Every week, we at Analytics India Magazine aggregate the most important news stories that affect the AI/ML industry. Lets take a look at all the top news stories that took place recently. The following paragraphs summarise the news, and you can click on the hyperlinks for the full coverage.

This was one of the biggest news of the week for all data scientists and ML enthusiasts. arXiv, the most comprehensive repository of research papers, has recently stated that they are offering a free and open pipeline of its dataset, with all the relevant features like article titles, authors, categories, abstracts, full-text PDFs, and more. Now, with the machine-readable dataset of 1.7 million articles, the Kaggle community would benefit tremendously from the rich corpus of information.

The objective of the move is to promote developments in fields such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. arXiv hopes that Kaggle users can further drive the boundaries of this innovation using its knowledge base, and it can be a new outlet for the research community to collaborate on machine learning innovation. arXiv has functioned as the knowledge hub for public and research communities by providing open access to scholarly articles.

The India Meteorological Department (IMD) is aiming to use artificial intelligence in weather forecasting. The use of AI here is particularly focused on issuing nowcasts, which can help in almost real-time (3-6 hours) prediction of drastic weather episodes; the Director-General Mrutunjay Mohapatra said last week. In this regard, IMD has invited research firms to evaluate how AI is of value to enhance weather forecasting.

Weather forecasting has typically been done by physical models of the atmosphere, which are uncertain to perturbations, and therefore are erroneous for significant periods. Since machine learning methods are more robust against perturbations, researchers have been investigating their application in weather forecasting to produce more precise weather predictions for substantial periods of time. Artificial intelligence helps in understanding past weather models, and this can make decision-making faster, Mohapatra said.

PyCaret- the open-source low-code machine learning library in Python has come up with the new version PyCaret 2.0. The design and simplicity of PyCaret is inspired by the emerging role of citizen data scientists and users who can perform both simple and moderately sophisticated analytical tasks that would previously have required more expertise.

The latest release aims to reduce the hypothesis to insights cycle time in an ML experiment and enables data scientists to perform end-to-end experiments quickly and efficiently. Some major updates in the new release of PyCaret include features like Logging back-end, Modular Automation, Command Line Interface (CLI), GPU enabled training, and Parallel Processing.

Global manufacture of mobile devices and technology solutions company Nokia said it would set up a robotics lab at Indian Institute of Science to drive research on use cases on 5G and emerging technologies. The lab will be hosted by Nokia Center of Excellence for Networked Robotics and serve as an interdisciplinary laboratory which will power socially relevant use cases across areas like disaster and emergency management, farming and manufacturing automation.

Apart from research activity, the lab will also promote engagement among ecosystem partners and startups in generating end-to-end use cases. This will also include Nokia student fellowships which will be granted to select IISC students that engage in the advancement of innovative use cases.

Julia recently launched its new version. The launch introduces many new features and performance enhancements for users. Some of the new features and updates include Struct layout and allocation optimisations, multithreading API stabilisation & improvements, Per-module optimisation levels, latency improvements, making Pkg Protocol the default, Automated rr-based bug reports and more.

It has also brought about some impressive algorithmic improvements for some popular cases such as generating normally-distributed double-precision floats.

In an important update relating to the technology infrastructure, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) may soon launch a national policy framework for building data centres across India. Keeping in sync with the demands of Indias burgeoning digital sector, the data centre national framework will make it easy for companies to establish hardware necessary to support the rising data workloads, and support business continuity.

The data centre policy framework will focus on the usage of renewable power, state-level subsidy in electricity costs for data centres, and easing other regulations for companies. According to a report, the national framework will boost the data centre industry in India and facilitate a single-window clearance for approvals. Read more here.

A new commission has been formed by Oxford University to advise world leaders on effective ways to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning in public administration and governance.

The Oxford Commission on AI and Good Governance (OxCAIGG) will bring together academics, technology experts and policymakers to analyse the AI implementation and procurement challenges faced by governments around the world. Led by the Oxford Internet Institute, the Commission will make recommendations on how AI-related tools can be adapted and adopted by policymakers for good governance now and in the near future. The report outlines four significant challenges relating to AI development and application that need to be overcome for AI to be put to work for good governance and leverage it as a force for good in government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The University of Oxford has partnered with Atos to build the UKs AI-focused supercomputer. The AI supercomputer will be built on the Nvidia DGX SuperPOD architecture and comprises 63 nodes. The deal with Atos has cost 5 million ($6.5 million) and is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Joint Academic Data Science Endeavor, a consortium of 20 universities and the Turing Institute.

Known as JADE2, the AI supercomputer aims to build on the success of the current JADE^1 facility a national resource in the United Kingdom, which provides advanced GPU computing capabilities to AI and machine learning experts.

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Vishal Chawla is a senior tech journalist at Analytics India Magazine and writes about AI, data analytics, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and blockchain. Vishal also hosts AIM's video podcast called Simulated Reality- featuring tech leaders, AI experts, and innovative startups of India. Reach out at vishal.chawla@analyticsindiamag.com

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Julia and PyCaret Latest Versions, arXiv on Kaggle, UK's AI Supercomputer And More In This Week's Top AI News - Analytics India Magazine