The U.S. federal government is the most prepared among 160 nations to use artificial intelligence in the public services they provide, according to a report released this week by London-based consultancy Oxford Insights. The annual report, called the 2021 Government AI Readiness Index, rates countries based on 42 indicators--including software spending and industry investment in emerging technologies--across three pillars: government, technology sector, and data and infrastructure. Buoyed by the unrivaled maturity of its technology sector, the U.S. topped the rankings, followed by Singapore, which topped the government pillar due to its digital capacity. The United Kingdom, Finland and the Netherlands finished third, fourth and fifth, respectively. "Governments stand to gain from the vast applications of recent developments in AI," said Richard Stirling, CEO and co-founder of Oxford Insights. "Those governments who take a strategic approach to harnessing AI within government and promoting their national AI sector are likely to see the greatest benefits.

Fox Business Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on FoxBusiness.com. "May you live in interesting times," goes the old Chinese curse. When it comes to economics, "interesting" usually means the sky is falling. Inflation reached seven percent at the end of 2021, a rate not seen in forty years.

Research suggests that many more women could benefit from targeted breast cancer treatments – we just need to find them.

Something a little more unusual in this blog post as we are going to be exploring how Artificial Intelligence can be a tool that we can use to help and support people, of any age with additional needs or disabilities, in our churches. "Technology has changed the world, bringing knowledge within reach and expanding a range of opportunities. Persons with disabilities can benefit enormously from such advances, yet too many lack access to these essential tools…" So, has anything changed since then? And what does today's Artificial Intelligence, or'AI', offer as technological solutions for disabled people, particularly in our church settings? What can we learn about'AI' together, that can enable us to better serve and support disabled people in our church communities?

Unless the intelligence community changes the way it defines intelligence and adopts cloud computing, it will wind up behind adversaries, private interests, and even the public in knowing what might happen, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Intelligence collection to predict broad geopolitical and military events has historically been the job of well-funded and expertly staffed government agencies like the CIA or the NSA. But, the report argues, the same institutional elements that allowed the government to create those agencies are now slowing them down in a time of large publicly-available datasets and enterprise cloud capabilities. The report, scheduled to be released Wednesday, looks at a hypothetical "open-source, cloud-based, AI-enabled reporting," or OSCAR, tool for the intelligence community, a tool that could help the community much more rapidly detect and act on clues about major geopolitical or security events. The report lists the various procedural, bureaucratic, and cultural barriers within the intelligence community that block its development and use by U.S. spy agencies.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology has become a critical disruptor in almost every industry and banking is no exception. The introduction of AI in banking apps and services has made the sector more customer-centric and technologically relevant. AI-based systems can help banks reduce costs by increasing productivity and making decisions based on information unfathomable to a human agent. Also, intelligent algorithms are able to spot anomalies and fraudulent information in a matter of seconds. A report by Business Insider suggests that nearly 80% of banks are aware of the potential benefits that AI presents to their sector. Another report suggests that by 2023, banks are projected to save $447 billion by using AI apps.

A year ago French president Emmanuel Macron announced plans to provide a framework for his nation's industrial and research forces to make the country a key player in the development of quantum technology. The "Quantum Plan" included an investment of €1.8 billion ($2 billion) over five years--a significant increase that placed France third after the United States and China. That included nearly €800 million for computers alone. The sector has already experienced significant growth, with patent filings doubling between 2018 and 2020, according to data and analytics company GlobalData. It is believed that the technology could potentially revolutionize areas of defense such as artificial intelligence (AI), enabling autonomous vehicles and improved targeting for precision weapons systems.

Our previous blog posts, Artificial Intelligence as the Inventor of Life Sciences Patents? and Update on Artificial Intelligence: Court Rules that AI Cannot Qualify As "Inventor," discuss recent inventorship issues surrounding AI and its implications for life sciences innovations. Continuing our series, we now look at the appeal recently filed by Stephen Thaler ("Thaler") in his quest to obtain a patent for an invention created by AI in the absence of a traditional human inventor. As we previously reported, on September 3, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that an AI machine cannot qualify as an "inventor" under the Patent Act, in a case that Thaler filed seeking, among other things, an order compelling the USPTO to reinstate his patent applications. Those patent applications name an AI system called "Device for Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience" aka "DABUS," as the sole inventor. Thaler, who developed DABUS, remains the owner of any patent rights stemming from these applications.

The benefits of analytics are well-documented. Analytics has helped organisations transform retail experiences, map pathways for trains and trucks, discover extraterrestrial life, and even predict diseases. However, over the past few years, organisations across the globe have wrestled with just how much human error has permeated their analytics attempts, often ending with disastrous results. From crashing spacecraft to sinking ships, transferring billions of dollars to unintended recipients, and causing deaths due to overdose of medication, human error in data analysis has far-reaching ramifications for organisations. The reason for human error in data analysis could be many, such as lack of experience, fatigue or loss of attention, lack of knowledge, or the all-too-common biases in interpreting data. However, what's common among these errors is that they are related to humans reading, processing, analysing, and interpreting data.

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman has departed Google after an eight-year stint at the company. Suleyman co-founded AI giant DeepMind alongside Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg in 2010 before it was acquired by Google in 2014 for $500 million. DeepMind has become somewhat of an AI darling and has repeatedly made headlines for creating neural networks that have beat human capabilities in a range of games. DeepMind's AlphaGo even beat Go world champion Lee Sedol in a five-game match. He left for Google in 2019 and was most recently the company's vice president of AI product management and policy.