International borders and high security sites could one day be protected by high tech virtual defences. That's the plan of Palmer Luckey, the man behind Oculus virtual reality technology, who is now working on a way to secure America's borders from illegal immigrants. The scheme would employ lasers, as used in self-driving cars, to detect the movement of people, drones and other unwanted traffic into restricted areas. Palmer Luckey last hit headlines back in March after being jettisoned from Occulus, the VR company he helped found and sold to Facebook. In September 2016, it emerged that he secretly funded a pro-Donald Trump group that mocked Hillary Clinton online, during the US presidential race.

Nearly half of NHS trusts (43%; obtained from a Freedom of Information (FoI) request) are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) enabling patients to'self-help' when accessing services. The trusts are harnessing technology such as virtual assistants, speech recognition technology and chat bots to ease the pressure on healthcare workers across their organisations. These vital investments are geared up to primarily provide access to information and services all-day, every-day, but they also play a key role in reducing the numbers of patients queuing to see their GP for information they can now access through a virtual assistant. Research commissioned by Nuance in 2015 into the impact of clinical documentation in NHS acute care trusts revealed that clinicians spend over half of their work day on clinical documentation. In a more recent Nuance study of UK GP practices, over nine in 10 reported that patient documentation was a considerable burden for their practice and that in 49 per cent of the practices, over half their patient documentation is paper versus electronic format.

Turing went from drawing up a basic model for all computers to breaking down the constructs of complex chemical reactions with enviable ease. By 1943 the tide had turned – Alan Turing had developed the Naval Bombe, an adaptation of his decryption Bombe device capable of laying bare the secrets of the complex German Naval Enigma. Turing and his colleague Gordon Welchman built on the Polish machine at Bletchley Park. Turing and Church together hypothesised the idea of a universal Turing machine, a machine which could read and perform any algorithmic function – that is, a Turing machine that can simulate the algorithmic functions of any other Turing machine.

Beyond Limits, which is commercialising technology used by NASA and the US Department of Defence, has announced securing $20 million from sole investor BP Ventures. The Series B round brings the total amount raised by the Pasadena, California-based artificial intelligence company to $25.5 million. Developed in the labs of NASA's Caltech deep space program, Beyond Limits' AI software is 20 years in the making. The company said the technology has been "battle tested in deep space where there is zero margin for error" and is subsequently a lot faster than other AI technology in the market. "It has been used in NASA for diagnostics of the NASA deep space network, for optimisation of Mars missions, and has even helped discover a weather model by tracking dust build and wind storm activity based on Mars rover battery and solar panel performance," Beyond Limits' CEO AJ Abdallat told ZDNet.

In a video message to the summit, Mr. Guterres called AI "a new frontier" with "advances moving at warp speed." The opening session of the summit is expected to give voice to the leading minds in AI, with breakout sessions focusing on issues such as sustainable living and poverty reduction. ITU Secretary-General Houlin Zhao, said the event "will assist us in determining how the UN, ITU and other UN agencies can work together with industry and the academic community to promote AI innovation and create a good environment for the development of artificial intelligence." The summit will run through Friday, with a closing session on "applying AI for good."

In today's workplaces, it also helps to remain calm and hold back on emotions -- to an extent. Those are the cautionary words coming out of a recent CXO Talk webcast, joined by Dr. David Bray, CIO for the Federal Communications Commission, and Dr. Michael Chui, partner with McKinsey & Company. The challenge, he adds, is getting people ready for the changes AI and data analytics will bring about. It's almost an imperative for CIOs to really work closely with their chief executive officers, and serve as an internal venture capitalist, for how we bring data, to bring process improvements and organizational performance improvements - and work it across the entire organization as a whole."

According to Google-Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study, Indian digital payments industry will grow to $500 billion by 2020, contributing to 15% of GDP. Digital transactions have seen a dramatic increase in India in the past year due to push from both government and the private sectors. In India, post demonetization, it was time for India to go on a cashless ride where more emphasis was laid on Paytm, Payment Bank Arrival, Telecomm Disruption through Jio, Make in India and Digital India Initiatives. Last month Paytm raised $1.4 billion from Softbank and apps like Whatsapp are exploring the unified payment inter surface (UPI) to launch its payment solution in India. Another digital payment brand, MobiKwik has grown its user base from 35 million to 55 million since November 2016 and has over 1.5 million merchants on its platform. India recently lost the tag of'fastest growing economy' as its gross domestic product (gdp) slumped to its lowest in more than two years in the March quarter.

Just when you thought you had the ultimate password to foil hackers, along come new cyberthreats that make you WannaCry. Meet the new cyberthreats, in many cases driven by artificial intelligence (AI). Fortunately, the new countermeasures are starting to deploy AI as well. "What we have seen in the last while is that passwords have kind of broken down. Weak passwords – that's what's behind a lot of the recent breaches we have seen," says Deepak Dutt, founder and chief executive officer of Zighra, a Toronto-based cybersecurity company.

You can hear the drone before it's visible, whining like a mosquito above the hillside grounds of Rwanda's Kabgayi District Hospital. Emerging through a patch of fog, roughly 100 feet in the air, the small plane quickly disappears again, circling in an oblong pattern as it descends toward an altitude low enough to make its drop. After a period of silence, it's suddenly back, swooping over the roof of Kabgayi's accident ward to drop its payload on the driveway with a thud. On the ground lies a red cardboard container, roughly the size of a shoebox, attached to a parachute made of wax paper and biodegradable tape. The contraption may resemble a children's art project, but its contents are lifesaving.

While AFR tech has been trialled by a number of UK police forces, this appears to be the first time it has led to an arrest. South Wales Police didn't provide details about the nature of the arrest, presumably because it's an ongoing case. Back in April, it emerged that South Wales Police planned to scan the faces "of people at strategic locations in and around the city centre" ahead of the UEFA Champions League final, which was played at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on June 3. On May 31, though, a man was arrested via AFR. "It was a local man and unconnected to the Champions League," a South Wales Police spokesperson told Ars.