Artificial intelligence (AI) is a game-changing technology that is affecting all our lives and shaping our future. In the latest ISOfocus issue, we debunk the AI myths, explore the opportunities and explain why globally relevant standards are key. Are killer robots about to take over the world? Mention artificial intelligence to the average person today and this is one of the many scary scenarios that spring to mind. Perhaps this is no surprise when you consider how AI is the technology that enables computers to think and act like human beings.

In any normal year, Cambridge Analytica would have been the biggest story. Facebook alone had a royal flush of scandals, including a huge data breach in September, becoming the subject of multiple class action lawsuits for discrimination, accusations of inciting ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, potential violations of the Fair Housing Act, and hosting masses of fake Russian accounts. Throughout the year, Facebook executives were frequently summoned to testify, with Mark Zuckerberg himself facing the US Senate in April and the European Parliament in May. News broke in March that Google was building AI systems for the Department of Defense's drone surveillance program, Project Maven. The news kicked off an unprecedented wave of tech worker organizing and dissent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a megatrend that the industry will continue to talk about for the next 20 years. So said Brian Burke, chief of research at Gartner, who presented the top 10 strategic technology trends for 2019 on day three of the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Cape Town this morning. Burke said technology is continuing to advance. It is these advancements that underpin Gartner's "Continuous Next" operating philosophy. "AI is going to underlie pretty much everything that we do in technology." Every year, Gartner puts together a list of what it considers to be the most impactful technology trends for organisations.

When researchers at University of Washington pulled together a clip of a faked speech by President Obama using video segments of the President's earlier speeches run through artificial intelligence, we watched with a queasy feeling. The combination wasn't perfect – we could still see some seams and stitches showing – but it was good enough to paint a vision of the future. Soon we would not be able to trust our own eyes and ears. Now the researchers at University of Washington (who clearly seem intent on ruining our society) have developed the next level of AI visual wizardry – fake people good enough to fool real people. As reported recently in Wired Magazine, the professors embarked on a Turing beauty contest, generating thousands of virtual faces that look like they are alive today, but aren't.

One of the bigger trends in enterprise software has been the emergence of startups building tools to make the benefits of artificial intelligence technology more accessible to non-tech companies. Today, one that has built a platform to apply power of machine learning and natural language processing to massive documents of unstructured data has closed a round of funding as it finds strong demand for its approach. Eigen Technologies, a London-based startup whose machine learning engine helps banks and other businesses that need to extract information and insights from large and complex documents like contracts, is today announcing that it has raised $37 million in funding, a Series B that values the company at around $150 million – $180 million. The round was led by Lakestar and Dawn Capital, with Temasek and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity (which co-led its Series A) also participating. Eigen has now raised $55 million in total.

Juniper Networks rolled out Mist's artificial intelligence (AI) engine across wired and wireless networks today to kick off its annual Nxtwork event. It's the first step in what Juniper calls the "AI-driven enterprise" that will use AI and automation to troubleshoot and self-correct across the entire IT environment. "For that we mean wireless access, wired access, and ultimately data centers as well as SD-WAN with a security overlay on top of that," said Jeff Aaron, VP of enterprise marketing at Juniper Networks. Juniper acquired wireless LAN startup Mist Systems for $405 million earlier this year. In addition to the wireless technology, the deal gave Juniper an in-house AI engine.

The issues of ethical development and deployment of applications using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is rife with nuance and complexity. Because humans are diverse -- different genders, races, values and cultural norms -- AI algorithms and automated processes won't work with equal acceptance or effectiveness for everyone worldwide. What most people agree upon is that these technologies should be used to improve the human condition. There are many AI success stories with positive outcomes in fields from healthcare to education to transportation. But there have also been unexpected problems with several AI applications including facial recognition and unintended bias in numerous others.

During the day the EC representatives will present the details of the calls for proposals, euRobotics will provide additional information, including presentations on the existing Digital Innovation Hubs, and the proposers will have the possibility to present their project ideas or expertise to the audience, offering them an excellent networking opportunity to complement their consortium, or to join a consortium. Registration is free of charge, but mandatory to get access to the venue. Please have a look at the programme. You can also follow the event via live webstreaming. The recoding will be available after a few days.

The third edition of DataHack Summit organised by Analytics Vidhya is going on in Bengaluru to highlight the latest trends, state of the art developments and machine learning frameworks to democratize AI for everyone. The four-day summit, which kicked off yesterday, has been a strategic platform for industries and technologies worldwide to understand and leverage the latest innovations and the impact they have on our businesses and daily lives. The first day of the conference witnessed 20 sessions by leading AI experts like Eric Weber (ListReports), Mathangi Sri (PhonePe), Ujjyaini Mitra (Zee5), Dr Vikas Agrawal (Oracle Analytics Cloud), Abhishek Khanna, Jayatu Sen Chaudhury (American Express) et al. including 8 live hack sessions by Sudalai Rajkumar (H2O.ai), The panel had Kunal Jain (Analytics Vidhya), Dr Om Deshmukh (Yodlee), AviPatchava (Bright Money), Eric Weber (List Reports) and Tarry Singh (DeepKapha.ai, Kunal Jain, Founder and CEO, Analytics Vidhya, said, "It's exciting to see more than 1000 passionate data science professionals from diverse industries and domains (more than 500 organizations) coming together and building a vibrant Data Science ecosystem in India. Think of this group as a think tank powering hundreds of banks, every ecommerce player and travel portal in the country building algorithms to improve customer experience and deliver business value."

You know how Google says you can't "fix" your way back to position one? That seems unhelpful but it's actually useful. It helps one understand what not to waste time on. In my opinion, based on my experience, once you know what not to focus on, it will help you understand more productive areas to focus on. According to Google, fixing things won't help you recover.