The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting an above-normal 2017 Hurricane Season, with five to nine hurricanes -- two to four of them Category 3 (winds at least 111 mph) or stronger. The weakness or absence of storm-suppressing El Niño climate conditions, combined with above-normal ocean surface temperatures and average or weaker vertical wind shear across the Caribbean and Atlantic Coast are factors pointing to an active hurricane season, said Ben Friedman, acting NOAA administrator. They expect that three named storms will make landfall in the U.S. April's Tropical Storm Arlene was a rare preseason storm, but it was also an indication of an active season ahead, Friedman said Thursday during a news conference at the NOAA Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Md. In the 25 years since Category 5 Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida, forecasting accuracy has improved 65%, said Mary Erickson, deputy director at the National Weather Service.

Computer problems are causing delays for British Airways passengers worldwide, the airline has said. The carrier apologised for the "global system outage" and said it was "working to resolve the the problem as quickly as possible". Heathrow Airport said it was "working closely" with BA to solve the issue. It is not known how many flights are affected but passengers have reported issues at a number of airports on social media. Journalist Martyn Kent said he had been sat on a plane at Heathrow for 90 minutes.

Goldstaub, aged 31, is the co-founder of CognitionX, which aims to bring clarity to the fast-paced world of artificial intelligence (AI). "We're like a Ghostbusters hotline," she says. "When you feel lost and wonder who you're going to call we have researchers who can answer big questions. AI will be the next industrial revolution, it's happening quicker than anything we have ever seen. This month's NHS hack is just the latest reminder of how fast technology is developing and Goldstaub says it illustrates the need for widespread education and "collaboration beyond the tech sector, with government, academia and business talking about moving forwards with new tools". Sitting in an eye-poppingly pink chair at her company's HQ at the Wayra incubator in Piccadilly, where she has a staff of 22 and is "expanding at a rate of knots", Goldstaub explains how AI has the potential to detect cancer earlier than humans can, trade stocks, increase energy efficiency, predict human rights trials and make fairer decisions in courts. Already, 76 per cent of companies use some form of AI and it could add $814 billion to the UK economy by 2035, increasing productivity by up to 40 per cent, according to a report by Accenture. So we'd better get it right. Goldstaub compares AI to a child, learning from what it hears. "If you train AI based on racist, sexist information, you can't be surprised that it becomes racist and sexist." She cites the example of the chatbot Tay, which was trained on Twitter and in less than 24 hours was making offensive remarks. "You'll have AI making decisions about whether you can get loans, about car insurance.

What are the universal principles of DevOps? How to you build a DevOps team? And I know growing up we are taught there aren't any wrong questions, but as organizations undergo digital transformation, these questions require context and a reference point, else they cannot be answered with meaningful or precise statements. DevOps Is a Constant State of Flux Even if it was possible to answer these questions, what constituted a definition of DevOps at its inception does not necessarily mean DevOps now. DevOps for one company might occur in a totally different fashion to another - depending on size, tools, frequency of releases and so on.

With more than 40% market share in mobile games, billion monthly active users and 2.6 billion unique devices, Unity plays a profoundly important role in the booming gaming and VR markets. Introducing machine learning and AI into game development will curb one of the greatest expenses in time and money that go into content creation, but will also change the role of programmers. With immense access to data and computing power, developers will use historical data to model extensive virtual realities of games, taking programming out of the equation. I spoke with Dr. Danny Lange, VP of AI and machine learning at Unity about this, the present and future of game development, machine learning, and how developers and startups can get most out of it. Dr. Danny Lange is VP of AI and machine learning at Unity Technologies.

Inflowz, an artificial intelligence process optimization company, raised $3.5 million in seed funding from Glilot Capital Partners. The investor is a venture capital fund that specializes in enterprise software. Founded in 2017, the company aims to help sales leaders optimize their processes with an artificial intelligence technology platform. The technology generates a visual display of various sales journeys, and creates dynamic recommendations for optimization and maximization of revenue throughout the sales process. Inflowz says it will use the funds to expand its current Tel Aviv-based team of 10 with engineering, Machine Learning, and AI professionals.

"Through making our large datasets and systems publicly available, we've enabled research groups around the world to make significant progress on building machines that can automatically answer questions about visual content," she highlights. When Thomas first started researching deep neural networks a few years ago, virtually no educational resources existed online. Suchi Saria, Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University, believes computational modeling of data from sensor platforms and electronic medical records presents "a tremendous opportunity for high impact work." Since receiving her PhD in Computer Science from Stanford, Shubha Nabar has built data products and data science teams at Microsoft, LinkedIn, and now Salesforce.

Jane Wang started out as an applied physicist modeling the complex network dynamics of memory systems in the brain before moving into experimental cognitive neuroscience as a postdoc at Northwestern. Since joining DeepMind two years ago, her non-machine learning background has equipped her with a unique set of tools and perspectives for tackling the hardest AI problems. "It's exhilarating to formulate theories of human brain function as powerful deep reinforcement learning models that can solve similarly complex tasks," she shares. Though Wang has been successful without a formal AI background, she's concerned the steep learning curve and hypercompetitive atmosphere of AI research can discourage diverse participation. "Although competitiveness drives the field forward, it also discourages those who wish to work in more inclusive, cooperative environments," she warns.

Sören Schwertfeger finished his postdoctorate research on autonomous robots in Germany, and seemed set to go to Europe or the United States, where artificial intelligence was pioneered and established. Instead, he went to China. "You couldn't have started a lab like mine elsewhere," Mr. Schwertfeger said. The balance of power in technology is shifting. China, which for years watched enviously as the West invented the software and the chips powering today's digital age, has become a major player in artificial intelligence, what some think may be the most important technology of the future.

Humanity's contest with artificial intelligence, using the oldest and most complicated form of competition known to the human mind, came down convincingly in the machine's favour this week, firmly marking a point in time when the progeny of the human race outsmarted the creator's own ingenuity. AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence (AI) programme developed in 2014 by the DeepMind lab of the world's largest internet search engine Google, vanquished China's Ke Jie, the top player of the game of Go in all three matches this week in Wuzhen in Zhejiang province. The game of Go, also known as weiqi (圍棋), is played on a 19 X 19 grid board by two players. With more permutations and possible moves than the total number of estimated atoms in the visible universe, it has been used as the benchmark for measuring human intelligence against the artificial variety. Computer scientists and futurists had predicted that AI would need at least a decade before it can beat humans at Go. AlphaGo's 3-0 victories this week have brought forward that timeline significantly.