In the coming decade, I expect that AI will play an increasingly prominent role in the lives of people everywhere. AI-infused services will become more common, and AI will become increasingly embedded in the daily lives of people across the world. I believe that this will bring with it great economic and societal benefits, but that it will also require us to address the many challenges to ensure that the benefits are broadly shared and that people are not marginalised by these new technologies. A key insight of AI research is that it is easier to build things than to understand why they work. However, defining what success looks like for an AI application is not straightforward.

In the near term, Defense Information Systems Agency officials plan to strategically employ artificial intelligence capabilities for defensive cyber operations. "First of all, the threat has never been higher. It's also been commoditized: Malware has become commercialized as essentially organized crime on an international scale," Deputy Commander of the Joint Force Headquarters-Department of Defense Information Network Rear Adm. William Chase III, told reporters during a media roundtable last week. "So, one of the first questions we have to ask ourselves is: 'What are we actually vulnerable to?'" The press event was associated with DISA's Forecast to Industry and the release of its strategic plan for 2022 through 2024.

NASA is exploring a concept for a new fleet of mini-rovers that can work together to solve problems and make decisions as a unit. If one fails or gets stuck somewhere, the others could carry on without it. As part of the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration (CADRE) project, NASA engineers are designing compact, mobile robots the size of a shoebox (for comparison, Perseverance is the size of a small SUV) to autonomously explore the moon and other planets. These rovers will operate as a group to collect data in hard-to-reach places like craters and caves. In a demonstration mission expected in the next few years, CADRE's mini-rovers will explore the moon's massive lava tubes--areas where the top layer of soil has solidified, but lava still flows beneath.

On September 15 2021, the UN issued a statement that AI must not interfere with human rights. This isn't a new sentiment - last year, a similar pronouncement was issued: Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights chief is calling for a moratorium on the use of artificial intelligence technology that poses a serious risk to human rights, including face-scanning systems that track people in public spaces. It also said Wednesday that countries should expressly ban AI applications which don't comply with international human rights law. As part of its work on technology and human rights, the UN Human Rights Office has today published a report that analyses how AI – including profiling, automated decision-making and other machine-learning technologies – affects people's right to privacy and other rights, including the rights to health, education, freedom of movement, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and freedom of expression. Applications that should be prohibited include government "social scoring" systems that judge people based on their behavior and certain AI-based tools that categorize people into clusters such as by ethnicity or gender.

Managing risks from poor-quality AI is too important to leave purely to technical specialists. An organization-wide perspective is needed. As the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) continues at pace across industries, there is increasing awareness of the risks it can pose. Recent high-profile examples have highlighted the risk of unjust bias regarding race and gender, such as those found in some law enforcement or recruitment algorithms. Other examples have highlighted the reputational risk from poorly communicated AI use cases, such as an online insurer's recent claims of using facial emotion recognition to detect fraud.

The US health and medical insurance industry is a $1.1-trillion maze that is impossible to navigate. And in the bigger scenario of a massive $11-trillion-plus global healthcare industry, America is definitely not first. Americans are fed up, and a digital revolution that goes way beyond telemedicine is the only thing that will restore control. Mentioned in today's commentary includes: Sage Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SAGE), Cassava Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: SAVA), COMPASS Pathways plc (NASDAQ: CMPS), Neuronetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: STIM), Acadia Healthcare Company, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACHC). Fixing it is a highly disruptive, multi-trillion-dollar opportunity.

Amazon's squadron of delivery drones was supposed to be in full flight by now. And the fall of 2021 would have been an opportune time to have little automated flying machines delivering packages to customers--what with all the trouble human workers are causing around the country with strikes and labor shortages. Amazon announced an experimental drone delivery service with great fanfare as part of a 60 Minutes feature in 2013. Amazon's promise was quite remarkable: Your packages--containing anything from toothpaste to a new smartphone--would arrive right at your doorstep (or on your lawn) by way of a drone that lands, drops your parcel and flies away. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's then-CEO, said in the televised segment that it would likely take "four to five years" to turn the "R&D project" into a reality.

The European Union has developed an artificial intelligence strategy to simplify research and rules and regulations. The European Union's approach to this new technology is to implement a legal framework to address fundamental rights and safety risks. It plans to implement rules to address liability issues. It also plans to revise the sectoral safety legislation and modify the rules and regulations. The new framework grants developers, deployers, and users a certain amount of clarity if it becomes necessary for them to intervene if legislation does not cover the issues.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has called for "a bill of rights" to protect Americans in what is becoming "an AI-powered world." The concerns about AI are well-known and well-founded: that it will violate privacy and compromise transparency, and that biased input data will yield biased outcomes, including in fields essential to individual and societal flourishing such as medicine, law enforcement, hiring and loans. But AI will compel even more fundamental change: It will challenge the primacy of human reason. For all of history, humans have sought to understand reality and our role in it. Since the Enlightenment, we have considered our reason--our ability to investigate, understand and elaborate--our primary means of explaining the world, and by explaining it, contributing to it.

Stakeholders in the Nigerian maritime industry have identified deeper application of technology as a way to achieving an efficient port system in Nigeria. At a recent one-day Town Hall Meeting on Hitch Free Port Operations in Nigeria organised by JournalNG in Lagos, they urged the federal government to consider applying the Webb Port system being used in neighbouring Benin Republic. While making a presentation at the event, Managing Director of Webb Fontaine Nigeria Limited, Ope Babalola disclosed that his company has assisted Benin Republic in achieving ICT port system that harmonised the country's interests through a single transaction. According to him, the system has helped in saving time, producing more accurate results, protecting government revenue and facilitating trade. Tankian Coulibaly an official from Webb Fontaine in Benin Republic said his company helped in Beninois government to set up a port community integration system called Webb Port.