Within Korea University, the School of Electrical Engineering's Intelligent Signal Processing Lab (ISPL), headed by Professor Ko Hanseok, specializes in both image and speech processing.

CNN: The story

The zero emission taxis have been developed by a consortium, led by Intelligent Energy, which includes Lotus Engineering, London Taxis International and TRW Conekt with part-funding from the UK Government's Technology Strategy Board.

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In the AI optimist camp, futurist and Google director of engineering Ray Kurzweil also sees intelligent machines precipitating human extinction, of a sort, only in Kurzweil's telling, humanity is not exterminated but subsumed into a superintelligent machine.

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But beyond the results, Pellegrini comes across as intelligent, educated (he has a degree in civil engineering) and charismatic, in a statesmanlike sort of way.

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