Scientists have warned that an underwater volcano off the coast of the northwestern US is likely to blow sometime in 2025. The volcano, called Axial Seamount, is more than 3,600-feet-tall and sits half a mile underwater just 300 miles off the coast of Oregon. Experts made the prediction on December 10 after detecting seafloor swelling around Axial that mimicked a level seen immediately before an eruption in 2015. Seismic activity has also increased, with hundreds of earthquakes generated around the volcano per day and earthquake swarms greater than 500 per day. 'Based on the current trends, and the assumption that Axial will be primed to erupt when it reaches the 2015 inflation threshold, our current eruption forecast window is between now (July 2024) and the end of 2025,' researchers said in the new study.

We introduce ClarQ-LLM, an evaluation framework consisting of bilingual English-Chinese conversation tasks, conversational agents and evaluation metrics, designed to serve as a strong benchmark for assessing agents' ability to ask clarification questions in task-oriented dialogues. The benchmark includes 31 different task types, each with 10 unique dialogue scenarios between information seeker and provider agents. The scenarios require the seeker to ask questions to resolve uncertainty and gather necessary information to complete tasks. Unlike traditional benchmarks that evaluate agents based on fixed dialogue content, ClarQ-LLM includes a provider conversational agent to replicate the original human provider in the benchmark. This allows both current and future seeker agents to test their ability to complete information gathering tasks through dialogue by directly interacting with our provider agent. In tests, LLAMA3.1 405B seeker agent managed a maximum success rate of only 60.05\%, showing that ClarQ-LLM presents a strong challenge for future research.

There are more than 30 species of dolphins in the world, the Māui dolphin, which lives off the west coast of the North Island, New Zealand, faces a threat of extinction. To save this rarest of the world's dolphins, a nonprofit organization has been formed called MAUI63 (Marine Animal Unmanned Identification, with 63 representing the estimated number of Māui dolphins when this initiative began in 2018). The team's scientists and conservationists use an AI-powered drone to locate, track, identify, and ultimately protect these and Hector's dolphins. The Māui dolphin population has declined further since the project began, as a 2021 survey counted only 54. Hector's and Māui dolphins are small coastal dolphins found only in New Zealand.

"The global life science's technology market is growing significantly, but it's especially exciting to watch the momentum on the West Coast. West Coast biotechs are rapid adopters of clinical trial technology, decentralized trial models and smaller, more focused outsourced providers like eClinical's Data Services" Biocom California, the association representing the California life science industry, reports that the state's life science sector has tripled since 2000, with a compound annual average growth rate of 5.6%. The organization's recent report also reveals that the local life science industry generated $131 billion in 2020 alone. Simultaneously with this growth, companies face increasing pressure in a crowded market to quicken drug development timelines to get treatments produced faster than competitors and contribute to the industry's sizable ascent. The elluminate Clinical Data Cloud, which now includes risk-based quality management (RBQM) for operational insights, and a Statistical Computing Environment (SCE) will help these companies enhance their clinical trial efficiencies through greater automation of processes delivering sustained competitive advantage.

The Royal Navy has made its first at-sea use of artificial intelligence (AI) to track supersonic missile attacks, as part of a NATO exercise taking place off the west coast of Scotland. HMS Dragon, a destroyer, and frigate HMS Lancaster are testing how two AI software packages can support personnel in reacting to missile threats. Startle monitors airspace and generates alerts and recommendations, while Sycoiea builds on this to identify incoming missiles and recommend weapons to deal with them. The AI software is designed to help personnel react faster, rather than replacing humans. "I was able identify missile threats more quickly than usual and even outwit the operations room," said above water tactician leading seaman Sean Brooks on HMS Lancaster.

Galway start-up Chatspace has developed an artificial intelligence answers and insights platform that prevents projects on track and prevents costly failures. Chatspace works with the world's largest companies unleashing new insights for company strategy that traditional teams can't reach, automating repeatable tasks and scaling capabilities across the enterprise. The company believes that the future of work is engaged and connected employees taking advantage of the capabilities that technology provides. Its clients to date include ATOS, Nestle and Medtronic. "Project Management is integral to Enterprise," explains Chatspace CEO and founder John Clancy.

Artificial Intelligence is still a nascent technology; much of the groundbreaking work moving the industry forward is done inside AI research labs. It's often from those labs that open source projects are started. Institutes like Open AI, NASA's JPL, Google Deepmind, MIT CSAIL, BAIR, The Turing Institute, and Max Planck -- to name just a handful -- are presenting at ODSC in 2019, helping us bring our community to the leading edge of AI. To learn more about the labs' role at ODSC, visit ODSC West. Since our next conference is in San Francisco, we're looking west at a few exciting research labs in the area that are participating in ODSC this year.

Artificial Intelligence is still a nascent technology; much of the groundbreaking work moving the industry forward is done inside AI research labs. It's often from those labs that open source projects are started. Institutes like Open AI, NASA's JPL, Google Deepmind, MIT CSAIL, BAIR, The Turing Institute, and Max Planck -- to name just a handful -- are presenting at ODSC in 2019, helping us bring our community to the leading edge of AI. To learn more about the labs' role at ODSC, visit ODSC West. Since our next conference is in San Francisco, we're looking west at a few exciting research labs in the area that are participating in ODSC this year.

Governors and other state leaders who are working to help the residents of their states cope with rapid economic change recently got a better look at the challenges they face. New research by our Brookings colleagues Mark Muro, Rob Maxim, and Jacob Whiton suggested that while artificial intelligence isn't likely to eliminate millions of jobs overnight, as many as 25 percent of American workers (36 million people) face "high" exposure to task disruption in the coming decades. That exposure is more concentrated in certain states, especially in the Heartland. More worryingly, companies are accelerating their efforts to automate in order to stay competitive. The good news is that governors have substantial power to do something about it, especially if they can work in partnership with legislative leaders and a broad set of economic actors in their states.

AI, machine learning, and robotics are fundamentally changing healthcare, says Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky. "One of the most exciting parts of my job right now is to see the technology that's usually equated with California and the West Coast," said Gorsky. "Whether it's AI, machine learning or robotics, you're seeing it more and more being integrated into healthcare." One of the most exciting parts of my job right now is to see the technology that's usually equated with California and the West Coast. Whether it's AI, machine learning or robotics, you're seeing it more and more being integrated into healthcare.