Grand master Viswanathan Anand and sports minister Anurag Thakur were Times of India's guest editor on Saturday, 18th June. Sports guest editors Viswanathan Anand and Anurag Thakur talk to TOI about the game-changing dynamics of the Chess Olympiad... Viswanathan Anand has decided to don a new hat. The five-time world chess champion, who is still an active p layer at 52 and has defeated the world's top player, Magnus Carlsen, twice recently, will contest for the post of deputy president in the FIDE (world chess body) elections. He is also the face of the Chess Olympiad, which will be held in India for the very first time, in Chennai in July-August this year. Anand, looking relaxed in a light summer coat, joined sports minister Anurag Thakur during an interaction with TOI in the Capital on Saturday. The two Guest Sports Editors talked about the way ahead for chess, plans to popularise the sport at the grassroots level and stage more international tournaments to give aspiring youngsters exposure to top-quality chess. Excerpts from the interaction... India is hosting such a big chess event for the first time since the Anand versus Carlsen battle in 2003.

Silicon Valley and the EU have never really seen eye to eye, but a recent regulation – that means citizens have the right to demand an explanation to an algorithmic decision by 2018 – could drive the two to legal war. You only have to look to see how often many of the largest tech companies – but particularly Google – find themselves in front of EU courts, over their applications and how the average user interacts with them. Its search results wield enormous power and leverage online, not only in terms of what content appears on the first page of search results, but also with incredibly lucrative e-commerce business. This is where it has previously been accused of favouring its own products. What the vast majority of Google users do not realise – or any user of a search engine for that matter – is that their results are defined by months or even years of harvested data. Every search result, every click is analysed by an AI algorithm to decide what it wants to show you.

Professor Barry O'Sullivan, Director of Insight at UCC, became the first Irish member of the EurAI board in 2014. Professor Barry O'Sullivan, Director of Insight at UCC, has been elected as Deputy President of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI) at its General Assembly held in The Hague. Professor O'Sullivan, who became the first Irish member of the EurAI board after being elected in 2014, said: "It's a huge honour to be the first Irish person to serve on the board of the European Association for Artificial Intelligence, so to be elected as its deputy president is a major thrill." UCC professor named deputy president of world's largest AI body https://t.co/WNjjanZlfz EurAI, formerly ECCAI, was established in July 1982 as a representative body for the European artificial intelligence community.

The world's largest artificial intelligence body, the European Association for Artificial Intelligence (EurAI), has appointed UCC's Prof Barry O'Sullivan as its deputy president. Professor O'Sullivan is director for the Insight Centre for Data Analytics, and UCC's chair of Constraint Programming. He leads Insight's research group on optimisation and decision analytics, and is responsible for Insight's strategic engagement in European initiatives, such as Horizon 2020. Professor O'Sullivan has been involved in winning over 140 million in research funding, of which approximately 25 million has directly supported his research activities at UCC. EurAI has more than 4,500 members across more than 30 countries, making it the largest AI organisation in the world. The primary objective of the association is to promote research in, and study of, artificial intelligence, as well as representing the AI community externally.