Autonomous Vehicles

UNITED NATIONS – Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the United Nations has not been able to independently corroborate that the cruise missiles and drones used in attacks earlier this year on an airport and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia "are of Iranian origin." The U.N. chief said in a report to the council obtained Friday by The Associated Press that the U.N. also can't confirm that the missiles and drones were transferred from Iran "in a manner inconsistent" with the Security Council resolution that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six key countries. The United States has blamed Iran for the attacks. The Saudis said the missiles and drones were Iranian but stopped short of accusing Iran of firing them. The U.N. chief said the U.N. examined debris from the weapon systems used in the attacks and is still collecting and analyzing additional information and trying to establish the supply chain.

A leading expert in artificial intelligence has issued a stark warning against the use of race- and gender-biased algorithms for making critical decisions. Across the globe, algorithms are beginning to oversee various processes from job applications and immigration requests to bail terms and welfare applications. Military researchers are even exploring whether facial recognition technology could enable autonomous drones to identify their own targets. However, University of Sheffield computer expert Noel Sharkey told the Guardian that such algorithms are'infected with biases' and cannot be trusted. Calling for a halt on all AI with the potential to change people's lives, Professor Sharkey instead advocates for vigorous testing before they are used in public.

It can also be stated that we're all the time residing one day. Humans have an enchanting means of ignoring present-day as our long term from five mins or five hundred years prior. Regardless of ways it's spelled out, this long term, the one the place synthetic intelligence making choices impacting human lives--is right here. It turns out like best the day prior to this when Tesla was once rolling out its first Model S and we had been all excited, apprehensive and in doubt without delay. What would this imply for the way forward for the auto?

Those were some of the questions posed by John Zimmer, president and co-founder of U.S. rideshare firm Lyft, at the recent Rakuten Optimism 2019 conference in Yokohama, Japan. Lyft became the first ridesharing company to go public earlier this year when it completed an IPO with a valuation of $24 billion. It has also been pursuing autonomous driving technology: in partnership with Aptiv, Lyft recently notched 50,000 rides in Las Vegas in just a year, and has recently launched Waymo autonomous vehicles on the Lyft platform in Phoenix, Arizona. Against that background, Zimmer spoke about the future of transport with Mickey Mikitani, CEO of early Lyft investor, Rakuten. "We have to think about what is the right infrastructure to support (the future of transport)," Zimmer said during his second appearance at Optimism since speaking at the inaugural conference last year in San Francisco.

Artificial intelligence will soon be making a career in the maritime industry: Because specialist personnel and cargo space are scarce and transport costs are high, more and more ship owners are relying on ships with state-of-the-art assistance systems and autonomous driving functions. Autonomous ships will get by completely without captain and crew. When autonomous vessels plough through the waves in the future, the history of ghost ships will have to be rewritten. Legends like the Flying Dutchman and the Marie Celeste have one thing in common. Both vessels had a crew on board before fate befell them in the vastness of the oceans.

A consortium of companies is offering foreign visitors in Tokyo a taste of autonomous driving, in the world's first demonstration of a project that uses both an airport shuttle bus and a self-driving taxi to provide smooth travel from the airport to the Marunouchi shopping district near Tokyo Station. The Mobility as a Service experiment, which allows reservations by smartphone, is to be operated from Jan. 20 to Feb. 1. Foreign nationals are able to reserve a shuttle bus from Haneda or Narita airport to Tokyo City Air Terminal, and then ride an autonomous taxi from there on the around 3 kilometers leg to Marunouchi. They will also be able to ride in a fully autonomous single-seat vehicle for free on select days, and use a tablet to choose their destination within the Marunouchi area. The autonomous taxi will have a backup driver for safety reasons. Reservations for foreign nationals via smartphone app began on Dec. 2 and will run until Jan. 9.

Although insurers have not moved as quickly as other financial services providers in embracing fintech, there are lots of opportunities and it is a sector to watch. Technology has already played a significant role in disrupting other areas of financial services – in banking and payments there has been an influx of fintech providers to the market. However, unlike the insurance sector, this digital disruption has been underpinned by legislative reforms and regulatory intervention. The absence of similar intervention in the insurance sector, coupled with challenges associated with legacy systems and strict regulation around the provision of insurance, means that there are major barriers to entry in the market. However, this does not mean that insurtech disruption is not feasible or indeed happening.

Although insurers have not moved as quickly as other financial services providers in embracing fintech, there are lots of opportunities and it is a sector to watch. Technology has already played a significant role in disrupting other areas of financial services – in banking and payments there has been an influx of fintech providers to the market. However, unlike the insurance sector, this digital disruption has been underpinned by legislative reforms and regulatory intervention. The absence of similar intervention in the insurance sector, coupled with challenges associated with legacy systems and strict regulation around the provision of insurance, means that there are major barriers to entry in the market. However, this does not mean that insurtech disruption is not feasible or indeed happening.

Autonomous vehicles received the largest percentage of private artificial intelligence (AI) investment for 2018 and 2019. Global driverless car technology startups scooped up $7.7bn, accounting for 9.9% of total private AI investment. That's according to the AI Index 2019, a report compiled by the Stanford Human-Centred AI Institute, in collaboration with McKinsey & Company, AI21 Labs, Genpact, Google and OpenAI. The annual report examines the biggest trends in the AI industry between January 2018 and October 2019, such as AI growth by country and the number of peer-reviewed research papers. It found that while autonomous vehicles – also known as AVs – are largely being tested in the US, at least 25 countries are testing them.

The pace of progress in artificial intelligence is astonishingly fast and it is growing at a rampant pace. Tech firms such as DeepMind, etc as well as countless academic teams at leading technical universities all over the world, have been working for years on the creation of an AI with a neural network capable of all the mental functions humans posses. Unless one has direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast AI is growing. However, it is fascinating to see how AI is transforming lives right now in its early stages of narrow intelligence: from disease detection to artificial organs, autonomous driving to manufacturing. Evolution -- the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms and evolution has created intelligence -- the humans, but we are the most "exceptional" form of life in existence.