Just about every major technology player is investing serious financial and human capital in pursuit of advances in cognitive computing. The National Science and Technology Committee on Technology released a much-anticipated report on how to prepare for the future where we have mature artificial intelligence systems. The report, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, outlines specific implications that artificial intelligence will have when it comes to transforming our society and outlines twenty-three recommendations for federal agencies to consider. Computers that think and work like humans will change the nature of our public agencies, from how they are designed and managed to the delivery of public services and the management of public goods. We have good reason to believe that there will be significant benefits to be had from cognitive computing solutions.

An ongoing internet outage appears to be spreading and taking down many of the world's biggest websites. Companies including Twitter, Netflix, PayPal and eBay appeared to have their websites broken. And other services like PlayStation Network appeared to be hit by the outage. Almost every major service that isn't part of a major internet provider seemed to be having issues. As such, Google and Facebook appeared to stay up – but almost everything else was down, according to Down Detector's dashboard. Amy Rimmer, Research Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, demonstrates the car manufacturer's Advanced Highway Assist in a Range Rover, which drives the vehicle, overtakes and can detect vehicles in the blind spot, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire Chris Burbridge, Autonomous Driving Software Engineer for Tata Motors European Technical Centre, demonstrates the car manufacturer's GLOSA V2X functionality, which is connected to the traffic lights and shares information with the driver, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire In its facilities, JAXA develop satellites and analyse their observation data, train astronauts for utilization in the Japanese Experiment Module'Kibo' of the International Space Station (ISS) and develop launch vehicles The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to the music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight.

Seeing a driver take their hands off the wheel can be enough to unnerve even the most hardened front seat passenger. But auto firm Jaguar Land Rover is looking to make this cold sweat inducing sight a common occurrence, with its autonomous driver technology. The firm is one of a trio of car makers set to trial vehicles which can'talk' to one another, drive themselves, skip red lights and even help you find a parking spot. Jaguar Land Rover is looking to make this cold sweat inducing sight a common occurrence. A trio of car manufacturers has joined with universities and tech firms to launch a three-year project to test connected and automated cars in the UK.

Cincinnati Zoo has finally re-joined Twitter, after receiving an onslaught of abuse that forced it to delete its account for two months. And it is already getting more of it. The zoo was the home of Harambe, the gorilla, who was shot earlier this year after a child fell into his enclosure. And it was that event that eventually forced it off Twitter and Facebook. While it attempted to use its account to highlight other parts of the zoo, all of its post ended up being filled with replies making reference to Harambe and holding the zoo responsible. Amy Rimmer, Research Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, demonstrates the car manufacturer's Advanced Highway Assist in a Range Rover, which drives the vehicle, overtakes and can detect vehicles in the blind spot, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire Chris Burbridge, Autonomous Driving Software Engineer for Tata Motors European Technical Centre, demonstrates the car manufacturer's GLOSA V2X functionality, which is connected to the traffic lights and shares information with the driver, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire In its facilities, JAXA develop satellites and analyse their observation data, train astronauts for utilization in the Japanese Experiment Module'Kibo' of the International Space Station (ISS) and develop launch vehicles The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to the music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight.

Does it seem like your virtual personal assistant (VPA) knows everything about your life? Microsoft's Cortana can give you reminders, track packages, send emails or texts, keep track of your flights and even remind you to say happy birthday to your cousin next time she calls. According to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, developers made deliberate design decisions with customers in mind as the company moves into the world of artificial intelligence (AI). "When it comes to AI, the fundamental vision I have is that AI will be infused into everything," Mr. Nadella said in the Mastermind Interview at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 in Orlando. "The currency going forward is going to be how to build trust in technology so that people and organizations are comfortable using more technology, and I think that's one of the pressing issues of our time," he said.

Weber Shandwick's report AI-Ready or Not: Artificial Intelligence here we come!, released this week, shows that top global marketers believe AI will have an even bigger impact on comms than social media. Gorkana asks Weber and other agencies, including Firefly, Hotwire PR and Babel, what they think about the AI'revolution'. According to Weber Shandwick's report, AI is defined as the following: "[AI] is a field of technology designed to create computers, machines and software that are as smart as humans, and which are able to perform the same tasks that normally require human intelligence." It surveyed 150 chief marketing officers across the UK, US and China and more than half of them (55%) expect AI to have'a greater impact on marketing and communications than social media ever had'. Nearly six in ten (58%) of respondents believe that within the next five years companies will need to compete in the AI space to succeed. Furthermore, 68% of the CMOs reported that their company is currently selling, using or planning for business in the AI area.

Much of the internet appears to be broken. A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack has taken down systems run by Dyn, Inc, one of the largest providers of internet services in the world. And as a result it seems to be causing problems for a variety of websites – including Reddit, Spotify and Twitter. Dyn runs domain name servers or DNS. They work as a phone book or map to the internet, making sure that when someone writes an address into their computer or phone, it can be directed to the right place and show the right information.

British physicist Professor Stephen Hawking at the inauguration of Cambridge University's artificial intelligence (AI) centre on Wednesday said that AI will either "transform" society or destroy it. "Success in creating AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilisation...but it could also be the last unless we learn how to avoid the risks," he said.

WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most secure chat platforms, according to Amnesty International. But that decision has already met with scepticism from people in the technology community, some of whom have warned that it might not be safe to use the apps at all. Amnesty gave Facebook and WhatsApp a score of 73 out of 100 – its highest – to the two apps, which it didn't distinguish between. But it particularly picked out WhatsApp, which it said was "the only app where users are explicitly warned when end-to-end encryption is not applied to a particular chat". It did have some criticism for Facebook, which doesn't apply strong encryption by default and doesn't warn users that they're not using the most secure technology.

Last Thursday, I had the honor to be one of the warmup acts for President Obama at the White House Frontiers Conference at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Here is the prepared text and slides from the talk I delivered there. As you'll see if you watch the video, what I ended up saying isn't exactly what I had written out in advance, but it is reasonably close. Let me know if you like this format for sharing talks.) Hearing that Bob Dylan just won the Nobel Prize for Literature, how could I not begin this talk with his famous line, "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"