI which could help diagnose diseases like cancer earlier and make industries, including aviation and automotive, more sustainable", and would be "working closely with 300 leading businesses, including AstraZeneca, Google, Rolls-Royce and NHS trusts".

The next generation of UK scientists have been backed by government today (Thursday 24 October) to develop the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies that will transform how people live and work and help tackle some of the world's most pressing challenges. A combined government and industry investment of £370 million will deliver 2,700 new PhD places in biosciences and AI. Of this, £200 million will fund 1,000 new PhD places over the next 5 years to study AI which could help diagnose diseases like cancer earlier and make industries, including aviation and automotive, more sustainable. The first 200 students will be studying at 14 universities across the country, working closely with 300 leading businesses, including AstraZeneca, Google, Rolls-Royce and NHS Trusts. A further £170 million will fund 1,700 places to study PhDs in biosciences helping to tackle issues like feeding the world's growing population and helping people stay healthier for longer.

Beware: many defence methods can lead to gradient masking, whether intentional or not. Gradient masking does not guarantee adversarial robustness, and has been shown to be circumventable (Tramèr et al., 2017; Athalye et al, 2018). We hope this article provides helpful insights on how to defend against adversarial examples. Please feel free to provide suggestions in the comment section if we're missing something.

British startup FiveAI has today announced the launch of commuter research trials for its self-driving car technology, alongside motor insurance giant Direct Line. As part of the Streetwise Consortium, which also includes TRL, a 19km self-driving research route featuring human passengers will be launched in Croydon and Bromley to test out the technology. The invite-only trial will take place during the next two months, in which participants will be asked for insight on their experiences. Ultimately, the government-backed consortium hopes to provide data for a shared self-driving service for future London commuters. Transport secretary Grant Shapps said the trial is "a major step to rolling out the next phase of the UK's transport revolution".

We are witnessing drastic change all around us after the Artificial Intelligence (AI) invasion into our life. AI has already ventured in almost all the sectors and has eased the workload, as well as enhanced the yields. This also brings in a personalized focus on the business. But the Indian SMEs, being away from technology sphere, has not utilized the benefits of AI thoroughly. Though the SMEs account about 30 percent of the country's GDP and also employ about 460 million people, growth of the SMEs is yet to skyrocket. To develop SMEs, the government of India has inculcated various measures such as loan benefits, slewing other sops and more.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already reconfiguring the world in conspicuous ways. Data drives our global digital ecosystem, and AI technologies reveal patterns in data. Smartphones, smart homes, and smart cities influence how we live and interact, and AI systems are increasingly involved in recruitment decisions, medical diagnoses and judicial verdicts. Whether this scenario is utopian or dystopian depends on your perspective. The potential risks of AI are enumerated repeatedly.

Sci-fi and science can't seem to agree on the way we should think about artificial intelligence. Sci-fi wants to portray artificial intelligence agents as thinking machines, while businesses today use artificial intelligence for more mundane tasks like filling out forms with robotic process automation or driving your car. When interacting with these artificial intelligence interfaces at our current level of AI technology, our human inclination is to treat them like vending machines, rather than to treat them like a person. Because thinking of AI like a person (anthropomorphizing) leads to immediate disappointment. Today's AI is very narrow, and so straying across the invisible line between what these systems can and can't do leads to generic responses like "I don't understand that" or "I can't do that yet". Although the technology is extremely cool, it just doesn't think in the way that you or I think of as thinking.

When speaking of the Department of Defense's artificial intelligence research and development, a panel of academics and the Pentagon's top A.I. officials agreed the effort is underfunded and understaffed. The threat, however, is ever-present and adversaries are devoting significant amounts of money and personnel to develop A.I., Air Force Lt. Gen. John Shanahan, the director of the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told USNI News after a panel discussion Tuesday at The Promise and The Risk Of the A.I. Revolution conference, hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute at the U.S. Naval Academy. "At its core, we are in a strategic competition," Shanahan said. "We're in a strategic competition against a peer adversary -- not near-peer -- but peer." Russia and China are devoting vast amounts of resources to develop A.I. capabilities, Shanahan said.

Interested in the future and want to experience even more?! eXplore More. You've heard of self-driving cars and trucks, flying cars, and probably even self-driving cargo ships, but soon we'll be able to add a new type of vehicle to the self-driving category – spacecraft. And if you're going to spend millions of dollars on a spacecraft, you might as well try to cram in as much as possible. With that in mind, the European Space Agency (ESA) has now detailed the "side mission" it's planning for the asteroid-visiting spacecraft Hera. After the projects main work is accomplished, which is to bump the asteroid off course, the new spacecraft will then test out some new autonomous navigation systems, which should help future spacecraft get around without relying on ground control all the way back on Earth – something that the agency sees as a necessity as we continue to explore the further reaches of space – and one day visit them.

According to the headlines, the Age of Artificial Intelligence is dark and dystopian -- with self-aware, killer robots coming for us all. Such storylines make for blockbuster movies, but they lack a true understanding of AI, how quickly it's developing and what technological barriers exist. The Age of AI is coming, and fast, and there is plenty to be concerned about. Most of the world, including the United States, is unprepared to reap many of the economic and societal benefits offered by AI or mitigate the inevitable risks. Getting there will take decades.