Blighty's Science and Technology Committee released Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, while the White House delivered Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence and National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan. Limitations to AI research were also recognised in the separate report, The National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan. The US plans to develop shared public data sets for AI training and testing. Bryson makes a good point as the White House report was timed just before Obama was due to host the White House's Frontiers Conference.

In a major breakthrough in the field of speech recognition, Microsoft researchers have created a technology that accurately recognises the words in a conversation like humans do. The team from Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research reported a speech recognition system that makes the same or fewer errors than professional transcriptionists. The researchers reported a word error rate (WER) of 5.9 per cent, down from the 6.3 per cent WER the team reported just last month. The 5.9 per cent error rate is about equal to that of people who were asked to transcribe the same conversation, and it's the lowest ever recorded against the industry standard "Switchboard" speech recognition task. This is an historic achievement," said Xuedong Huang, the company's chief speech scientist in a Microsoft blog post. The milestone means that, for the first time, a computer can recognise the words in a conversation as well as a person would. In doing so, the team has beat a goal they set less than a year ago -- and greatly exceeded everyone else's expectations as well. "Even five years ago, I wouldn't have thought we could have achieved this.

When it comes to benchmarking the White House's vision for artificial intelligence, even the administration isn't quite sure how to quantify it. "I don't know the answer to that," said Terah Lyons, policy adviser for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. "It depends on what direction the technology goes." But there are some clues to follow the progress, Lyons added. Register now: Join Tonya Ugoretz, director of Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center for a free online chat on Tuesday, October 25 at 1 p.m. "Improved service delivery, advancing our mission, lowering costs to tax payers," she told Federal News Radio during the Center for Data Innovation's Data Innovation Day 2016: Algorithms, Automation, and Public Policy, held Oct. 19 in Washington.

Thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences are to receive posthumous pardons, the government has announced. It will mean formal pardons for those convicted over consensual same-sex relationships before homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK. Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said the move was "hugely important". It honours a government commitment made after World War Two code-breaker Alan Turing was pardoned in 2013. Under the move - dubbed "Turing law" - deceased people who were convicted of sexual acts that are no longer deemed criminal will receive an automatic pardon.

Joseph Rios, NASA aerospace engineer, explains a live test of six active drones for the Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management program on Oct. 19, 2016 at Reno-Stead Airport. RENO -- As increased adoption of drones raises concerns about safety, tests at a small airport in Reno this week could bring more order to the Wild West scenario seen with unmanned aerial vehicles. NASA, in partnership with the University of Nevada, Reno's NUANCE Lab, held the second stage of testing Wednesday for an air traffic management system designed to coordinate multiple drones flown by different operators. Nevada is one of six official sites designated by the Federal Aviation Administration for testing unmanned aerial systems. The test of the Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management, or UTM, program at the Reno-Stead Airport simulates a scenario where the system would need to make snap decisions during emergencies or unforeseen events with up to six drones flying in the immediate area.

The Las Vegas health department typically selects at random the restaurants it will inspect. But earlier this year, it tried something new. The agency used a software program to analyze tens of thousands of tweets in order to identify possible food poisonings. The program then connected those tweets to specific restaurants and dispatched inspectors to check for any health violations. The Las Vegas experiment resulted in citations in 15 percent of inspections compared to just 9 percent when inspections were random.

CAMBRIDGE: Professor Stephen Hawking on Wednesday (Oct 19) opened a new artificial intelligence research centre at Britain's Cambridge University. Funded by a 10 million (US 12.3 million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the centre's express aim is to ensure AI is used to benefit Read More ... Tags: Computer systems Computer Software Higher Education Universities Artificial intelligence Artificial Intelligence Software Best Universities Cambridge University Places: Oceania Australasia Zealandia New Zealand Singapore Europe Northwest United Kingdom England East Cambridgeshire Cambridge North Waikato Cambridge Cambridge (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Professor Stephen Hawking on Wednesday opened a new artificial intelligence research centre at Britain's Cambridge University. Funded by a  10 million (11.2 million-euro, 12.3-million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the centre's express aim is to ensure AI is Read More ... Tags: Computer systems Computer Software Higher Education Universities Artificial intelligence Artificial Intelligence Software Best Universities Cambridge University Places: Oceania Australasia Zealandia New Zealand Americas North America United States Europe Northwest United Kingdom England East Cambridgeshire Cambridge North Waikato Cambridge Cambridge University Football Club has been recognised in the Football Hall of Fame for its role in developing the game's official rules. The club, formed in 1856, created a set of 10 laws known as "Cambridge Rules". These helped formalise the game and "elements" of them appear in the Football Association (FA) rules drawn up in 1863, the FA said.

CAMBRIDGE: Professor Stephen Hawking on Wednesday (Oct 19) opened a new artificial intelligence research centre at Britain's Cambridge University. Funded by a 10 million (US 12.3 million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the centre's express aim is to ensure AI is used to benefit Read More ... Tags: Computer systems Computer Software Higher Education Universities Artificial intelligence Artificial Intelligence Software Best Universities Cambridge University Places: Oceania Australasia Zealandia New Zealand Singapore Europe Northwest United Kingdom England East Cambridgeshire Cambridge North Waikato Cambridge Cambridge (United Kingdom) (AFP) - Professor Stephen Hawking on Wednesday opened a new artificial intelligence research centre at Britain's Cambridge University. Funded by a  10 million (11.2 million-euro, 12.3-million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the centre's express aim is to ensure AI is Read More ... Tags: Computer systems Computer Software Higher Education Universities Artificial intelligence Artificial Intelligence Software Best Universities Cambridge University Places: Oceania Australasia Zealandia New Zealand Americas North America United States Europe Northwest United Kingdom England East Cambridgeshire Cambridge North Waikato Cambridge Cambridge University Football Club has been recognised in the Football Hall of Fame for its role in developing the game's official rules. The club, formed in 1856, created a set of 10 laws known as "Cambridge Rules". These helped formalise the game and "elements" of them appear in the Football Association (FA) rules drawn up in 1863, the FA said.

DARMSTADT, GERMANY/HESSEN GERMANY – Scientists were waiting for word Wednesday on whether the European Space Agency's experimental Schiaparelli probe had safely touched down on Mars. Signals received from the lander indicated that it entered the atmosphere of the red planet as planned and deployed its parachute. Schiaparelli is meant to test technology for a future European rover and avoid the fate of Europe's ill-starred Beagle 2 robot, which failed to function after landing on Mars 13 years ago. The probe is part of a larger mission called ExoMars that will help in the hunt for life on the planet. Schiaparelli was released from the mother ship, the Trace Gas Orbiter, on Sunday.

Trained neural networks at Microsoft are now as good at recognizing the human voice as humans are, researchers announced today. In a report released Monday, researchers pitted Microsoft's NIST 2000 automated system against professional transcriptionists and found for the first time a higher error rate among humans than computers. "This marks the first time that human parity has been reported for conversational speech," said the report published Monday. Better speech recognition could impact a range of Microsoft products in the future. "The milestone will have broad implications for consumer and business products that can be significantly augmented by speech recognition. That includes consumer entertainment devices like the Xbox, accessibility tools such as instant speech-to-text transcription, and personal digital assistants such as Cortana," Microsoft said in a blog post published today about the achievement.