The National Artificial Intelligence Research Institutes is launching today to fund $200 million in grants over the coming years, which shall go towards benefiting society. "Sustained R&D investments are needed to advance trust in AI systems to ensure they meet society's needs" Building trustworthy AI is at the top of the funding priorities for the new program led by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and supported by a whole bunch of government agencies and their many acronyms. Together, these six areas shall prove to have a profound impact on our lives in the future -- from the management of our food supply to curing and preventing diseases and making giant leaps in our understanding of our place in the cosmos. "Sustained R&D investments are needed to advance trust in AI systems to ensure they meet society's needs and adequately address requirements for robustness, fairness, explainability, and security," according to the National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan: 2019 Update. NSF Director France Cordova stated, "Advances in AI are progressing rapidly and demonstrating the potential to transform our lives.

When being empathetic is your full-time job, burning out is only human. Few people are more aware of this than customer service representatives, who are tasked with approaching each conversation with energy and compassion -- whether it's their first call of the day or their 60th. It's their job to make even the most difficult customer feel understood and respected while still providing them accurate information. But over the last few years, an unlikely aide has come forward: artificial intelligence tools designed to help people tap into and maintain "human" characteristics like empathy and compassion. One of these tools is a platform called Cogito, named for the famous Descartes philosophy Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am").

I cover AI and future trends for a living. One overreaching theme I've noticed is how AI is being used not to augment people, but to weaponize their data against them. Businesses across almost every industry deploy artificial intelligence to make jobs simpler for staff and tasks easier for consumers. But that doesn't tell the whole story. Indeed unbridled adoption of AI won't just result in job losses, but data purgatory, and an internet that feels more like slavery than education and freedom.

In the center of Seattle-based food-tech company Picnic's 8,000-square-foot lab, an automated assembly line consists of a conveyor belt propped upon a metal base. To demonstrate the production, a Picnic worker places a pre-made 16-inch circle of pizza dough into the first module. A form of artificial intelligence (AI) called deep learning uses numerous layers of mathematical formulas to process and assess the size, dimensions and placement of the pizza on the belt, and to adjust the the module lighting so a computer-vision camera can properly see it. The pizza chugs along to a series of modules where a small hose evenly squirts tomato sauce over the dough, then a tray dispenses cheese, followed by a spray of pepperoni and ham. The pizza completes its journey through the automated assembly line in a little over a minute. The finished product glistens golden brown when it emerges from the oven.

The world's top technology and business leaders gather this week in Yerevan, Armenia for the 23rd World Congress on Information Technology. WCIT is organized by the World Information Technology & Services Alliance, the Consortium of ICT associations of 83 countries representing 90 percent of the industry. Running for 40 years, the WCIT is one of the oldest and most prestigious ICT events in the world that brings together CEOs, investors, policy makers, government officials, academics, and technologists to discuss the current state of the industry as well as where it is going. This year, WCIT has focused its attention on the Power of Decentralization: Promise and Peril. During the congress, held from 6 to 9 October at the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concert Complex, ICT leaders will explore how information and communications technology (ICT) is transforming the world and our lives, both for better and for worse.

Fox News Flash top headlines for Oct. 8 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com Exploding enemy targets with precision artillery, "lasing" ground targets for drone air attack and waging close-combat urban warfare with hand-carried small arms -- are all scenarios entertained recently in high-tech virtual training wargame designed to closely replicate anticipated future warfare. The exercise, intended to virtually "create" high-threat, multi-domain modern warfare, was intended to move the Army closer to its goal of engineering a new "force-on-force" mobile training technology designed to prepare soldiers for the risks and perils of a new kind of war. "This was a computer-based simulation down to the individual model -- using real-time data and responding in a real-world manner," Col. Chris Cassibry, Maneuver Capabilities Development and Integration Directorate's Concepts Development Division director, recently told reporters.

Python leads as a top machine learning solution – thanks largely to its extensive battery of powerful open source machine learning libraries. Python provides a great way for machine learning newcomers to begin their hands-on practice, or for experienced practitioners to augment their growing battery of tools. Python's popularity has recently grown even further since it is the most common way to access leading deep learning solutions such as TensorFlow. Note that this workshop day does not cover deep learning, since it serves first-time users by covering a broader, foundational range of traditional machine learning methods. However, this training does provide helpful groundwork for the "Hands-On Deep Learning in the Cloud" workshop scheduled for later in the same week.

This can be the case when discussing Artificial Intelligence with CEO's who haven't yet correlated their own business processes with artificial intelligence and machine learning. Investment discussions are going to take the buy-in from senior leadership, champions, and YOUR PITCH to get movement within your company, so it's best to prepare yourself with an arsenal of resources that you can align to your designated industry and deliver your best pitch. Do you only talk benefits and show lengthy PowerPoint slides that are too tactical for today's modern CEO to grasp? Here are some ways you can learn to adjust your language to theirs and speak to them in a way, so they can digest the concept of Artificial Intelligence and the proposed opportunity as it pertains to your industry. Be succinct and be poignant.

During the 2017 project pilot phase, the Carton Council provided MRFs with grants to purchase and work with AMP to install carton-sorting robots. The first was at Alpine Waste & Recycling in Colorado, followed soon after by one at Dem-Con Companies in Minnesota. Past the pilot phase, the robots are now ready for prime time and there have been growing numbers of installations in the U.S. and Canada. This summer, another carton-sorting robot was installed at Single Stream Recyclers in Sarasota, Florida, along with several robots to sort other valuable materials and help to reduce contamination. With arms and grippers that can pick materials out of the recycling stream faster and with a higher rate of accuracy than their human counterparts, these robots utilize a vision centre with a camera that allows for monitoring materials as they pass through on a conveyer belt.

I cover AI and future trends for a living. One overreaching theme I've noticed is how AI is being used not to augment people, but to weaponize their data against them. This is going to be a long read, and it's because I feel a bit passionate about this topic. The debate over free-speech this week related to the Hong Kong protests signals no trade war resolution will take place since a cold tech war also is about information wars and basic freedom of speech. As companies with billion-dollar market caps like Microsoft, Apple and Google cave into creating censorship products, we all lose and begin to enter a potential data-based Neo-Fascism era of control and surveillance.