The State Government of South Australia announced their contract with Solar Reserve to build a 150MW solar thermal power plant for Port Augusta, South Australia. This is an addition to the state-owned gas plant and the world's largest lithium ion battery recently announced contract with Tesla. According to State Premier Jay Weatherhill, this solar thermal plant "biggest of its kind in the world" and "will help make our energy grid more secure." This Aurora Solar Energy Project will be ready in 2020 and is expected to supply 100% of the government's anticipated power needs. IntelAI has been collaborating with NASA FDL's Lunar Water and Volatiles team in a 9-week program this year. Working with Intel's team and their deep learning technologies, Intel Nervana, NASA is looking to accelerate the development of a software solution to take AI to the moon.

Some artificial intelligence and machine learning proponents present the technologies as if they were manna from heaven, tools that have the capability to replace humans. And it's not unusual for mere mention of the term "artificial intelligence" to evoke images of futuristic machines that can think for themselves. The truth is simpler than that. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are tools healthcare executives, technical staff and clinicians can use to enhance operations and improve healthcare. Artificial intelligence is when computers replicate something that humans do – real AI is when the results are as good or better than the best human results, said Dustin Rigg Hillard, vice president of engineering at Versive, which conducts machine learning and artificial intelligence hunting of cyber-adversaries and insider threats.

SAN DIEGO – A 25-year-old U.S. citizen has been charged with using a drone to smuggle more than 13 pounds (6.1 kilograms) of methamphetamine from Mexico by drone, an unusually large seizure for what is still a novel technique to bring illegal drugs into the United States, authorities said Friday. Jorge Edwin Rivera told authorities that he used drones to smuggle drugs five or six times since March, typically delivering them to an accomplice at a nearby gas station in San Diego, according to a statement of probable cause. He said he was to be paid $1,000 for the attempt that ended in his arrest. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a recent annual report that drones are not often used to smuggle drugs from Mexico because they can only carry small loads, though it said they may become more common. In 2015, two people pleaded guilty to dropping 28 pounds (62 kilograms) of heroin from a drone in the border town of Calexico, California.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., and JERUSALEM, Aug. 8, 2017 -- Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) and Mobileye N.V. (NYSE: MBLY) today announced the completion of Intel's tender offer for outstanding ordinary shares of Mobileye, a global leader in the development of computer vision and machine learning, data analysis, localization and mapping for advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving. The acquisition is expected to accelerate innovation for the automotive industry and positions Intel as a leading technology provider in the fast-growing market for highly and fully autonomous vehicles. The combination of Intel and Mobileye will allow Mobileye's leading computer vision expertise (the "eyes") to complement Intel's high-performance computing and connectivity expertise (the "brains") to create automated driving solutions from cloud to car. Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data and services market opportunity to be up to $70 billion by 2030. "With Mobileye, Intel emerges as a leader in creating the technology foundation that the automotive industry needs for an autonomous future," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich.

The Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta invites applications for tenure-track or tenured faculty positions at all levels. Candidates with a strong research record in the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI), in particular (but not limited to) Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer Games, Visualization, Security, Planning/Heuristic Search, and Algorithmic Game Theory, will be considered for this position. According to csrankings.org the department is ranked #1 in Canada and averaged #3 in the world in terms of number of publications at top AI venues in the last 10 years, and it is also home to Amii (www.amii.ca), the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute, formerly known as AICML. It is noteworthy that the 2017 Government of Canada Budget included an investment of $125 million into a Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy which features a major investment in research at the University of Alberta. According to the most recent Times Higher Education World University ranking, the department is ranked 3rd in Canada and 67th in the world.

To help spur that future, Calit2 has set up a Pattern Recognition Laboratory with a variety of novel low-energy processors that can execute real-time trained neural networks in the exploding mobile environment of drones, robots, and self- driving cars. However, the training of these neural networks requires massive amounts of Big Data and computing time. To support this need the NSF-funded Pacific Research Platform (PRP), which connects two dozen research universities at 100-1000 times the speed of the commodity Internet, is creating a new community of computer science machine learning researchers and proposing using the optical fiber backbone of the PRP to create a distributed Graphics Processing Unit computing "cloud." Finally, I will speculate on the exponentially growing machine intelligence and how it will increasingly inter-operate with human intelligence.

Elon Musk recently commented on Twitter (twtr) that artificial intelligence (AI) is more dangerous than North Korea. It's not the first time that the entrepreneur has warned about the dangers of AI. Should we all be afraid as he is? Will AI lead to a huge disaster or robot takeover that destroys humanity? Let's be clear: A nuclear conflict between North Korea and the U.S. would cause millions to die.

Government is always being asked to do more with less -- less money, less staff, just all around less -- and that makes the idea of artificial intelligence (AI) a pretty attractive row to hoe. If a piece of technology could reduce staff workload or walk citizens through a routine process or form, you could effectively multiply a workforce without ever actually adding new people. But for every good idea, there are caveats, limitations, pitfalls and the desire to push the envelope. While innovating anything in tech is generally a good thing, when it comes to AI in government, there is fine line to walk between improving a process and potentially making it more convoluted. Outside of a few key government functions, a new white paper from the Harvard Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation finds that AI could actually increase the burden of government and muddy-up the functions it is so desperately trying to improve.

In this episode, Jack Rasiel speaks with Kostas Bekris, who introduces us to tensegrity robotics: a striking robotic design which straddles the boundary between hard and soft robotics. A structure uses tensegrity if it is made of a number of isolated rigid elements which are held in compression by a network of elements that are in tension. Bekris, an Associate Professor of Computer Science, draws from a diverse set of problems to find innovative new ways to control tensegrity robots. Kostas Bekris is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is working in the area of algorithmic robotics, especially on problems related to robot motion planning and coordination.

A mysterious Chinese automaker has offered to purchase Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Automotive News reports. It's part of a larger Chinese effort to acquire international assets to make inroads abroad--a strategy that's worked with Volvo and Pirelli. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo seems to have made an about-face on the congestion pricing issue, calling it "an idea whose time has come, according to The New York Times. The scheme, still in its infancy, would charge drivers to drive on some of the city's most crowded streets. New ways to deliver stuff may not help traffic, and yet: General Motors' Maven mulls entry into a crowded ridehail and on-demand delivery market, Reuters reports. The trick is to pull off experiments in the area without angering partners Lyft and Uber. More in traditional automakers gone Silicon Valley: Fiat Chrysler says it will join a potent alliance between BMW, chipmaker Intel, and the tech and sensor mavens at Mobileye to build self-driving cars. While you wait for your robocar: Enjoy Hyundai's effort to give you Google Assistant in its upscale Genesis brand. The Verge argues it's probably healthier for you to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event outside of your vehicle and with some friends--no matter how much you love your car. A mysterious Chinese automaker has offered to purchase Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Automotive News reports. It's part of a larger Chinese effort to acquire international assets to make inroads abroad--a strategy that's worked with Volvo and Pirelli. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo seems to have made an about-face on the congestion pricing issue, calling it "an idea whose time has come, according to The New York Times.