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AI BRINGS BACK FORGOTTEN CORNER OF EUROPE

Artificial intelligence has brought back to life a forgotten part of Europe.

Researchers from the University of Bristol used artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to analyse 47,000 multilingual pages from newspapers dating back to 1873. The aim of the study, which has been published in Historical Methods, was to discover whether historical changes could be detected from the collective content of local newspapers from the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca.

The findings revealed a series of political and cultural events which took place in a forgotten corner of the Austrian Empire that is now divided between Italy and Slovenia, some of which were unknown.

A team of computer scientists and a historian digitised microfilms of old multilingual newspapers from the County between 1873 to 1914. The images were then converted to text. The patterns that emerged from the automated analysis of 47,000 pages revealed the individual stories of thousands of people, but also the collective trends of a population in the years leading up to WW1 and the final years of that Empire.

Professor

Cristianini, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and lead author of the study, said: “Importantly, we get a glimpse in the last years of a world heading towards a new chapter in its history and during a period that transformed it beyond recognition. We see new technologies, new ideas, new economic opportunities, new cultural challenges and problems.”

ROBO DOGS COULD BEFOR SALE NEXT YEAR

Robo dogs that mimic real canines (they can open doors, and walk up and down stairs), could be on sale as early as next year.

Marc Raibert, the CEO of Boston Dynamics which has developed the agile dogs, said that they are designed initially for commercial office environments and then for the home. The robo dogs navigate using sophisticated motion detection software, not ‘true’ artificial intelligence. One of the main problems with the dogs is that the battery life is a meagre 90 minutes. Meaning that Fido is going to have to take a large number of breaks throughout the day.

SHERPA PROJECT LAUNCH

Representatives of 11 different organisations (from academia, industry, civil society, standards bodies and ethics committees) from six European countries met recently in Brussels to launch the EU-funded SHERPA project.

The project will examine how smart information systems (SIS - the combination of artificial intelligence and big data analytics) impact ethics and human rights.

“Artificial intelligence and big data analytics bring a variety of benefits to society, but at the same time have the potential to disrupt society, ethical

values and human rights, and life as we know it”, said Bernd Stahl, Director of the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility, De Montfort University and co-ordinator of the SHERPA project. “The EU-funded SHERPA project examines these issues and is working to enhance the responsible development of such technologies.”

ROBOT MARTY WORKS AT TENNESSEE GROCERY STORE

The small US town of La Follette, Tennessee might not be the centre of the robotics universe, but one of its stores has taken on a robot helper called Marty. Developed in Lexington, Kentucky,

by Badger Technologies, Marty operates in Food Lion, primarily doing runs around the store to check for out-of-stock products, making sure items are priced properly and keeping an eye-open for trip hazards.

SELF-DRIVINGMINIVAN

Self-driving car accidents continue to hit the headlines.

Notable amongst the recent stories were a Google owned vehicle and a Tesla car.

First up was self-driving minivan, a Pacifica, which was involved in a crash in Arizona. The vehicle belongs to Waymo, Google’s selfdriving car unit, and the crash looked

serious in bodywork terms. Humans only received minor injuries.

But, there seems to be disagreement between whether the car was in manual, or autonomous mode.

Second was a Tesla car which allegedly hit a police car whilst using Autopilot mode. The driver suffered some minor injuries. When interviewed by police, the

driver apparently insisted that the car was using the auto-mode functions. The crash made Tesla issue a statement which included: “When using Autopilot, drivers are continuously reminded of their responsibility to keep their hands on the wheel." It’s unclear what mode the car was in when it crashed.

Elon Musk may have a point when he laments that when an autonomous car crashes, its national news, but the fact that some thousands are killed in the US in manually driven cars barely gets a mention.

He said in a recent tweet: "It's super messed up that a Tesla crash resulting in a broken ankle is front page news and the ~40,000 people who died in US auto accidents alone in past year get almost no coverage."

DELIVERY BOTS ARE IN VOGUE

Delivery robots which handle the ‘last mile’ are all the vogue currently, with companies desperate to grab a piece of the action.

The approach varies between companies. Many think that sophisticated machines such as

walking robots are the answer; others that low-cost, basic machines are the better solution.

Starship Technologies and latterly, Alibaba think the latter approach is the best. Agility Robotics, a start-up based in Oregon, believe that the sophisticated approach is the way forward. They build robots that can walk and run.

The company’s two-legged robot, which goes by the name of Cassie, is being sold to research and development

teams. One major use for the robots, which will eventually have arms, is to deliver parcels and goods to people’s homes.

Interestingly, the technology for Agility grew out of research that co-founder and CTO Jonathan Hurst completed at the Dynamic Robotics Laboratory, located in Oregon State University. Agility was created in November 2015 and recently it raised $8m in venture funding from Playground Global, Sony Innovation Fund and Robotics Hub.

The battle for the last mile between simple and complex machines is likely to go on for some years.

IT GIANTS CHASING AI

The IT giants are racing to invest-in and acquire cutting-edge artificial intelligence startups and scaleups.

So says a new report from Hampleton Partners, the international technology M&A advisory firm.

According to the latest Mergers & Acquisitions Market Report on Artificial Intelligence which has just been published, the world’s major IT players such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Intel, Facebook, Twitter and Salesforce are intent on acquiring AI assets.

The report reveals that the three key AI sub-sectors - machine data analysis, natural language processing and machine vision - have all shown impressive growth rates over the past 24 months, but it is the machine data analysis category that is attracting most buyers, with half of all deals (49%).