A British AI platform for assisting with the diagnosis of heart disease will enter trials with 20 NHS hospitals before the end of 2018, after securing £10 million in first-round funding. UK start-up Ultromics has developed echocardiography analysis technology called Topological Analysis that claims to reduce errors diagnosing coronary artery disease by as much as 75%. The machine learning platform is currently being trialled at six NHS hospitals, and after garnering interest from a number of trusts earlier this year, Ultromics has secured investment to expand trials to additional UK sites. The fundraising was led by Oxford Sciences Innovation (OSI), with Neptune, RT Ventures, GT Healthcare, Tanarra, Fushia and personal investors Andre Crawford-Brunt and Dieter Spälti also participating. The £10 million investment will be used to bring the technology to market in the USA, with Ultromics hoping to make it available in the UK from early 2019.

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has created a new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) that will have oversight over almost all service and defense agency AI efforts. The JAIC will report to Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy, the establishing memo by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Shanahan says. Its ambit is not quite untrammeled; any projects under $15 million remain the authority of the service or agency. The JAIC will establish a common set of AI "standards…. Undersecretary for Research & Engineering Mike Griffin, a far more prominent proponent of AI and other cutting-edge technologies who has warned China and Russia are catching up to the US, "will continue to promote development of new AI technologies, systems, and concepts" but without any clearly specified role in the new center.

China is on its way to developing a strong artificial-intelligence industry and won't be derailed by the Trump administration's steps to protect sensitive American technologies amid rising trade tensions. So says Nomura-Instinet analyst Joel Ying. In a note to clients Friday, Ying said Alibaba Group (BABA) and other Chinese internet giants are funding a slew of artificial-intelligence startups. "Despite headwinds from the U.S.-China disputes in the high-tech sector, we believe Chinese companies can still maintain strong momentum in the AI industry," he wrote. Get these newsletters delivered to your inbox & more info about our products & services.

A bionic hand that restores amputees' sense of touch is set to change the lives of thousands who have lost limbs, claim scientists. Two middle-aged men who lost their right hands in horrific accidents at work have revealed how the device has given them back their independence over the last two years. Keith Vonderhuevel, 51, from Ohio, is now able to pick up his grandchildren - and actually'feel' their hands for the first time. And Igor Spetic, 52, also from Ohio, has been filmed at home brushing his teeth, combing his hair, cutting eggs and tomatoes and drizzling mayonnaise. Named'Sensation', the bionic hand could revolutionise the treatment of maimed members of the Armed Forces, its developers claim.

A new breed of two-legged machine is capable of traversing stepping stones of varied heights without falling over - even on its first attempt at the course. Walking robots typically struggle with the unpredictability of uneven ground, where every step is a slightly different height and distance from the last. Scientists got around this issue using machine learning to'teach' the new robots how to adapt to bumpy surfaces on the fly. The development stokes fears that militaries across the globe will soon have access to killer robots capable of chasing down enemy combatants across any terrain. Created at the University of California, Berkeley, the robots use a mixture of expert balance and small jumps to ensure they don't tip over.

The trick, according the Maxwell, is having the assistance come at just the right time, in order to prevent the wearer from falling out of sync with the device, or "fighting" it. "It takes 75 milliseconds for the human body to go from thought to action," he said, referring to the time it takes for electrical impulses from the brain to initiate muscle movement in the body. As a result, the exoskeleton quickly becomes second-nature, ultimately reducing the metabolic "cost" of transport--the wearer's VO2max--by nine percent. In other words, soldiers don't have to consume as much oxygen to perform a given task, Maxwell says. Taking that edge off has associated benefits.

The large, round, plastic robot head is part of SpaceX's latest supply delivery to the International Space Station. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A robot with true artificial intelligence is about to invade space. The large, round, plastic robot head is part of SpaceX's latest supply delivery to the International Space Station. Friday's pre-dawn liftoff also includes two sets of genetically identical female mice, 20 mousestronauts that will pick up where NASA's identical twin brother astronauts left off a few years ago. Super-caffeinated coffee is also flying up for the space station's java-craving crew.

If you were miffed about Britain's National Health Service (NHS) giving your sensitive data away to Google's DeepMind, how you respond to today's news is probably a crapshoot. The NHS has announced that it will begin anonymizing said data that's been used to analyze blood test results and to detect risk of acute kidney injuries and other ailments. To be clear, these are separate events (the data use and today's announcement), but one led to the other. In 2016, the NHS and DeepMind caught their fair share of criticism over how data was shared with implied -- not explicit -- consent from 1.6 million patients. "The new de-identification process (known as De-ID) will protect patient privacy by de-identifying a person's records in a consistent way," according to a statement from the NHS.

Dawn was barely breaking on Friday morning over Cape Canaveral in Florida, when Matthius Biniok looked across a bay of water at the rocket that was about to take his floating robot into space. "I feel a little bit like a father that is losing his son," he said from the operational room at the Kennedy Space Centre, 21 minutes before lift-off. Binjok was an artificial intelligence engineer from Germany who had built the brain of CIMON, a spherical robot about the size of a basketball that would propel itself around the zero-gravity environment of the International Space Station by shooting jets of air. Spearheaded by EADS' Airbus, which built the "body" and much of the AI-powered software behind it, CIMON would be the first-known space robot to assist astronauts, an early iteration of HAL 9000 or souped-up version of Wilson depending on your movie preference. Just in front of Binjok on Friday morning, around 100 engineers and scientists mingled on the Kennedy Center's fourth-floor viewing terrace and noticed streaks of pink lighting up the dark sky behind the white crest of a SpaceX's Block 4 Falcon 9 rocket, as the sun prepared to rise.

A second-hand SpaceX rocket has blasted off to the International Space Station, carrying a robot with artificial intelligence and other station supplies. The shipment – packed into a Dragon capsule that is also recycled – should reach the station on Monday. This marked SpaceX's fastest reflight of a rocket booster. The same first-stage booster launched the planet-hunting TESS satellite in April, while the capsule flew in 2016. The Dragon will deliver the robot Cimon, which stands for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion and is pronounced Simon.