Federal agencies should be individually exploring how artificial intelligence could improve their operations, a White House report suggests. Agencies should consider building "DARPA-like organizations" for "high-risk, high-reward AI research and its application" in government, said the report, which outlined opportunities and challenges for the technology. The report was released Wednesday, months after the White House hosted a series of public workshops, including one focused on AI applications for social good. That document incorporated discussions from the workshops, and recommended the Executive Office of the President publish a second report by the yearend to delve deeper into the effects of AI on the U.S. job market and outline recommended policy responses. The White House recommended federal agencies prioritize open training data and open data standards for artificial intelligence so those systems could be trained to analyze government data sets.

A UK parliamentary committee has urged the government to act proactively -- and to act now -- to tackle "a host of social, ethical and legal questions" arising from growing usage of autonomous technologies such as artificial intelligence. "While it is too soon to set down sector-wide regulations for this nascent field, it is vital that careful scrutiny of the ethical, legal and societal dimensions of artificially intelligent systems begins now," says the committee. "Not only would this help to ensure that the UK remains focused on developing'socially beneficial' AI systems, it would also represent an important step towards fostering public dialogue about, and trust in, such systems over time." The committee kicked off an enquiry into AI and robotics this March, going on to take 67 written submissions and hear from 12 witnesses in person, in addition to visiting Google DeepMind's London office. Publishing its report into robotics and AI today, the Science and Technology committee flags up several issues that it says need "serious, ongoing consideration" -- including: "[W]itnesses were clear that the ethical and legal matters raised by AI deserved attention now and that suitable governance frameworks were needed," it notes in the report.

IMAGE: Brown researchers have trained a computer algorithm to spot in laboratory samples a cellular transition associated with more aggressive cancers. Brown University researchers have developed a new image analysis technique to distinguish two key cancer cell types associated with tumor progression. The approach could help in pre-clinical screening of cancer drugs and shed light on a cellular metamorphosis that is associated with more malignant and drug-resistant cancers. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition, or EMT, is a process by which more docile epithelial cells transform into more aggressive mesenchymal cells. Tumors with higher numbers of mesenchymal cells are often more malignant and more resistant to drug therapies.

Just one day after announcing his plans to get humans to Mars by the 2030s, President Obama's thoughts on artificial intelligence have been revealed. According to the president, AI has been'seeping into our lives' for some time, even in ways we don't notice – and while there are many potential benefits that come with the technology, there may be grim consequences as well. The rise of'specialized AI' could deepen income inequality and make low-skilled employees become redundant in the workforce, Obama warned in an interview with Wired, and advanced, self-teaching algorithms could pose threats to the stock exchange and national security. According to the president, AI has been'seeping into our lives' for some time, even in ways we don't notice – and while there are many potential benefits that come with the technology, there may be grim consequences as well The White House has released a report and strategic plan regarding future directions and considerations for AI. The report, entitled Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, examines the current state of AI, along with its applications both now and in the future, and outlines a series of recommendations to ensure safe use.

British lawmakers want more transparency and less bias in decision-making -- not their own, of course, but in decisions made by AI systems. As more and more software systems and connected devices employ artificial intelligence technologies to make decisions for their owners, the lawmakers want to know what's behind their thinking. The U.K. Parliament's Science and Technology Committee has been studying the need for more regulation in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence. Recent advances in AI technology raise a host of social, ethical and legal questions, the committee's members said in a report published Wednesday. We need, they said, to think about whether transparency in decisions made by AI systems is important; whether it's possible to minimise bias being accidentally built into them; and how we might verify that such technology is operating as intended and will not lead to unwanted or unpredictable behaviors.

Artificial-intelligence systems can do increasingly complex tasks but they can't yet figure much out on their own without help from humans. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers at Alphabet Inc.'s Google DeepMind describe experimental software that they say gets closer to that goal and could be more accurate and less costly than current systems. "There's a lot of things it could be used for," he said. One obvious future application is "chatbots," software that answers questions autonomously, he said. The new DeepMind prototype couples so-called artificial neural networks -- which are widely used for image and speech recognition -- with an external memory.

IBM (NYSE:IBM) has a lot of moving parts, and a vociferous crowd of critics. In the process of analysis, it's easy to be overwhelmed by complexity, or sidetracked into refuting mindless attacks by the ill-informed. In the interest of simplicity, this article focuses on hard evidence of the company's progress in exploiting the developing market for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or Cognitive Computing. The quarterly and annual financial results provide segment information, to include year over year revenue growth and pre-tax margins. Looking at 2Q 2016, Cognitive Solutions at 4.4% is the only segment showing growth, and at 27.5% the second highest (after Global Financing) in pre-tax margins.

Brown University researchers have developed a new image analysis technique to distinguish two key cancer cell types associated with tumor progression. The approach could help in pre-clinical screening of cancer drugs and shed light on a cellular metamorphosis that is associated with more malignant and drug-resistant cancers. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition, or EMT, is a process by which more docile epithelial cells transform into more aggressive mesenchymal cells. Tumors with higher numbers of mesenchymal cells are often more malignant and more resistant to drug therapies. The new technique combines microscopic imaging with a machine learning algorithm to better identify and distinguish between the two cell types in laboratory samples.

Google scientists have created a computer program that uses basic reasoning to learn to navigate the London Underground system by itself. The same Artificial Intelligence (AI) agent could also answer questions about the content of snippets of stories and work out family relationships by looking at a family tree. Scientists predict that in future a similar approach could pave the way for virtual assistants that would be able to instantaneously scour the internet to answer questions and carry out instructions with precision. Herbert Jaegar, a computer scientist at the University of Bremen, said: "I think this can be described as rational reasoning. They [the tasks] involve planning and structuring information into chunks and re-combining them."

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display