WIRE)--New technology using deep learning and advanced algorithms to evaluate blood flow to the heart is now being used in English hospitals to fight against coronary heart disease. Coronary heart disease (CHD) is one of the leading causes of death in the UK. It is responsible for more than 66,000 deaths each year and it is estimated that 2.3 million people in the UK are currently living with the diseasei. CHD develops when the arteries leading to the heart narrow or become blocked, which can reduce blood flow, and cause chest pain and heart attacksii. The HeartFlow FFRct Analysis is being supported by NHS England as part of the Innovation and Technology Payment (ITP) programme to help physicians better diagnose coronary heart disease.

Back in 2011, IBM's new Watson technology was the focus of a lot of excited expectation about what its artificial intelligence platform – having famously bested human opponents on Jeopardy! Seven years later, some media reports are wondering whether Watson's potential was over-promised. Recent stories, in Stat News, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere have taken aim at the AI technology's diagnostic track record, drawn attention to potential patient safety risks, and questioned whether the billions of dollars Big Blue has spent building and training the platform have worth it. The Stat News story reported on internal IBM documents that showed "multiple examples of unsafe and incorrect treatment recommendations" from the Watson for Oncology system. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that "more than a dozen IBM partners and clients have halted or shrunk Watson's oncology-related projects."

Alexander Gerst will test the technology demonstrator aboard the ISS Watson AI (IBM's artificial intelligence technology) is designed to support space flight crews Friedrichshafen / Bremen, 26/02/2018 – Airbus, in cooperation with IBM, is developing CIMON (Crew Interactive MObile CompanioN), an AI-based assistant for astronauts for the DLR Space Administration. The technology demonstrator, which is the size of a medicine ball and weighs around 5 kg, will be tested on the ISS by Alexander Gerst during the European Space Agency's Horizons mission between June and October 2018. "In short, CIMON will be the first AI-based mission and flight assistance system," said Manfred Jaumann, Head of Microgravity Payloads from Airbus. "We are the first company in Europe to carry a free flyer, a kind of flying brain, to the ISS and to develop artificial intelligence for the crew on board the space station." Pioneering work was also being done in the area of manufacturing, Jaumann continued, with the entire structure of CIMON, which is made up of plastic and metal, created using 3D printing.

This is part of our Road Trip 2017 summer series "The Smartest Stuff," about how innovators are thinking up new ways to make you -- and the world around you -- smarter. A Las Vegas driver asks me this after I tell him I'm headed to Defcon at Caesars Palace. All week, a cloud of paranoia looms over Las Vegas, as hackers from around the world swarm Sin City for Black Hat and Defcon, two back-to-back cybersecurity conferences taking place in the last week of July. At Caesars Palace, where Defcon is celebrating its 25th anniversary, the UPS store posts a sign telling guests it won't accept printing requests from USB thumb drives. You can't be too careful with all those hackers in town.

This article is an excerpt from the Pearson Addison-Wesley book "Pragmatic AI" by Noah Gift. Reprinted here with permission from Pearson and 2019. What do Russian trolls, Facebook, and US elections have to do with machine learning? Recommendation engines are at the heart of the central feedback loop of social networks and the user-generated content (UGC) they create. Users join the network and are recommended users and content with which to engage.

Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator at the European particle physics lab CERN, produce about a million gigabytes of data every second. Even after reduction and compression, the data amassed in just one hour is similar to the data volume Facebook collects in an entire year – too much to store and analyze. Luckily, particle physicists don't have to deal with all of that data all by themselves. They partner with a form of artificial intelligence called machine learning that learns how to do complex analyses on its own. A group of researchers, including scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, summarize current applications and future prospects of machine learning in particle physics in a paper published today in Nature.

The Defence Ministry will soon come up with a detailed roadmap on working closely with the industry on leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) -- latest technology that emphasises on creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans -- in Armed Forces, said Ajay Kumar, Secretary, Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence. A task force, headed by Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran to study use and application of AI in military, recently gave its recommendations, which has been converted into a Draft Executive Order. Consultation is underway with different wings of the Defence Ministry on this, he said at a CII conference on Aerospace & Defence Manufacturing Technologies on the Theme: Fostering a Competitive, Innovative and Robust Industry. "AI is a big driver in all our platforms. We have already asked Defence PSUs to come up with suggestions as to where they can start leveraging in AI. Developing AI capabilities is absolutely essential part of leading the next generation innovation thrust," he said.

In our prior The World's Most Disruptive Technology (That No One Is Talking About) post we portrayed the promise and peril of a potent new gene-altering technology. Since our CRISPR post, we've been tracking another technology development equally deserving of legal scrutiny, due to it's potential to "change everything" according to one prominent thinker who knows a thing about disruptive technology. However, unlike CRISPR's promise to fundamentally alter the basic structures of human life (i.e. Deep dive with me, if you dare, into the subzero world of quantum computers. How Cold Is Quantum Computing? Imagine a computer so powerful it could instantly crack any level of data encryption.

The US Department of Defense's recently established Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) has finally debuted and will oversee the Pentagon's AI strategy. After a couple of years' worth of paperwork drills, Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan released a document at the end of June establishing the JAIC, and stating it would take the next 30 days to figure out what its national mission objectives and personnel needs are. The specifics of how the center will carry out its duties going forward haven't been publicly released, but that's par for the course when dealing with military strategy. Let's just all keep our fingers crossed that whatever defense strategy the Pentagon eventually comes up with is comparable to those of other countries, such as China and Russia, who are all-in on AI at the state level. Because the White House, so far, has dealt with artificial intelligence (and STEM programs in general) by letting big tech do whatever it wants.

What: "The Cautious Path to Strategic Advantage: How Militaries Should Plan for AI," a research study done by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Why: While artificial intelligence can play many roles in the automation of combat, weighing the risks -- particularly surrounding machine learning -- and compensating for them accordingly is critical. Findings: The risks around AI are significant, EFF researchers warned. Machine learning can be easily fooled, while reinforcement learning -- or learning from environmental interactions -- produces innovative but unpredictable AI. Factor in the inherent cybersecurity advantage that attackers have over defenders, and using AI in the military could lead to "catastrophic forms of failure that are hard to mitigate."