Your Essentials Guide to Artificial Intelligence – September Part III

Artificial Intelligence is an often overused yet little understood term in popular culture, evoking visions of a machine dominated world. The reality, however, is far from that – AI is not a disruptive element as it is frequently portrayed to be. It’s creating more job opportunities than it is taking away. Most importantly, it is aiding a wide variety of technological advances. The following news articles reflect how tech giants are pushing AI research forward and how different industries are benefiting from it.
Google Opens an AI Research Lab in Bengaluru to Advance Computer Science Research in India
At its recent annual event, Google for India announced that it is setting up a research lab in India which will focus on Artificial Intelligence and its applications in India. This research lab will be based in India’s tech capital, Bangalore and will be headed by a renowned scientist and ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) fellow, Dr Manish Gupta. The research activities will centre around applying AIML technologies in healthcare, agriculture and education. This lab is expected to help millions of people in the country who do not have access to quality healthcare or education, apart from taking the AI pledges forward.
Samsung Electronics is Actively Investing in Artificial Intelligence in Seven Countries
In a Samsung Newsroom interview recently, Gary Geunbae Lee, Senior Vice President and Head of Samsung Research’s AI Center in Seoul, revealed AI insights that are driving their centres in South Korea (Seoul), the U.S. (Silicon Valley and New York), the U.K. (Cambridge), Canada (Toronto and Montreal) and Russia (Moscow). These centres focus on various facets of AI, ranging from computer vision to language understanding, data analysis, robotics and more. The company aims to fuse AI functionalities with its products to present consumers with more smart solutions. AI ethical compliance is also a key focus area for Samsung, as it believes that AI can cause serious social problems if mishandled and abused.
Microsoft And Qualcomm Debut Their Vision AI Developer Kit  
Microsoft and Qualcomm have come together to build their debut Vision AI Developer Kit for computer vision applications. This platform uses Microsoft Azure ML and Azure IoT Edge platforms to run AI models locally or in the cloud. The hardware uses Qualcomm Snapdragon 603 chip and LDDR4X memory. 
Artificial Intelligence Used to Recognize Primate Faces in The Wild
Studying primitive species like Chimpanzees who have complex social lives can lead to many sociological discoveries but long-term research on primates is often hindered by low lighting, poor image quality and motion blur. Scientists at the University of Oxford are using AI software to recognise and monitor wildlife activities. These AI inputs are expected to aid research and cut down on expenses.
AI Technology is Creating Real Value Across Industries
“AI—like any technology in history—is neutral, it’s what we do with it that counts, so it’s our responsibility, as an AI ecosystem, to drive it in the right direction.” – Says Affectiva CEO Rana el Kaliouby. Affectiva is one of the 50 companies featured in the Forbes list of promising artificial intelligence companies. The founders of all of these companies think that AI has been held in a bad light for way too long, whereas in reality, it’s only as beneficial as we make it. On the other hand, founders also feel that we have inflated expectations from AI, which is after all, not as intelligent as a pattern-matching system. 
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