In October, French forces were training Kurdish fighters outside the Iraqi town of Dohuk when a drone crashed to the ground. As they inspected the device, it exploded, killing two Kurdish soldiers and wounding many others. A Kurdish official later reported that the drone had been "booby-trapped" with a bomb disguised as a battery case. Former Rep. Jane Harman is the director, president and CEO of the Wilson Center. She served nine terms in Congress, representing the aerospace center of California.

It's been an unusual year in tech: Apart from maybe Snapchat's elusive Spectacles, there hasn't been a truly game-changing, mass-market piece of technology that's totally dominated the conversation. Instead, the biggest companies in tech, especially Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, spent their 2016 hyping up something a little more abstract: their ongoing quests to build a so-called "general artificial intelligence," and all the extra smarts they're adding to the product while they're at it. If you ask the biggest tech companies in the world, the rise of artificial intelligence is just as big a deal, if not more so, than the transition from desktop PCs to mobile computing. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, a very vocal fan of AI, has said that he envisions a world in which every user gets their own personal Google. Facebook and Microsoft, too, have made a big point of showing how artificial intelligence is improving their own apps, enabling stuff (like helping you design better PowerPoints) that would never have been otherwise possible.

How to survive the age of Artificial Intelligence? Part 2: "World urban population will double in 2050. So, what should be done? With an exploding world population increasingly becoming urban, new technologies like AI threatening the job market, what should we do? I've read up multiple blogs and articles available out there and couldn't figure out a clear answer – most of them stopped at scaremongering. So, here's an attempt to start finding the solutions. These in no way are concrete solutions, but I see it as a start for ideas and thoughts. As I write this blog, sweeping changes are being made in the world political scene. Donald Trump is the president-elect of USA, Theresa May is busy finding solutions to wriggle out of the BREXIT mess, Modi with one stroke of an executive order has demonetized a major chunk of currencies (Rs) in India. The common theme is CHANGE. We need similar sweeping changes in our policies to be prepared for the future. Future work for humans is not heavy lifting, but creative. Our policies should start focusing on "How could a driver earn his living in the near future?", "How could they contribute to knowledge & creativity?", not "How many unskilled workers got trained as plumbers?" What are they going to do & how will they survive. Does our current rote-based learning system prepare them for future? Focus should be on improving basic needs at rural areas and discourage urbanisation. Policies should also focus on de-urbanisation, like "How to incentivise skilled people like doctors, teachers etc to move to rural areas?" Let's only hope this becomes mainstream policies (like Paris climate agreement). Voters should start demanding action from the elected representatives and start probing on their thoughts. Cost of treating the damage to environment (e.g., air & water pollution) and humans (e.g., depression, medicare) will prove to be very costly. Do we leave everything to our policy makers? We could also start with small changes. Atleast for workers in the knowledge industry this flexibility exists. Learning new skills is going to be very critical in the coming years. There are business & social opportunities in skill development & education. Read part-1 of the series: Why smart city is a dumb strategy? Read part-2 of the series: "World urban population will double in 2050.

Predictions 2017: Infosys "We have made enormous leaps forward" Will adoption of Smart machines become mainstream in 2020? Stay up-to-date on the topics you care about. We'll send you an email alert whenever a news article matches your alert term. It's free, and you can add new alerts at any time.

Predictions 2017: Infosys "We have made enormous leaps forward" Stay up-to-date on the topics you care about. We'll send you an email alert whenever a news article matches your alert term. It's free, and you can add new alerts at any time.

A withering factory town in the rust belt is looking for revival through a dose of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "robot revolution." Kadoma's population in Osaka Prefecture has shrunk 13 percent as the nation ages, prompting mergers among elementary schools and emergency services departments. Factories can't find enough people to run assembly lines, further threatening an industrial base that includes titan Panasonic Corp. and smaller businesses like Izumo Co., a maker of industrial rubber. Yet Izumo President Tsutomu Otsubo doesn't believe the solution involves finding more people. He'd rather find more machines to do the work so his company can capitalize on Abe's plan to quadruple Japan's robotics sector into a ¥2.4 trillion ($20 billion) industry by 2020. "We want to create a mass-production system run by robots and tap into the global market," said Otsubo, in the prefabricated office that's tacked to the side of his aging factory.

Researchers and engineers from BMW are working at IBM's Munich headquarters for its Watson Internet of Things (IoT) technology. They'll help develop IBM's Watson cognitive system for integration into automotive products, which will be able to learn from the physical world and pass intelligence back to it. BMW is Read More ... Tags: Computer systems Vehicle Manufacturers BMW AG Cars Artificial intelligence IBM and BMW Are Using the Watson A.I. to Give Smart Cars More Personality BM and BMW announced Thursday that they have teamed up to figure out how Watson, the A.I. most famous for winning Jeopardy! in 2011, could be used to make driving better. Could this finally make KITT from Knight Rider a reality? The companies said they want to explore the potential of Watson "personalizing the driving experience and creating more intuitive driver support systems for cars of the future." That sounds Read More ... Tags: Vehicle Manufacturers BMW AG Cars Driverless Cars Car Types As if the BMW X6 wasn't already one of the sportiest and most aggressive-looking SUVs (SACs) in the world, this particular one on display at the automaker's Abu Dhabi showroom is taking things even further.

What better way to create a movie trailer about an artificially enhanced human than to use the reality behind the premise; artificial intelligence (AI). That's just what a partnership between IBM Research and 20th Century Fox recently set out to do, when they used machine learning techniques to produce what they described as the "first ever cognitive movie trailer." You'll have to judge the merits of the result yourself, but what is beyond doubt is this is just one example of the many ways AI and machine learning techniques are already changing the face of the entertainment industry. It's only makes sense that creative industries are leading the pack when it comes to the adoption of and experimentation with AI. Media, entertainment, and advertising are all the on the cutting edge when it comes to the adoption of AI and machine learning.

OTTAWA, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Canada's BlackBerry Ltd will open an autonomous driving research center on Monday, as it tries to make itself an indispensable under-the-hood piece of the automotive industry's weaponry in the self-driving vehicle arms race. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend the launch by the Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone pioneer, the prime minister's office said on Sunday. A Blackberry spokeswoman deferred any comment on the project until Monday. Blackberry, once known for its phones but now betting its future on the more profitable business of making software and managing mobile devices after largely ceding the smartphone market to the likes of Apple and Samsung, is expanding subsidiary QNX's Ottawa facility to focus on developing advanced driver assistance and autonomous vehicle technology. After a detour where QNX's industrial-focused software was used to reinvent the now-discarded BlackBerry phone operating system, BlackBerry is focused on how its embedded software interacts with the explosion of sensors, cameras and other components required for a car to drive itself.

Could AWS Be the Right Choice for IoT and Machine Learning? 'Hark' the herald robots sing H5N6 Bird Flu Strain Spreads to Be S. Korea's Worst AI Outbreak Stay up-to-date on the topics you care about. We'll send you an email alert whenever a news article matches your alert term. It's free, and you can add new alerts at any time.