Microsoft and its PC partners plan to add a "Copilot" key to your PC keyboards, making it easy and intuitive to launch Microsoft's Copilot AI -- and avoid using an AI solution from a competitor. PC makers appear to be prepping to replace one of the existing buttons in the no-man's land grouping of keys to the right of the PC spacebar into a key that will launch Copilot on command. "Over the coming days leading up to and at CES, you will start to see the Copilot key on many of the new Windows 11 PCs from our ecosystem partners, with availability beginning in late February through spring, including on upcoming Surface devices," Yusuf Mehdi, who now oversees the Windows and Surface businesses after the departure of Panos Panay, wrote in a blog post. Copilot is available in Windows, of course, and it's now officially available on iOS and Android as well. Early looks at the new PCs indicate that the new key could potentially replace the "menu" key on some Windows PCs like Microsoft Surface devices, which are rarely used.

Toshiba Corporation has developed the world's most accurate highly versatile Visual Question Answering (VQA) AI, able to recognize not only people and objects, but also colors, shapes, appearances and background details in images. The AI overcomes the long-standing difficulty of answering questions on the positioning and appearance of people and objects, and has the ability to learn information required to handle a wide range of questions and answers. It can be applied to a wide range of purposes without any need for customization. In experiments using a public dataset comprising a large volume of images and data text, the VQA AI correctly answered 66.25% of questions without any pre-learning and 74.57% with pre-learning. For example, the AI can find a worker standing in a designated place by asking questions like, "is the person on a black mat?" which requires recognition of the individual, position, shape and color.

Kioxia Holdings Corp. is preparing to go public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as early as September after heightened U.S.-China tensions led to the postponement of the Japanese chipmaker's planned debut last year, sources familiar with the plan said. The envisaged listing of Kioxia, formerly known as Toshiba Memory Holdings Corp., comes as robust demand for semiconductors is giving a boost to chipmakers and their share prices. The firm is expected to submit an application to the Tokyo bourse this month to list its shares, likely on the First Section, the sources said Wednesday. Kioxia postponed its plan to go public last October after the United States under then President Donald Trump restricted exports to Huawei Technologies Co., a buyer of Kioxia chips. Kioxia manufactures flash memory chips for personal computers and smartphones, and its debut, with an estimated market capitalization of ¥1.5 trillion ($14 billion) at the time, would have been one of the largest initial public offerings in Japan last year.

Intel RealSense is known in the robotics community for its plug-and-play stereo cameras. These cameras make gathering 3D depth data a seamless process, with easy integrations into ROS to simplify the software development for your robots. From the RealSense team, Joel Hagberg talks about how they built this product, which allows roboticists to perform computer vision and machine learning at the edge. He joined Intel in 2018 after a few years as an Executive Advisor working with startups in the IoT, AI, Flash Array, and SaaS markets. Before his Executive Advisor role, Joel spent two years as Vice President of Product Line Management at Seagate Technology with responsibility for their $13B product portfolio.

The Japanese giant Toshiba has sold its final stake in the personal computer maker Dynabook. It means the firm no longer has a connection with making PCs or laptops. Sharp bought 80% of Toshiba's personal computing arm in 2018 for $36m (£27m), and has now bought the remaining shares, Toshiba said in a statement. Toshiba's first laptop, the T1100, launched in 1985. It weighed 4kg (8.8 pounds) and worked with 3.5 inch (8.8cm) floppy disks.

It sounds like a sci-fi movie: pitting an artificial intelligence against human pilots. Sadly, DARPA will no longer hold an in-person event for its third and final AlphaDogfight Trial. It'll happen virtually, instead, with participants and viewers watching online as AI algorithms control simulated F-16 fighter planes in aerial combat. By the end of the three-day event, viewers will witness a matchup between the top AI and an experienced Air Force fighter pilot, who'll also be controlling a virtual F-16. If you're interested, you need to register beforehand to tune in.

Toshiba Corp. has developed an artificial intelligence-based system to provide real-time video subtitles during online classes. The system transcribes teachers' speeches into subtitles, allowing students to quickly check parts they missed and review lessons afterward. Amid the new coronavirus outbreak, many universities and other educational institutions have introduced online education. Creating an environment to help students' understanding in online classes has become an important challenge. Toshiba, a major Japanese electronics and machinery maker, will conduct system verification tests at Keio University and Hosei University with the aim of putting the system into practical use in a year at the earliest.

Toshiba Corp. has developed a technology to detect 13 types of cancer from a single drop of blood with 99 percent accuracy, the company announced Monday. Toshiba developed the diagnosis method together with the National Cancer Center Research Institute and Tokyo Medical University, and hopes to commercialize it in "several years" after starting a trial next year. The method could be used to promote treatment of cancers from an early stage, it said. The method is designed to examine the types and concentration of microRNA molecules secreted in blood from cancer cells. Toray Industries Inc. and other companies have also developed technologies to diagnose cancer using microRNA molecules from a blood sample.

Toshiba Corp. said Thursday it will team up with the University of Tokyo to nurture specialists on artificial intelligence as part of efforts to secure talent in the next-generation technology. The electronics giant aims to nearly triple its number of AI engineers to 2,000 by March 2023 from the current 750 to boost research and development in the field, the company said. Under the program to be introduced in December, which is being developed with the university's graduate school of information science and technology, Toshiba engineers over a three-month course will study a wide range of technologies involving AI and big data analysis using data provided by the company's factories. The program is projected to train about 350 engineers by the end of fiscal 2022. Toshiba also plans to newly employ 200 AI specialists while nurturing another 700 under its original education system to have its staff acquire knowledge of the latest digital technologies.

When it comes to pure, cutting the cord TVs, Amazon's Fire TV Edition paved new ground in 2018. It was low-priced and aimed at folks who were happy ditching cable, plugging in an antenna and using the set to watch Internet programming. Vizio's new V436-61, just out, goes even further. It does all of that, and more. Instead of just being able to use voice commands via the Amazon Alexa assistant, Vizio lets you use Apple's Siri and the Google Assistant as well.