Artificial intelligence has thrashed humans at chess. Now the bots are gunning for mahjong. An AI-powered program developed by Microsoft Corp has surpassed the average level of the top players in a recent competition in Japan, Harry Shum, executive vice-president of the companys artificial intelligence and research group, said in Shanghai on Thursday. To those friends who usually lose money in mahjong, this is good news to you, Shum said to laughter at the World AI Conference. The bot player developed by Microsoft can deal with high uncertainty, presenting instincts akin to human, projection and deduction capabilities as well as a sense of overall consciousness.

TECHNOLOGY has advanced so much that one can now produce or alter audio or video content to show or present something that actually didn't happen. With deepfake technology (which combines "deep learning" with "fake"), one can, for example, superimpose someone's face over another person's to create a video to support his or her own agenda. The video is then circulated online, with disastrous consequences on the victim if the purpose is vile in nature, such as the sex video that is currently doing its rounds on social media in Malaysia. Deepfake is artificial intelligence (AI) at work, and there is little you can do to prevent it from happening to you, as highly-paid Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson lamented. The subject of a fake porn video, she told the Washington Post (Dec 31, 2018): "The truth is, there is no difference between someone hacking my account or someone hacking the person standing behind me on line at the grocery store's account. It just depends on whether or not someone has the desire to target you. "Obviously, if a person has more resources, they may employ various forces to build a bigger wall around their digital identity.

Lawmakers and regulators, still grappling with the downsides of the Internet and social media era, are now trying to balance the promises and perils of artificial intelligence.

PETALING JAYA: Dagang NeXchange Bhd (DNeX), via subsidiary Genaxis Sdn Bhd, has signed a joint-venture (JV) and shareholder agreement with Agorai Pte Ltd to provide artificial intelligence (AI) consulting services. Under the agreement, both companies will set up a JV company in Switzerland with an operating office in Malaysia, which will provide AI-related consulting services on a global scale. The JV company will be 50% owned by DNeX. DNeX will invest US$5mil in this exercise, where the company will receive a minority convertible equity investment in Agorai, as well as an enterprise development licence to Agorai's AI toolkit, which includes deep learning, machine vision and natural language understanding tools.

YEARS ago, we were munching on popcorn or in our pyjamas at home watching movies about Artificial Intelligence (AI), awed by how smart technology was. Today, AI has become a reality and countries are racing to be advanced in the technology, with the application of AI said to greatly enhance levels of economic and social development, among others. AI is developed to learn and think more like humans, and is used in specific fields including medical diagnosis, voice recognition, autonomous driving and smart city administration. This technology will soon change the job landscape as well as impact data privacy, both now a debate among technology experts, organisations, governments and the general public. ''Artificial Intelligence is set to become a major technological revolution over the next few years.

Artificial intelligence is here to take your jobs and steal your privacy. With the advent of facial recognition technology in products like iPhones, and recent data breaches at major companies such as Facebook, concern over the effects of AI in daily human life is as strong as ever. A survey released last week by Washington-based Brookings Institute shows America's fear of automation is alive and well. The national study, which polled more than 1,500 adults aged 18 or older, showed serious concerns about AI, a technology that has a growing presence in a number of industries. Of those polled, 39% expressed worry about the overall impact of AI, while 38% said AI will lead to fewer jobs for humans.

As making money with drone photography gets tougher, pilots are flying into new uncharted territories. What goes up must come down. This rule applies to both flying drones, and now unfortunately, to making a buck off them. With more affordable models entering the mass market, any enthusiast with a few thousand ringgit to spare can try his hand at aerial photography. While the lower barrier to entry may be good news for newbies, the increased competition is driving down remuneration.

Get shown news tailored to your preferences with the Google News app, now available for iPhones and iPads. The new Google News app that was first teased at the company's I/O developer conference last week has just rolled out to iOS; it's also already available for Android and the Web in 127 countries. The world wide web launched nearly 30 years ago, so the amount of content available to searchers is massive; in fact there are over 2 billion websites, not to mention social media posts and video footage. A blog post from the company describes how AI is a way for them to "find the best of human intelligence – the great reporting done by journalists around the globe"; using AI to help searchers sift through the haystack and find the right needle. The Google News app is divided into parts.

Toyota Motor Corp halted tests of its "Chauffeur" autonomous driving system on US public roads after a Uber Technologies Inc vehicle operating in autonomous mode under the supervision of a human safety driver struck and killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona, on Sunday evening. "Because we feel the incident may have an emotional effect on our test drivers, we have decided to temporarily pause our Chauffeur mode testing on public roads," spokesman Brian Lyons said in an emailed statement, referring to its hands-off testing mode. The carmaker said it could not speculate on the cause of the crash or what it may mean to the future of the nascent automated driving sector. Toyota had been doing on-road testing with self-driving vehicles in Michigan and California, Lyons said. The company has kept the number of vehicles small so they could be rapidly updated as the technology advances, he said, declining to name a specific number of self-driving vehicles in operation.