TechCrunch has reported that Facebook is acquiring London-based startup, Bloomsbury AI, as part of its efforts to fight against fake news on the world's largest social network. Bloomsbury's product is an NLP engine that helps machines answer questions on information derived from documents. TechCrunch's sources report that Facebook plans to use the firm's team and technology in policing the platform, and combating the scourge of bullshit fake news stories that have proliferated since the 2016 US general election. This is easily the biggest UK AI acquisition this year, and one of the most interesting since Google sucked up the machine learning powerhouse DeepMind in 2014. The deal is believed to be valued between $23 and $30 million, which is a far cry from DeepMind's $500 million asking price.

Facebook is buying London-based artificial intelligence start-up Bloomsbury, in yet another indication that the capital has become a hotbed for AI talent, ripe for cash-rich US tech giant's picking. Bloomsbury AI is a data analytics company that automates customer care and advice. It has proprietary algorithms that answer questions after trawling documents, which will prove a useful tool for Facebook's battle against fake news. The Silicon Valley tech giant will pay between $20m and $30m (£15m-£22m) to acquire the company in both cash and stocks, a move first reported by TechCrunch and confirmed by the Telegraph. It follows Google's purchase of Deepmind for £400m, another university-spin off...

Five different AI algorithms have teamed up to kick human butt in Dota 2, a popular strategy computer game. Researchers at OpenAI, a nonprofit based in California, developed the algorithmic A team, which they call the OpenAI Five. Each algorithm uses a neural network to learn not only how to play the game, but also how to cooperate with its AI teammates. It has started defeating amateur Dota 2 players in testing, OpenAI says. This is an important and novel direction for AI, since algorithms typically operate independently.

On Monday, non-profit AI research company OpenAI published a blog post about OpenAI Five, a group of five neural networks designed to work as a team while playing the real-time computer strategy game called Dota 2. According to the post, OpenAI Five can now beat a team of five human amateur players at the game, albeit with specific restrictions placed on gameplay. In August, it will attempt to beat a team of professional Dota 2 players at The International (TI), an annual Dota 2 tournament hosted by the game's developer, Valve Corporation. In Dota 2, two teams of five players battle to destroy the other team's "Ancient," a structure at the center of their base. Each player controls a different character, known as a "hero." These heroes have their own abilities, strengths, and weaknesses, and a team's ability to cooperate is key to its success.

If you were miffed about Britain's National Health Service (NHS) giving your sensitive data away to Google's DeepMind, how you respond to today's news is probably a crapshoot. The NHS has announced that it will begin anonymizing said data that's been used to analyze blood test results and to detect risk of acute kidney injuries and other ailments. To be clear, these are separate events (the data use and today's announcement), but one led to the other. In 2016, the NHS and DeepMind caught their fair share of criticism over how data was shared with implied -- not explicit -- consent from 1.6 million patients. "The new de-identification process (known as De-ID) will protect patient privacy by de-identifying a person's records in a consistent way," according to a statement from the NHS.

"Overall what we are excited about is that the training method we use is very general. We are focused on learning Dota, but we are hoping that this will give us more and more insight about how AI can solve complex problems of any kind," Dennison says. Gates is supportive of the aim of OpenAI to develop artificial intelligence for good. "This is just one of many amazing projects I had a chance to see at OpenAI, where they're working to ensure as many people benefit from AI as possible. This is an incredibly important mission, and I'm excited to see more of their work," says Gates on Twitter.

OpenAI made headlines last year when it proved a bot could beat a professional gamer head to head at one of the world's most complex video games. But it had one more gaming goal to conquer -- to beat a professional team of five. Now, after proving the bot can beat teams that rank in the top 1 percent of amateur players for its game of choice, OpenAI will get its chance to shine at the International, one of the world's most established video game tournaments. The tournament is where the researchers hope to showcase how far Elon Musk-backed OpenAI has come in terms of its ability to control its five-character team as well as any team of five humans can. While machines have beaten humans at games -- from IBM computer Deep Blue's chess victory in 1997 to a Google bot's win over Go champion Lee Sedol in 2016 -- each game has offered a new challenge for artificial intelligence to solve.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates congratulated OpenAI's team bots for beating human players at the video game Dota 2 on Monday. Bots now can work in teams and beat humans at video games. Bill Gates tweeted on Tuesday that artificial intelligence bots working in a team had beaten human players at the esports video game Dota 2. He praised the victory as "a huge milestone in advancing artificial intelligence." Business Insider spotted the tweet. The AI bot team was developed by OpenAI, a nonprofit AI research company co-founded by Elon Musk. Open AI employed five neural networks, collectively known as OpenAI Five, which defeated amateur human teams at Dota 2, according to the company's blog post published on Monday.

Artificial-intelligence research group OpenAI said it created software capable of beating teams of five skilled human players in the video game Dota 2, a milestone in computer science. The achievement puts San Francisco-based OpenAI, whose backers include billionaire Elon Musk, ahead of other artificial-intelligence researchers in developing software that can master complex games combining fast, real-time action, longer-term strategy, imperfect information and team play. The ability to learn these kinds of video games at human or super-human levels is important for the advancement of AI because they more closely approximate the uncertainties and complexity of the real world than games such as chess, which IBM's software mastered in the late 1990s, or Go, which was conquered in 2016 with software created by DeepMind, the London-based AI company owned by Alphabet Inc. Dota 2 is a multiplayer science-fiction fantasy video game created by Bellevue, Washington-based Valve Corp. Each team is assigned a base on opposing ends of a map that can only be learned through exploration. Each player controls a separate character with unique powers and weapons. Each team must battle to reach the opposing team's territory and destroy a structure called an Ancient.

A research lab named OpenAI, co-founded by Elon Musk, has announced its latest achievement: a team of AI bots that are gunning down human Dota 2 players and winning. OpenAI has been pitching its AI bots against professionals players in 1v1 matches since last year, but such games greatly reduced the actual difficulties of Dota 2. So for the first time, a team of upgraded AI players, 'OpenAI Five,' entered the battleground in 5v5 matchups against amateur Dota 2 human players which requires more coordination and long-term planning. For now, they managed to win the game. However, they are yet to challenge Dota 2's very best players. But the AI agents will be doing so later this year at the Dota 2 world championship, The International 2018. The motivation behind this research is straightforward: a complex video game like Dota exhibits the messiness and continuous nature of the real world.