The saying goes: "If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much space". And compute itself is now moving to the edge, forcing datacentre operators to wring the last drops of productivity from their infrastructure, ahead of a future supporting multi-sensor internet of things (IoT) devices over 5G for machine learning, and even artificial intelligence (AI). Jennifer Cooke, research director of cloud-to-edge datacentre trends at IDC, says datacentre operators need to start thinking about how many systems they will need to roll out, and the people they will need to support them. "Cost becomes the prohibitive factor," she says. Edge will take different forms.

MI5's deputy head will take the top job at the spy agency next month promising a sharper focus on China and to work more closely with the private sector in harnessing artificial intelligence in tackling hostile state and terrorist activity. Ken McCallum, a career MI5 officer, has been the agency's deputy director general since April 2017 and was seen by insiders as the heir apparent at an organisation that prides itself on internal appointments to its leading position. The Glaswegian is the youngest ever boss of MI5, although the organisation will only say he is "in his 40s" – and replaces Sir Andrew Parker, who had been due to step down in April after seven years as the director general in charge of the the UK's domestic security service. His appointment was announced by the home secretary, Priti Patel, on Monday. "MI5's purpose is hugely motivating," McCallum said.

Mixing quantum computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) may sound like a new buzzword. However, since quantum computing advances are hinting at profound changes in the very notions of computation, it is natural to reexamine various branches of computer science in the light of these disruptions. As usual, before entering the quantum realm, it is important to get an overview of the classical world. Artificial Intelligence is difficult to define. Probably because intelligence, by itself, is difficult to define.

Let's take a detailed look. This is the most common form of AI that you'd find in the market now. These Artificial Intelligence systems are designed to solve one single problem and would be able to execute a single task really well. By definition, they have narrow capabilities, like recommending a product for an e-commerce user or predicting the weather.This is the only kind of Artificial Intelligence that exists today. They're able to come close to human functioning in very specific contexts, and even surpass them in many instances, but only excelling in very controlled environments with a limited set of parameters. AGI is still a theoretical concept. It's defined as AI which has a human-level of cognitive function, across a wide variety of domains such as language processing, image processing, computational functioning and reasoning and so on.

Facial recognition is arguably the most talked-about technology within the artificial intelligence landscape due to its wide range of applications and biased outputs. Several countries are adopting this technology for surveillance purposes, most notably China and India. Both are among the first countries to make use of this technology on a large scale. Even the EU has pulled back from banning this technology for some years and has left it for the countries to decide. This will increase the demand for professionals who can develop solutions around facial recognition technology to simplify life and make operations efficient. Data science influencer Andrew Ng, along with teaching assistants from Stanford University, have devised a course that includes neural style transfer which enables working with facial images effectively.

Autonomous technology continues to make an impact on the supply chain. The autonomous supply chain, applies to moving goods without human intervention (to some degree at least) or aiding in achieving inventory accuracy. One of the more interesting examples is the Belgian brewery De Halve Maan, which in an effort to reduce congestion on the city streets, built a beer pipeline under the streets. The pipeline is capable of carrying 1,500 gallons of beer an hour at 12 mph to a bottling facility two miles away. Autonomous technology is seen in warehouses and stores, on highways and in mines, and in last mile deliveries.

Like many agencies, the Census Bureau looks for reductions in expenses and workloads when it makes decisions about machine learning. But the agency has discovered another advantage in the technology: It can find data that employees never knew they needed. More than 100 different surveys are handled by siloed programs within the Census Bureau, and the capture, instrumentation, processing and summation of the resulting data is "really hard to manage," said Zachary Whitman, chief data officer, at an AFCEA Bethesda event Wednesday, The bureau's dissemination branch exports data in a consolidated system where discovery and preparation is "difficult" for employees, Whitman said. So the agency is piloting ML that flags valuable information employees may not have even been searching for originally. "How do you get people to translate into information they might not know about but would be very valuable to them?" Whitman said.

IBM will make its Watson artificial intelligence software available for free, so government agencies, businesses, universities and healthcare institutions can use intelligent bots to answer citizens' queries about the unfolding COVID-19 crisis. The software will be available for free for at least 90 days, meaning organisations can use it to create chatbots to alleviate demand and waiting times on customer service phone numbers. IBM's Watson AI software will be free for organisations to create customer service bots, which can talk to people about their COVID-19 queries. The free service is already being used by organisations in the US and across Europe and the company said it could be added into existing mobile phone apps, or online apps such as the newly released Australian government's, to provide information and advice about the pandemic. In a statement IBM's general manager of data and AI Rob Thomas said it was putting years of experience in helping businesses use natural language processing, out into the market for use.

A few years ago, when researchers successfully demonstrated the use of augmented reality (AR) to treat PTSD by examining which parts of the brain it impacted, no one would have thought that scientists would be able to able to use artificial intelligence (AI) to turn brain activity to text. According to The Guardian, scientists at the University of California (UC) have been able to do so using electrode arrays implanted in the brain. Although the results are not too revolutionary, and AI commits mistakes more often than not, the fact that this is now possible is an achievement in itself. While, in the AR experiment, scientists were looking at which part of the brain gets impacted by certain images and videos to decode neural response, in the UC experiment, AI converted brain activity to numbers related to aspects of speech. The AI, with great difficulty, could only do this for the 50 sentences in which it was trained.

Chances are you've already encountered, more than a few times, truly frightening predictions about artificial intelligence and its implications for the future of humankind. The machines are coming and they want your job, at a minimum. Scary stories are easy to find in all the erudite places where the tech visionaries of Silicon Valley and Seattle, the cosmopolitan elite of New York City, and the policy wonks of Washington, DC, converge--TED talks, Davos, ideas festivals, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, The New York Times, Hollywood films, South by Southwest, Burning Man. The brilliant innovator Elon Musk and the genius theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking have been two of the most quotable and influential purveyors of these AI predictions. AI poses "an existential threat" to civilization, Elon Musk warned a gathering of governors in Rhode Island one summer's day.