Neil deGrasse Tyson shares Musk’s view that AI is ‘our biggest existential crisis’

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Legendary astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson shares the view of Tesla founder Elon Musk that AI poses mankind’s “biggest existential crisis”.

Musk made his now-infamous comment during the South by Southwest tech conference in Austin, Texas last year as part of a call for regulation. Musk warned: “I think that’s the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one.”

A year later, Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked what he believes to be the...

4 October 2019 | Ethics

Project FARM: AI will help to ensure you can still get your coffee fix

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Coffee farmers will receive some welcome assistance from AI on managing their crops amid tough conditions and growing demand.

European researchers from Capgemini have developed a platform called Project FARM (Financial and Agricultural Recommendation Models) which aims to boost farmers’ yield, optimise the value chain, and bolster the global food supply.

Project FARM is first going to be used in Kenya to assist coffee farmers. The platform was built in collaboration...

2 October 2019 | Agriculture

Pope Francis warns AI risks a ‘regression to a form of barbarism’

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Pope Francis has weighed in on AI and issued a stark warning that failing to consider the moral and ethical implications could lead to a form of barbarism.

Speaking during a Vatican conference last week titled 'The Common Good in the Digital Age,' the pope was joined by theologians, academics, and tech executives such as Mozilla co-founder Mitchell Baker and Facebook's director of cybersecurity law Gavin Corn.

Pope Francis said at the conference:

"The...

1 October 2019 | Ethics

Researchers explain how AI can help people with bipolar disorder

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Two professors explain how artificial intelligence can help to improve the lives of individuals living with bipolar disorder.

Melvin McInnis, professor of bipolar disorder and depression, and Emily Mower Provost, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, are working on an AI system to help unlock deeper insights about individual bipolar sufferers.

Speaking on a panel titled "Artificial Intelligence, Personalized Technology, and Mental Health" at...

30 September 2019 | Healthcare

Alibaba unveils Hanguang 800 AI inference chip to speed-up ML tasks

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Alibaba Group has introduced its first AI inference chip called ‘Hanguang 800’ which performs machine-learning tasks efficiently and quickly.

The neural processing unit is already being used to power features on Alibaba’s e-commerce sites, including product search and personalised recommendations. The Hanguang 800 will be made available to Alibaba Cloud customers at a later stage.

According to Alibaba, its ecommerce website Taobao previously took an hour to...

26 September 2019 | Hardware

British PM Johnson warns of AI’s dangers in UN speech and invites leaders to summit

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson used his maiden speech at the UN to warn of the dangers of AI and invite world leaders to a UK summit.

Johnson opened his speech going over some of the usual things he says would be expected of a British PM: advancing democratic values, rules of a peaceful world, protecting freedom of navigation at sea, and finding a “two-state” solution to the conflict in the Middle-East.

“Of course, I’m proud to do all these things,” says...

25 September 2019 | Government

Cisco partners with decentralised AI blockchain firm SingularityNET

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Cisco has established a partnership with blockchain firm SingularityNET to explore decentralised artificial intelligence.

The partners are specifically looking at artificial general intelligence (AGI) technologies which aim to replicate the complex tasks of which humans are capable.

AGI is considered a step above standard AI because it aims to add human-like reasoning capabilities in uncertain scenarios. Such processing will enable AGIs to do things like solve puzzles...

24 September 2019 | AGI

Microsoft chief Brad Smith warns that killer robots are ‘unstoppable’

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Microsoft chief Brad Smith issued a warning over the weekend that killer robots are ‘unstoppable’ and a new digital Geneva Convention is required.

Most sci-fi fans will think of Terminator when they hear of killer robots. In the classic film series, a rogue military AI called Skynet gained self-awareness after spreading to millions of servers around the world. Concluding that humans would attempt to shut it down, Skynet sought to exterminate all of mankind in the interest of...

23 September 2019 | Ethics

Huawei announces its own AI assistant as it prepares for Google-less life

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Huawei has announced its own AI-powered assistant during a launch event in Munich as it prepares for life without Google’s services.

Due to US trade restrictions, Huawei is losing access to Google’s services. The new Mate 30 smartphones announced in Munich today will launch with the open-source Android, but it will not feature the Play Store, Gmail, YouTube, Google Pay, or the many other services which Western consumers are used to.

Among the features that will be...

19 September 2019 | Huawei

Facebook will teach its AI to spot shootings using videos of UK police firearms training

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Facebook is using videos of British police firearms training to teach an AI to quickly spot shootings broadcast on its platform and limit their exposure.

Live-streaming poses a very modern but serious problem. As evident with the white supremacist attack in Christchurch in March, live-streams of terrorism can quickly go viral and taking down videos manually is often a slow process.

Automation can step-in to help identify and remove content to prevent terrorists from...

18 September 2019 | Law Enforcement