AI bias continues to be a prevailing problem when it comes to ensuring proper implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in many industries. Since the technology has been implemented across several verticals, some of its use cases have been causing… unpleasantness among users. One of the biggest worries surrounding the sticky issue of AI bias, is in facial recognition solutions. As AI works purely on analyzing data inputs that it has access to, the algorithms may at times not provide entirely accurate results. In the case of facial recognition, the particular AI recognized certain races as criminals, causing an uproar in society.

When GovTech conceptualized "Ask Jamie" in 2014, AI chatbots were still pretty much in their infancy. Ask Jamie was designed as a virtual assistant that can be implemented on government agency websites and trained to be able to answer queries within specific domains. Singapore has implemented Jamie in over 70 government agency websites. Some of Jamie's basic tasks include providing responses to citizens who have queries on basic information. Over the years, the AI chatbot evolved to handle more complex queries and issues as well.

Autonomous cars, commonly known as self-driving cars, aren't new in Japan -- nor the automotive industry. But whilst the rest of the developed world is pushing for autonomous vehicles largely for reasons of safety and convenience for people in general, Japan's a little different. It's to compensate for its aging population. The Japanese ageing population is in need of transportation -- but the country is plagued by persistent labor shortages. "In the cargo and transport sectors, drivers have become older and the shortage of human resources has become serious," a recent METI report said.

Robots in agriculture are becoming increasingly used by the industry today. An example would be the multiple analytics and machine learning tools used in smart farming to help with predicting harvests. One of these tools, agriculture robots, are normally used collaboratively (known as cobots). These robots possess mechanical arms and make harvesting much easier for farmers. Compared to traditional industrial robots and machinery, cobots are designed to work alongside human employees, giving manufacturers the benefits of both robots and humans combined.

Fraud detection is something the financial services industry can't afford to take lightly. From retail to consumer banking, to fintech and insurance

Scientists last month unveiled the most exhaustive database yet of the proteins that form the building blocks of life, in a breakthrough where observers said would "fundamentally change biological research". Every cell in every living organism is triggered to perform its function by proteins that deliver constant instructions to maintain health and ward off infection. Unlike the genome -- the complete sequence of human genes that encode cellular life -- the human proteome is constantly changing in response to genetic instructions and environmental stimuli. Understanding how proteins operate -- the shape in which they end up, or "fold" into -- within cells has fascinated scientists for decades. But determining each protein's precise function through direct experimentation is painstaking.

Japan's farming market is possibly undergoing its twilight years with a significantly greying community, and that's why smart, autonomous tractors being developed by machine maker Kubota Tractor Corporation could hold commercial appeal. According to Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing, the number of Japanese engaged primarily in farming dropped to 1.7 million in 2014 from 1.86 million in 2011. About 515,000 farmers were 75 years or older in 2014. By comparison, only 83,000 were 39 years old or younger -- and that number was down by 7,000 from just three years earlier, reports USA Today. To make matters more pressing, Japan's population is shrinking by a quarter of a million people a year, and the number of births in 2014 was the lowest since record-keeping began in 1899, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Artificial intelligence has become a general-purpose technology. Not confined to futuristic applications such as self-driving vehicles, it powers the apps we use daily, from navigation with Google Maps to check deposits from our mobile banking app. It even manages the spam filters in our inbox. These are all-powerful, albeit functional roles. What's perhaps more exciting is AI's growing potential in sourcing and producing new creations and ideas, from writing news articles to discovering new drugs -- in some cases, far quicker than teams of human scientists.

It now needs to be online, available at any time, and it needs to be fast. Messengers are proving valuable channels to support customers in a way that is natural to them. The approach can enable customer service teams to deliver fast, friendly and personal support. But to cater for a higher volume of support requests, many businesses are turning to chatbots and automation technology. Well-designed chatbots are the key to scaling conversational support, but there's a lot of debate around what makes a good chatbot.

We've all seen those videos of face-swapped individuals, often a parody of a popular film with a different celebrity's face superimposed over a another's via the power of artificial intelligence (AI). These videos and images have come to be known as deepfakes, and while many are indeed for harmless fun, the incredible realism of these videos leaves plenty of room for malicious behavior. Deep Trace Lab, a deepfake detection technology firm, found that the amount of detectable deepfake videos on the internet more than doubled to 49,081 in just the six months between January and June 2020. Not only that, but while deepfake prevalence was picking in the West last year, the first instances of convincing deepfakes here in Asia are starting to surface. The reported incident of face-swapping was reportedly in a Chinese TV series, when actress Liu Lu was blacklisted in the country, and her contract terminated.