Google DeepMind is launching a project to reduce the time it takes doctors to prepare treatment for head and neck cancers. Alphabet's London-based artificial intelligence division has partnered with the UK's National Health Service and will be conducting the research in coordination with the University College London Hospital. Head and neck cancers are hard to plan treatment for because of their close proximity to important parts of the body. Before any kind of radiation treatment, clinicians will prepare a detailed map of where radiation will be administered on a patient in order to avoid damaging surrounding tissue. DeepMind says planning can take doctors up to four hours for head and neck cancers, and it hopes that by applying machine learning it will be able to automate parts of the process and reduce that planning time down to an hour.

Nvidia has been a leader in producing the technology behind high-quality graphics for years, but the company is now betting on a different future. With the rapid advances in self-driving vehicles, warehouse robots, diagnostic assistants, and speech and facial recognition, there's plenty of reasons for companies to be excited about deep-learning-based artificial intelligence (AI). Nvidia is one such technology firm that is extremely bullish in this space. In a recent conversation with CXOtoday, Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director-South Asia, Nvidia said that the company is moving ahead with its AI-focused hardware, software, and solutions for the enterprise. As such data scientists in both industry and academia have been using graphics processing units (GPUs) for machine learning to make groundbreaking innovations across a variety of applications including image classification, video analytics, speech recognition and natural language processing or NLP. In particular, Deep Learning, the use of sophisticated, multi-level "deep" neural networks to create systems that can perform feature detection from massive amounts of unlabeled training data, is an area where Nvidia is significantly investing in recent quarters.

Artificial intelligence has reached yet another milestone, of sorts, in its development: Elon Musk's OpenAI group has decided to hire "techie cops." These cops aren't futuristic vigilantes out to destroy a rogue AI program lest it kick-start the Terminator saga. Instead, they're looking for those who would abuse AI for illegal or unethical purposes. But even these kinds of policing efforts don't help assuage all the fears of people who are still wary of the very concept of artificial intelligence. It will take transparency and trust to change minds about what is, essentially, our inevitable future.

In a report commissioned by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, top defense and technical professionals argue that the United States needs to prepare for artificial intelligence in warfare – because other countries might prepare for it first. "While evident that the DoD is moving forward in the employment of autonomous functionality, it is equally evident that the pull from diverse global markets is accelerating the underlying tech base and delivering high-value capabilities at a much more rapid pace," the introduction to the 121-page report reads. Along with this comes a caveat that the study isn't recommending major projects, "given the current budget environment." Instead, it suggested a wide variety of experimental projects, plus recommending that the DoD reach out to private "non-traditional R&D communities." The report operated under the idea that autonomous weapons capabilities were going to be developed eventually, and that the United States needs to avoid an AI Cold War.

IBM has underscored how seriously its taking Blockchain technology with the creation of a new business unit centered around it. The new business, called Industry Platforms, will be led by Global Business Services chief, Bridget van Kralingen. IBM's entire blockchain leadership team will transition to the new business, which was first announced last year. As well as working on Blockchain technology, the Industry Platforms business will also work to promote its Watson artificial intelligence platform in the financial services sector. "The Industry Platforms business will bring clients radically optimized processes and marketplaces that leverage Watson, IBM Cloud, IBM Systems, blockchain, deep domain expertise and ecosystems of partners and developers," said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.

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Apple has bought artificial intelligence startup Turi for 200m, as the electronics giant looks to expand into the growing machine learning sector. Apple acknowledged its purchase of the company but had no additional comment. Turi creates software tools that let brands develop and embed machine learning into applications. The tools allow the creation of advanced applications with state-of-the-art algorithms and scalable data structures. Turi's team is expected to remain in the Seattle region and continue to grow as Apple builds out further expertise in data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Salesforce has spent over 4 billion on acquisitions in the past year alone, and it's making some investors grow concerned about the company's spending strategy. According to a note by Macquarie Research on Tuesday, Salesforce may have some explaining to do during its earnings call on Wednesday to ease the investors worried about the company's record-high buying spree over the past year. That includes the 2.8 billion Demandware acquisition, which was the largest deal Salesforce has made to date, and the 750 million deal for the 40-person startup Quip. Still, Piper Jaffray noted that most of the acquisitions make sense because they've been in the artificial intelligence and machine learning space, in which Salesforce is launching its new product Einstein.

The last time state lawmakers tried to place limits on drones in the skies above California, they were met with the veto of Gov. Jerry Brown, who said he did not want to create new crimes to enforce bans on the use of such devices. This year, the pushback to new rules is coming not from the governor but through the lobbying efforts of a budding industry that hopes to influence policy at the state Capitol and nationwide. As drones multiply in number and category, cities and states want to set boundaries. But drone manufacturers and associations this legislative session boosted their politicking, successfully beating back several bills they said would create a patchwork of laws that vary by state and hinder innovation. "We want to solve problems and address concerns, but to do it in a way that is constantly clear across the country," said Brendan Schulman, vice president of policy and legal affairs for DJI Technology Co., the world's largest drone maker. "Otherwise, it will be too confusing for commercial users and consumers to understand what the rules are when they travel from place to place."

Use combination of genetic algorithms and neural networks to control the behaviour of in-game objects. Working example can be found here: http://ml-games.tomasz-rewak.com/ Everything here is written from a scratch, including all ML algorithms and game engine. Note that this is an early version of this software. If you can see anything that doesn't work as expected, or maybe a way to improve it, please inform me.