At last week's White House Frontiers Conference, President Obama outlined a vision for the development of AI: A plan that involves the collaboration of the US government. The event, co-hosted by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, was the first of its kind. Earlier that week, the White House had unveiled a report--Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence--which outlined how the government can be involved in researching, developing, and regulating future technologies. So how well does the American president understand AI? And how powerful will these policies be?

Gartner, Inc. today highlighted the top technology trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2017. Analysts presented their findings during the sold-out Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, which is taking place here through Thursday. Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with substantial disruptive potential that is just beginning to break out of an emerging state into broader impact and use or which are rapidly growing trends with a high degree of volatility reaching tipping points over the next five years. "Gartner's top 10 strategic technology trends for 2017 set the stage for the Intelligent Digital Mesh," said David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "The first three embrace'Intelligence Everywhere,' how data science technologies and approaches are evolving to include advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence allowing the creation of intelligent physical and software-based systems that are programmed to learn and adapt. The next three trends focus on the digital world and how the physical and digital worlds are becoming more intertwined. The last four trends focus on the mesh of platforms and services needed to deliver the intelligent digital mesh."

Summary: Here's some background on how 3rd generation Spiking Neural Nets are progressing and news about a first commercial rollout. Recently we wrote about the development of AI and neural nets beyond the second generation Convolutional and Recurrent Neural Nets (CNNs / RNNs) which have come on so strong and dominate the current conversation about deep learning. Our research shows that the next generation of neural nets is most likely to be led by Spiking Neural Nets (SNNs) that are a return to the'strong' AI tradition and closely mimic actual brain function. Unlike CNNs that fire signals to every one of their deep layer connections every time, SNNs are modeled after the fact that in the brain neurons do not constantly communicate with one another. Rather they communicate in spikes of signals or more correctly short trains of spiking signals.

The Pixel XL is the first Android phone to deliver an emphatic, cohesive, surprise-and-delight experience. Samsung and the other Android phone makers have tried to give users something magical before, but they never quite made fetch happen. Even Google itself has toyed with a unified software/hardware gestalt via its Nexus phones, but those devices could sometimes feel like stripped-down vessels for disconnected software services. But in the Pixel XL we finally have an Android phone that directly competes with the iPhone in terms of holistic design. For this we can thank Google Assistant, which serves as a central entry point for all the Google services I've been using daily since I switched from the iPhone in 2014. It really ties the room together.

Columnist Ed Baig reviews Pixel, which features the high-IQ Google Assistant and a competitive, high-end smartphone camera. NEW YORK--Google's new Pixel phones should be on a smartphone shopper's shortlist -- and not just for those disheartened by Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 recall. Pixel is a winner for anyone looking for an excellent phone. Start with cameras that are at the very least on par with the terrific cameras on the Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 that represent its main competition. Add the baked-in voice-enabled Google Assistant, Google's answer to Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Alexa, where another battleground is poised to take place.

A rover headed for the red planet will perform an unprecedented search for rocky remnants of dead Martians--so where should we send it? Fossil stromatolites, like this one from Bolivia, offer clues to the kinds of preserved life we may find on Mars. Nearly four billion years ago, when Earth was coming alive, Mars was gradually choking to death. The thick atmosphere that had warmed the red planet was leaking into space, and plummeting temperatures caused Martian lakes and rivers to freeze, turning the wet surface into a dry wasteland. But it's possible life took root in those early years.

Driven by a declining population, a trend for developing robotic babies has emerged in Japan as a means of encouraging couples to become'parents'. The approaches taken vary widely and are driven by different philosophical approaches that also beg a number of questions, not least whether these robo-tots will achieve the aim of their creators. To understand all of this it is worth exploring the reasons behind the need to promote population growth in Japan. The new Kirobo Mini robot from Toyota (pictured) can't do much but chatter in a high-pitched voice, but supposedly has the smarts of a five-year-old Studies have found that humans and robots can share a'high degree of bonding,' especially with social robots that have a human-like appearance. But, humans may find certain realistic human qualities unappealing.

Driven by a declining population, a trend for developing robotic babies has emerged in Japan as a means of encouraging couples to become "parents". The approaches taken vary widely and are driven by different philosophical approaches that also beg a number of questions, not least whether these robo-tots will achieve the aim of their creators. To understand all of this it is worth exploring the reasons behind the need to promote population growth in Japan. The issue stems from the disproportionate number of older people. Predictions from the UN suggest that by 2050 there will be about double the number of people living in Japan in the 70-plus age range compared to those aged 15-30.

Building a quantum computer has been called the'space race of the 21st century' – a difficult and ambitious challenge, with the potential to deliver revolutionary tools. Now an invention by engineers in Australia may have brought us one step closer to achieving the goal. The team designed a new kind of quantum bit, which can retain information for 10 times longer than ever previously achieved. The new quantum bit, known as a'dressed qubit' has been designed by researchers at the University of New South Wales, and is made up of the spin of a single atom in silicon, merged with an electromagnetic field (artist's impression) Quantum computing takes advantage of the ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at any time. In traditional computers, data is expressed in one of two states – known as binary bits – which are either a 1 or a 0. But quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits.

Days after German regulators asked Tesla Motors to stop branding their vehicles as having "Autopilot" driver assistance systems, Dutch officials are concerned with the labeling, Reuters reported Monday. However, it is unclear whether they will also ask the automaker to rename the service. German officials raised their concerns with the naming over the weekend, saying in a letter to the automaker that, in "order to prevent misunderstanding and incorrect customers' expectations, we demand that the misleading term'autopilot' is no longer used in advertising the system." The German transport ministry also wrote a letter to Tesla owners to remind them to remain vigilant and attentive even while using the autopilot feature. "Tesla's autopilot operates in conjunction with the human driver to make driving safer and less stressful. This is how the term has been used for decades in aerospace: to denote a support system that operates under the direct supervision of a human pilot," a Tesla spokesperson later told Ars Technica.