The next time you pull out your smartphone and ask Siri or Google for advice, or chat with a bot online, take pride in knowing that some of the theoretical foundation for that technology was brought to life here in Canada. Indeed, as far back as the early 1980s, key organizations such as the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research embarked on groundbreaking work in neural networks and machine learning. Academic pioneers such as Geoffrey Hinton (now a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto and an advisor to Google, among others), the University of Montreal's Yoshua Bengio and the University of Alberta's Rich Sutton produced critical research that helped fuel Canada's rise to prominence as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI). Stephen Piron, co-CEO of Dessa, praises the federal government's efforts at cutting immigration processing timelines for highly skilled foreign workers. Canada now houses three major AI clusters – in Toronto, Montreal and Edmonton – that form the backbone of the country's machine-learning ecosystem and support homegrown AI startups.

In a bid to give a fillip to industry and an impetus to trade and industry, the government is expected to announce a new industrial policy soon. The proposed policy will encompass the use of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and IoT which will open new avenues for investments in India. Rajiv Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, said, "The Food Processing Sector is one of the emerging sectors in our country. The government of India's policy regime and the robust business environment has ensured that foreign capital keeps flowing into the country. The government will relax FDI regulations to give a boost to the Food Processing Sector."

Facial recognition is a multi-billion dollar business in China, not to mention a key component of the government's sprawling surveillance ambitions. The New York Times reported in late July that investors collectively poured more than a billion dollars into the Chinese companies SenseTime and Megvii, both of which are leaders in facial recognition and artificial intelligence (AI), adding to their already sky-high valuations. SenseTime is "the world's highest-valued AI company," according to TechCrunch. It has received investments from Alibaba, Qualcomm, and other high-profile names, and has partnerships with the Chinese government and with globally recognized brands. Megvii is looking to expand its business into Southeast Asian countries Thailand and Malaysia, as well.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. After HRP-1, HRP-2, HRP-3, HRP-4, and HRP-4C, Japan's AIST is finally ready to unveil HRP-5P. Looks very impressive, and we'll be getting more details at IROS next week.

The Pentagon's science and technology research arm is launching a vigorous push into a new level of advanced artificial intelligence, intended to integrate advanced levels of "machine learning," introduce more "adaptive reasoning" and even help computers determine more subjective phenomena. It is called the 3rd Wave, a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program to leverage rapid advances in AI to help train data to make computer analysis more reliable for human operators, agency Director Steven Walker recently told a small group of reporters. DARPA scientists explain the fast-evolving 3rd wave effort as improving the ability of AI-oriented technology to provide much more sophisticated "contextual explanatory models." While humans will still be needed in many instances, the 3rd Wave can be described as introducing a new ability to not only provide answers and interpretations - but also use "machine learning to reason in context and explain results," DARPA Deputy Director Peter Highnam said. In short, the 3rd Wave can explain the reason "why" it reached the conclusion it reached, something which offers a breakthrough level of computer-human interface, he added.

Neural networks are among the most accurate supervised learning methods in use today. However, their opacity makes them difficult to trust in critical applications, especially when conditions in training may differ from those in practice. Recent efforts to develop explanations for neural networks and machine learning models more generally have produced tools to shed light on the implicit rules behind predictions. These tools can help us identify when models are right for the wrong reasons. However, they do not always scale to explaining predictions for entire datasets, are not always at the right level of abstraction, and most importantly cannot correct the problems they reveal. In this thesis, we explore the possibility of training machine learning models (with a particular focus on neural networks) using explanations themselves. We consider approaches where models are penalized not only for making incorrect predictions but also for providing explanations that are either inconsistent with domain knowledge or overly complex. These methods let us train models which can not only provide more interpretable rationales for their predictions but also generalize better when training data is confounded or meaningfully different from test data (even adversarially so).

The Terminator is not real. Most AI-using organizations are working to keep it that way, according to a recent study by SAS, Accenture, and Intel. Almost three quarters of large businesses are now using AI in one way or another, and 92% of the most successful ones are working to ensure their uses of artificial intelligence are pro-social. Most of them, of course, are not developing weapons systems. Instead, they're trying to ensure that their AI systems don't discriminate against minorities, the disadvantaged, or, frankly, anyone who doesn't fit the profile of the training data their neural networks are ingesting.

"It's always the company's responsibility to identify when UK citizens have been affected as part of a data breach and take steps to reduce any harm to consumers," ICO Deputy Commissioner of operations, James Dipple-Johnstone said http://bit.ly/2y1ahTQ.

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced its guiding principles for artificial intelligence (AI) and its creation of an external AI ethics advisory panel – the first European technology company to do so. The panel, comprised of experts from academia, politics and industry, will ensure the adoption of the principles and further develop them in collaboration with the AI steering committee at SAP, a group of SAP executives from development, strategy and human resources. The new guidelines, the external panel and the internal committee aim to ensure that the AI capabilities supported by SAP Leonardo Machine Learning capabilities are used to maintain integrity and trust in all solutions. As the market leader in enterprise technology that touches 77 percent of the world's transaction revenue and serves more than 400,000 customers worldwide, SAP solutions and applications impact the lives of billions of people daily. "SAP considers the ethical use of data a core value," said Luka Mucic, chief financial officer and member of the Executive Board of SAP Se. "We want to create software that enables the intelligent enterprise and actually improves people's lives. Such principles will serve as the basis to make AI a technology that augments human talent."

ISELIN, N.J. -- JT Kostman, Ph.D., an internationally recognized leader in cognitive computing, applied artificial intelligence, and data strategy, has joined Grant Thornton LLP as managing director of applied artificial intelligence. In this new role, Kostman will lead the development and delivery of artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, blockchain, and advanced analytic solutions and services for the firm and Grant Thornton clients. He will be based in the firm's Iselin, N.J., office and will report into National Managing Principal of Innovation Kevin Baril. Kostman is a data scientist, mathematician and psychologist renowned for his expertise in applied artificial intelligence and cognitive computing. He boasts an impressive pedigree – having served as chief data officer and a member of the executive committee for Time Inc., chief data scientist for Samsung, and chief data scientist and big data psychologist for Aptus Insights.