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IBM's Watson AI saved a woman from leukemia
IBM's Watson has done everything from winning at Jeopardy to cooking exotic meals, but it appears to have accomplished its greatest feat yet: saving a life. University of Tokyo doctors report that the artificial intelligence diagnosed a 60-year-old woman's rare form of leukemia that had been incorrectly identified months earlier. The analytical machine took just 10 minutes to compare the patient's genetic changes with a database of 20 million cancer research papers, delivering an accurate diagnosis and leading to proper treatment that had proven elusive. Watson has also identified another rare form of leukemia in another patient, the university says.
Google used DeepMind AI to cut its power bill
Google's grand experiment in using artificial intelligence to save power is paying off. The search firm's Demis Hassabis tells Bloomberg that the DeepMind AI has cut electricity use at Google data centers by "several percentage points" thanks to its extra-efficient use of equipment, such as cooling systems and windows. It's not certain just how much energy the smart code is saving, but Google used slightly over 4.4 gigawatt-hours in 2014 alone -- even a small dent in that consumption could easily save hundreds of millions of dollars. That pricey DeepMind acquisition is likely paying for itself.
AI is being used to brew beer in the UK
Brewers have a lot of tools at their disposal when it comes to brewing beer: hops, yeast, grain and loads of equipment. One brewery in the UK is employing AI to perfect its recipes though, and it claims it's the first to do so. IntelligentX Brewing Company is a collaborative effort between machine learning company Intelligent Layer and creative agency 10x. Together the two companies created algorithms that process consumer feedback as a means of helping brewers improve their beers.
AI lawyer shoots down 160,000 parking tickets
Who said that chat bots were gimmicks? Certainly not DoNotPay's Joshua Browder. He recently noted to VentureBeat that his service's AI-driven virtual lawyer has successfully contested 160,000 parking tickets in London and New York City in nearly 2 years of service, saving drivers millions in the process. It's not the most complicated bot, as it's really just asking simple questions about the circumstances of the ticket and walking you through the appeal. However, it's both effective (it successfully challenged 64 percent of tickets) and, importantly, free -- you don't have to pay a real lawyer to dish out advice.
Combat AI beats the Air Force's top tactical experts
A new artificial intelligence flight combat system dubbed ALPHA has taken on one of the Air Force's top tactical experts and won. Retired USAF Colonel Gene Lee -- an experienced combat instructor with "considerable fighter aircraft expertise" -- was repeatedly shot down during engagements with ALPHA in a high-fidelity air combat simulation. Lee called his computerized opponent "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible AI I've seen to date."
Google's Deepmind AI will play Go against the world number one
After it beat Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol by four games to one earlier this year, Google's AlphaGo has become the Go player to beat. Even while the series was still being played, 18-year-old Chinese Go champion Ke Jie remarked that he could beat Google's Deepmind computer. Now he has his chance. At the 37th World Amateur Go Championship in Chinese city of Wuxi this weekend, a spokesman for the Chinese Go Association revealed that representatives have been in contact with the team behind AlphaGo and will set up a match before the end of the year.
AI that picked Oscar winners could predict the next US president
There's strength -- and intelligence -- in numbers. Unanimous A.I., a Silicon Valley startup, has built a platform that taps into the collective knowledge of a group of people to form its own opinions, preferences and surprisingly accurate predictions. The software, dubbed UNU, successfully guessed last year's Oscar winners (11 out of 15 categories) and most recently predicted the winning horses in the Kentucky Derby. Now the "artificial swarm intelligence" is hosting its first AMA on Reddit, where it will respond to questions pertaining to the US presidential elections.
Fujitsu's AI can help catch criminals on the run
When it's not being an austere provider of corporate IT services, Fujitsu likes to try its hand at a little bit of mad science. The latest project to come out of the firm's labs is an artificial intelligence that'll assign police units to specific locations during large-scale manhunts. Given that cities are large and there are never enough police around, the idea is to co-ordinate their efforts using big data and game theory. The only downside to all of this is that we might have seen the end of the bellowing police chief screaming orders at maverick cops with nothing to lose.
