It might have never occurred to you how you could make sense of what your friend is blabbering at a loud party. There are all kinds of noises in a party; then how come we are perfectly able to carry out a conversation? This question is known widely as the'cocktail party problem'. Most of our cognitive processes can pay attention to only a single activity at a time. In the case of a party house, our capability of directing attention towards one set of words while ignoring other sets of words, which are often overpowering, is still a conundrum.

Conscious travel means being mindful of the world and the people we encounter during our travels. It's about thinking differently when we travel; changing our values and perception of the world by seeing a destination through a local's eyes. The world is altering as people's mindsets are shifting. No longer content with mass tourism, people are becoming more conscious of real experiences, immersing themselves with their surroundings to establish longer-lasting connections and gain a better understanding of the world. Conscious travel's goal is to create a sustainable travel economy that gives something back to communities.

Cynthia Breazeal has been promoted to full professor and named associate director of the Media Lab, joining the two other associate directors: Hiroshi Ishii and Andrew Lippman. Both appointments are effective July 1. In her new associate director role, Breazeal will work with lab faculty and researchers to develop new strategic research initiatives. She will also play a key role in exploring new funding mechanisms to support broad Media Lab needs, including multi-faculty research efforts, collaborations with other labs and departments across the MIT campus, and experimental executive education opportunities. "I am excited that Cynthia will be applying her tremendous energy, creativity, and intellect to rally the community in defining new opportunities for funding and research directions," says Pattie Maes, chair of the lab's executive committee.

The Helmholtz International BigBrain Analytics and Learning Laboratory (HIBALL) is a collaboration between McGill University and Forschungszentrum Jülich to develop next-generation high-resolution human brain models using cutting-edge Machine- and Deep Learning methods and high-performance computing. HIBALL is based on the high-resolution BigBrain model first published by the Jülich and McGill teams in 2013. Over the next five years, the lab will be funded with a total of up to 6 million Euro by the German Helmholtz Association, Forschungszentrum Jülich, and Healthy Brains, Healthy Lives at McGill University. In 2003, when Jülich neuroscientist Katrin Amunts and her Canadian colleague Alan Evans began scanning 7,404 histological sections of a human brain, it was completely unclear whether it would ever be possible to reconstruct this brain on the computer in three dimensions. At that time, there were no technical possibilities to cope with the huge amount of data.

Artificial Intelligence is making a great noise adding weight to the superhuman intelligent machines and long-term goal of human-level intelligence. It could be catastrophic for the human race if that happens to be true. At the current juncture, we are unable to specify the objective, nor can we anticipate or prevent the potential pitfalls that may arise if machines capacitate themselves with superhuman capabilities. Already, an alternate world of deep fakes exists which has caused a great deal of hullabaloo across the world, with disastrous consequences for well know personalities and power figures. Thus, with so much at stake, the great minds of today have already locked horns over a serious debate, seeking solutions, ferreting out loopholes, weighing up the risks and benefits, and so on.

New developments and opportunities are opening up in artificial intelligence, says Paul Budde. I RECENTLY followed a "lunch box lecture", organised by the University of Sydney. The world is infatuated with artificial intelligence (AI), and understandably so, given its super-human ability to find patterns in big data as we all notice when using Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay and so on. But the so-called "general intelligence" that humans possess remains elusive for AI. Interestingly, Professor Kuncic approached this topic from a physics perspective.

By Natalia Modjeska, MBA, PhD, helps organizations make sense of AI/ML. Recently I had the opportunity to attend the inaugural Emotion AI Conference, organized by Seth Grimes, a leading analyst and business consultant in the areas of natural language processing (NLP), text analytics, sentiment analysis, and their business applications. The conference was attended by about 70 people (including presenters and panelists) from industry and academia in the US, Canada, and Europe. Given the conference topic, what is emotion AI, why is it relevant, and what do you need to know about it? Read on to find out (warning: this is a long-ish article), but first, some background. We humans are highly emotional beings, and emotions impact everything we do, even if we are not, for the most part, aware of it.

Former Vice President Joe Biden defends his cognitive capabilities amid criticism. Joe Biden, at his first press conference in three months, defended his cognitive ability and said he "can hardly wait" to compare it to President Trump's as the general election matchup heats up. "I've been tested, I'm constantly tested," Biden said in response to a question from Fox News' Doug McKelway. "Look, all you've got to do is watch me and I can hardly wait to compare my cognitive capability to the cognitive capability of the man I'm running against." While Biden's press conference in Delaware was ostensibly about how he would respond to the coronavirus pandemic, the former vice president also slammed the current White House occupant for his response to reports that Russian intelligence operatives offered to pay bounties to Taliban-linked militants who killed U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Dialpad, the only cloud-native business communications platform powered by Voice Intelligence (Vi), recently announced that Jen Grant has joined the company's Board of Directors. The announcement comes as Dialpad continues to see rapid growth as the demand for remote work tools rises with changing business needs worldwide. "We are seeing remote work on the rise everywhere, and we don't expect to see that diminish even after offices start to open up," said Jen Grant, Chief Executive Officer of Turbo Systems. "Now, more than ever, people need the right work-from-anywhere tools, and I'm excited to be a part of the movement with Dialpad." Built in the cloud, Dialpad does not require on-premise servers, storage or hardwired phones, freeing customers to connect and communicate from anywhere.

The device that allows the human brain to connect to a computer could be implanted in a person for the first time later this year, announced the founder of Neuralink neurotechnology company, the tycoon Elon Musk. Last year, Musk's Neuralink introduced a special microchip and flexible fiber electrodes that should allow the human brain to connect to computers or machines. At the same time, he announced that the electrodes in question would like to be implanted with a laser in the future because it is more suitable than a mechanical drill for making holes in the skull. This crazy project of Elon Musk and his startup seems to be going well. Elon Musk said on Twitter that the Neuralink is working on an "awesome" new version of the company's signature device.