Artificial intelligence has not yet confronted a crisis like the showdown between the USSR and the U.S. in Cuba. By and large, AI has provided us with amazingly beneficial tools. "Learning algorithms" on our digital devices extract patterns from data to influence what we buy, watch and read. On a grander scale, AI helps doctors detect and treat diseases, opens new markets and improves productivity for business, and creates data sets and models that address critical issues related to education, energy and the environment.

The practical application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by banks and financial service providers will be a hot topic in 2018. While seemingly a recent development, banks have in fact deployed AI to improve efficiency and lower costs for well over two decades. Starting with the use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) disciplines across several banking processes in the 1990s, the emergence of big-data and cloud computing drove the adoption of additional Machine Learning capabilities by banks. Robo advisors and fraud detection are two recent examples of AI applications in banking. Inflection Point Despite the long history of AI deployment, we are now at an inflection point in the transformation of banking.

A professor of ethics and technology has told scientists and policymakers that digital technology like artificial intelligence'desperately' need to be regulated using an institutional framework and system of values. "People are becoming aware that this digital age is not neutral," he said. "It is presented to us mainly by big corporations who want to make some profit." Van den Hoven, a member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE), said: "We need to think about governance, inspection, monitoring, testing, certification, classification, standardisation, education, all of these things. We need to desperately, and very quickly, help ourselves to it."

Business magnate Elon Musk enters the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion & The Catholic Imagination Costume Institute Gala at The Metropolitan Museum on May 07, 2018 in New York City. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Tesla CEO Elon Musk were invited to sign a 350-year-old book in London last Friday. The Royal Society, which aims to promote excellence in science, is the world's oldest independent scientific academy. The Charter Book dates back to 1663 and contains the signature of every Royal Society fellow and member. Over the years, the book has been signed by scientists such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Alan Turing, David Attenborough, and Tim Berners-Lee.

There are many reasons England did not reach the World Cup final this year. There are myriad factors which contributed to Croatia stopping football coming home. I could probably spend a while talking about Harry Kane's missed opportunity, Modric's masterclass or general fatigue setting in during Extra Time. Instead, working at a technology company, I spoke with our AI Department Skunkworx and they took the opportunity to look at things from a different perspective. After using their machine-learning tools to analyse data from every world cup game ever, they presented me with multiple patterns.

Most people find it a pain to receive parcels between wide time slots like 8am and 5pm, so when delivery startup Paack offered a service where everyone could narrow that window down to one hour, with no extra charge, it had a challenge on its hands. The startup's routing engine worked but needed to be more efficient. Enter Prowler.io, a Cambridge, UK-based machine-learning startup that bills itself as a decision-making platform for any company with complex problems to solve. Paack's investor at Balderton in London introduced it to Prowler in February 2018 and within months, its delivery vans and trucks were being coordinated by an intelligent, digital simulation. With the beta test over, Paack's CEO Fernando Benito sees a potential benefit to his bottom line. Some of his startup's deliveries are now 15% more efficient, he tells Forbes.

Cognitive Robotic Process Automation is the next step in the evolution of robotic process automation trends. Many of the leading robotic process automation companies are already eyeing the big shift towards the cognitive automation. Cognitive robotic process automation is basically a combination of robotic process automation and Data Analytics, which together make it easy and effective to manage processes that are information-intensive, in an intelligent and efficient manner. By that definition, it is a marriage between artificial intelligence and cognitive computing methods. By incorporating artificial intelligence, cognitive automation broadens the scope and depth of actions that would typically be associated with RPA.

Porsche is undoubtedly one of the most high-tech car companies out there. The Stuttgart brand has got tech hubs worldwide that serve as incubators for start-ups at the cutting edge. This latest development is really taking things a step further. According to Porsche, it's developed an artificial intelligence platform that recognizes noises and vibrations to determine potential problems in production equipment. This latest development stems from a collaboration with the start-up iNDTact and the Porsche Design Lab in Berlin.

LISTEN carefully to the footsteps in the family home, especially if it has wooden floors unmuffled by carpets, and you can probably work out who it is that is walking about. The features most commonly used to identify people are faces, voices, finger prints and retinal scans. But their "behavioural biometrics", such as the way they walk, are also giveaways. Researchers have, for several years, used video cameras and computers to analyse people's gaits, and are now quite good at it. But translating such knowledge into a practical identification system can be tricky--especially if that system is supposed to be covert.

A terror network established in south Wales is now suspected to have been a much more elaborate and sophisticated operation. BBC Wales Investigates reveals the complex web which began with the arrival in Pontypridd of a "vulnerable looking" computer engineering student. In late December 2015 a uniformed Pentagon spokesman, Colonel Steve Warren, made a video announcement about "Operation Inherent Resolve", the US military's campaign against so-called the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. The spokesman gave details about 10 senior IS figures who had been targeted and killed, many in drone strikes, over the course of the month. "We are striking at the head of this snake by hunting down and killing ISIS leaders," declared the US army spokesman. Among those killed was Siful Sujan, a Bangladeshi national who was targeted near Raqqa in Syria on 10 December.