The Hyundai Motor Group bought a controlling share in Boston Dynamics for US$800 million back in 2020, impressed by the potential of its array of world-leading humanoid, quadrupedal and other robots. Now it's investing half that again to develop AI. Hyundai is founding a new Boston Dynamics AI Institute, headquartered in the Kendall Square research precinct in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Institute's core research areas will be athletic AI, organic hardware design ... and yes, cognitive AI. There will also be research into the less-technical – but very important – areas of ethics and policy, as they intersect with this highly-charged space.

Tristan Glatard, co-director of Applied AI Institute at Concordia University (left) and Fenwick McKelvey, co-director of Applied AI Institute at Concordia University (right).Supplied It wasn't long ago when, for the average person, the words "artificial intelligence" conjured up visions of futuristic fiction – the androids of Blade Runner, say, or Steven Spielberg's A.I. In fact, artificial intelligence is very much here-and-now, and not only with a human façade (think of virtual assistants Siri and Alexa, those smartphone genies ready to do our bidding), but in a myriad of forms. From Google searches to medical diagnoses, Netflix's personalized "Top Picks" to self-driving cars, AI technology has become pervasive. It's predicted that the AI market will contribute as much as $15.7-trillion per year to the global economy by the end of this decade. Its applications will be increasingly integrated into our lives and play a role in shaping our society.

The University of Western Australia's expertise in applied data science will be at the forefront at a new Institute of Data. The Institute will provide a gateway for data-intensive industries and government agencies to access UWA's rich expertise in applied data science to real-world problems and our understanding of ethical and socially acceptable use of data and automation. Director of Institute of Data Professor Eun-Jung Holden, from UWA's School of Earth Sciences, brings a wealth of experience in developing transformative and innovative data science applications for industry. "Data has become a critical currency in modern society," Professor Holden said. "Cheap accessible sensor technologies support expanding networks, which when combined with digital platforms such as the web, social media and internet-based commercial transactions, rapidly increase the volume of available data, which can then be transformed into'knowledge' to enable a multitude of diverse applications. "This transformation is driving innovations in all facets of life, thanks to the adoption of data science that encompasses statistical methodologies, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to improve our ability to identify patterns and make predictions from data.

Oregon Health & Science University is one of five universities nationwide to form a new National Science Foundation-funded institute to design and build intelligent systems to help people age in place. The five-year, $20 million grant will support the creation of an AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups, or AI-Caring. The institute will develop artificial intelligence systems that work for aging adults, including those diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, and their caregivers. Most older adults prefer to remain in their own homes. But safety concerns, medication schedule and isolation can all make it difficult for them to do so.

A global summit which aims to boost effective collaboration between experts working in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being organised by academics at the University of Exeter. Working with MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and STEMM Global, the University of Exeter's Professor Anna Baldycheva and a PhD candidate Kate Berseneva are launching the AI in Healthcare Summit, which will take place online on October 1st and 2nd, and is now open for registration. Professor Baldycheva, who heads up the organising committee, said: "Artificial Intelligence research is a key focus for the University of Exeter, and in light of Covid-19, the future is now. Galvanizing global experts is crucial to avoiding future pandemics. It's now crucial that we launch and drive innovation and development of AI for good, and our international summit will boost effective collaboration among leading AI academics, healthcare experts and business leaders to support innovation in healthcare."

Researchers and policymakers have warned that if the autonomous systems we're increasingly integrating into our lives are not carefully designed, there could be serious repercussions. But there are also opportunities to ensure that human values stay at the center of new advances in artificial intelligence. At this critical moment, Northeastern is launching the Institute for Experiential Artificial Intelligence, a pioneering research hub that will place human skills and intelligence at the forefront of artificial intelligence development, from the earliest design steps to the final implementation. The university is allocating $50 million for the new institute, in which leading experts in the humanities, law, public policy, machine learning, health, security, and sustainability will collaborate to develop solutions to the world's challenges. "This new institute, the first of its kind, will focus on enabling artificial intelligence and humans to collaborate interactively around solving problems in health, security, and sustainability," Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun wrote to the university's students, faculty, and staff.

When Kim Hilliard shows up at the clinic at the New Orleans University Medical Center, she's not there simply for an eye exam. The human touches she gets along the way help her navigate her complicated medical conditions. In addition to diabetes, the 56-year-old has high blood pressure. She has also had back surgery and has undergone bariatric surgery to help her control her weight. Hilliard is also at risk of blindness, which can result from a condition called diabetic retinopathy.

Amid a worldwide race for supremacy in artificial intelligence, Stanford University on Monday will unveil a new institute dedicated to using AI to build the best-possible future. The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence is co-directed by Fei-Fei Li, a former chief scientist for AI at Google, now a Stanford computer science professor. "The scope and scale of impact of the Age of AI will be more profound than any other period of transformation in our history," Li and co-director John Etchemendy said in an online note about the new institute. "AI has the potential to radically transform every industry and every society." The institute will take advantage of Stanford's strength in a variety of disciplines, including AI, computer science, engineering, robotics, business, economics, genomics, law, literature, medicine, neuroscience and philosophy, according to promotional materials.

The Mark Foundation Institute for Integrated Cancer Medicine will be funded by an £8.6 million award to the University of Cambridge from The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research – the first time that the New York-based philanthropic organisation has made an award to a UK institution. The virtual institute aims to exploit recent advances in big data processing and machine learning to capture and integrate clinical, genomic, and image data collated from hundreds of cancer patients in real-time. Laboratory and clinic-based researchers and data experts will work together to determine whether sophisticated computational integration of all these diverse data types into a single platform can inform and predict the best treatment decisions for each individual patient. Blood tests, biopsies, medical imaging, and genetic tests are a routine part of current cancer care; however, it is not always clear which of these increasingly large datasets are most important in guiding treatment at specific points in the patient journey. "Doctors have long dreamed of an objective system that can integrate all the results generated from their cancer patients, guiding comprehensive treatment decisions both for current treatment and to predict how a particular disease will behave in the future," explains Professor Richard Gilbertson, Director of the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre where the new institute will be based.

Leading scientists have drawn up plans for a vast multinational European institute devoted to world-class artificial intelligence (AI) research in a desperate bid to nurture and retain top talent in Europe. The new institute would be set up for similar reasons as Cern, the particle physics lab near Geneva, which was created after the second world war to rebuild European physics and reverse the brain drain of the brightest and best scientists to the US. Named the European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems, or Ellis, the proposed AI institute would have major centres in a handful of countries, the UK included, with each employing hundreds of computer engineers, mathematicians and other scientists with the express aim of keeping Europe at the forefront of AI research. In an open letter that urges governments to act, the scientists describe how Europe has not kept up with the US and China, where the vast majority of leading AI firms and universities are based. The letter adds that while a few "research hotspots" still exist in Europe, "virtually all of the top people in those places are continuously being pursued for recruitment by US companies."