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Category: robotics/AI

In the last few months, millions of people around the world stopped going into offices and started doing their jobs from home. These workers may be out of sight of managers, but they are not out of mind. The upheaval has been accompanied by a reported spike in the use of surveillance software that lets employers track what their employees are doing and how long they spend doing it.

Companies have asked remote workers to install a whole range of such tools. Hubstaff is software that records users’ keyboard strokes, mouse movements, and the websites that they visit. Time Doctor goes further, taking videos of users’ screens. It can also take a picture via webcam every 10 minutes to check that employees are at their computer. And Isaak, a tool made by UK firm Status Today, monitors interactions between employees to identify who collaborates more, combining this data with information from personnel files to identify individuals who are “change-makers.”

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Changing Course

The Air Force announced an AI initiative called “Skyborg” last March with the goal of flying fighter jets without anyone at the controls. Now, Shanahan says that the Air Force may be more interested in swarm drones and other uses for AI than necessarily taking the pilot out of a fighter plane’s cockpit.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about a 65ft-wingspan, maybe it is a small autonomous swarming capability,” Shanahan told BBC News. “The last thing I would claim is that carriers and fighters and satellites are going away in the next couple of years.”

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The current health crisis has snowballed into a world economic crisis, where every old business norm has been challenged. In such times, we cannot fall back on old ways of doing our business. Today, three technologies

Internet of Things(IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and blockchain are poised to change every aspect of enterprises and our lives. Now more than ever, organisations realise the pertinent need for a robust digital foundation for their businesses as their future plans have been disrupted. “To achieve that level of business sophistication holistically it is imperative that there is a seamless flow of data across all the functions of an enterprise. That requires connected data that is secure and one that is driven by connected intelligence,” Guruprasad Gaonkar, JAPAC SaaS Leader for ERP & Digital Supply Chain, Oracle told Moneycontrol in an interview:

How is India reacting to emerging technologies as compared to other Asia Pacific (APAC) regions?

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It turns out that you don’t need a computer to create an artificial intelligence. In fact, you don’t even need electricity.

In an extraordinary bit of left-field research, scientists from the University of Wisconsin–Madison have found a way to create artificially intelligent glass that can recognize images without any need for sensors, circuits, or even a power source — and it could one day save your phone’s battery life.

“We’re always thinking about how we provide vision for machines in the future, and imagining application specific, mission-driven technologies,” researcher Zongfu Yu said in a press release. “This changes almost everything about how we design machine vision.”

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Technology giant Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has bought a small Canadian start-up company to help it improve machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI).

Apple has purchased Waterloo, Ontario-based company Inductiv Inc., adding to more than a dozen AI-related acquisitions in recent years. Inductiv develops technology that uses AI to automate the task of identifying and correcting errors in data. Having clean data is important for machine learning, a popular and powerful type of artificial intelligence that helps software improve with less human intervention.

The engineering team from Inductiv joined Apple in recent weeks to work on Siri, machine learning and data science. The Inductiv acquisition is part of Apple’s broader machine-learning strategy. Apple has been upgrading the underlying technology that goes into the Siri digital assistant and other AI-powered products.

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Dozens of journalists have been sacked after Microsoft decided to replace them with artificial intelligence software.

Staff who maintain the news homepages on Microsoft’s MSN website and its Edge browser – used by millions of Britons every day – have been told that they will be no longer be required because robots can now do their jobs.

Around 27 individuals employed by PA Media – formerly the Press Association – were told on Thursday that they would lose their jobs in a month’s time after Microsoft decided to stop employing humans to select, edit and curate news articles on its homepages.

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Kitty Hawk is shutting down its Flyer program, the aviation startup’s inaugural moonshot to develop an ultralight electric flying car designed for anyone to use.

The company, backed by Google co-founder Larry Page and led by Sebastian Thrun, said it’s now focused on scaling up Heaviside, a sleeker, more capable (once secret) electric aircraft that is quiet, fast and can fly and land anywhere autonomously.

Kitty Hawk is laying off most of Flyer’s 70-person team, TechCrunch learned. A few employees will be brought over to work on Heaviside, according to the company. Those who are laid off will receive at least 20 weeks of pay, plus tenure, depending on how long they were with the company. Former workers will also receive their annual bonus and have their health insurance covered through the end of the year. The company said it will set up placement services to help people find employment.

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