MIT researchers have created the first fabric-fiber to have digital capabilities, ready to collect, store and analyze data using a neural network. In a first, the digital fiber contains memory, temperature sensors, and a trained neural network program for inferring physical activity. MIT researchers have created the first fiber with digital capabilities, able to sense, store, analyze, and infer activity after being sewn into a shirt. Yoel Fink, who is a professor of material sciences and electrical engineering, a Research Laboratory of Electronics principal investigator, and the senior author on the study, says digital fibers expand the possibilities for fabrics to uncover the context of hidden patterns in the human body that could be used for physical performance monitoring, medical inference, and early disease detection. Or, you might someday store your wedding music in the gown you wore on the big day -- more on that later.

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to improve governance in terms of accountability, citizen engagement and interoperability. The Indian government has been cottoning on to the benefits of AI since the turn of the last decade. In 2020, the Centre increased the outlay for Digital India to $477 million to boost AI, IoT, big data, cybersecurity, machine learning and robotics. In the 2019 Union Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government would offer industry-relevant skill training for 10 million youth in India in AI, Big Data and robotics. However, there is still a lot of scope for not only the Indian government.

Owing to COVID-19, enterprises have experienced significant disruption. While remote working has kept businesses afloat – it has also increased the surface for cyber attackers, which has led to massive network security risks as it makes an organization vulnerable to cyber threats. In the enterprise world, privacy and safety of customers' data is crucial. Hence, businesses need to focus on adopting a comprehensive cybersecurity architecture. And, this is where artificial intelligence comes under the spotlight.

As US businesses begin to emerge from Covid, many are now facing a labor shortage crisis. After nearly 18 months of being locked down and vaccination rates increase, Americans are heading out in droves to their favorite restaurants, bars, and retail establishments. While this is a positive sign, it's presenting a big problem for businesses across the country as they struggle to keep up with the surge in demand. According to a May 6th, 2021 Department of Labor Report, 16.2 million are claiming unemployment benefits. Not all news is negative.

Over the past several decades, artificial intelligence has advanced tremendously, and today it promises new opportunities for more accurate healthcare, enhanced national security and more effective education, researchers say. How do increased computing power and machine learning help create safer, more sustainable and resilient infrastructure? U.S. National Science Foundation-funded researchers at the Computational Modeling and Simulation Center, or SimCenter, have developed a suite of tools called BRAILS -- short for Building Recognition using AI at Large-Scale -- that can automatically identify characteristics of buildings in a city and detect the risks a city's structures would face in the event of an earthquake, hurricane or tsunami. SimCenter is part of the NSF-funded Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure program and serves as a computational modeling and simulation center for natural hazards engineering researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Charles Wang, the lead developer of BRAILS, says the project grew out of a need to "quickly and reliably characterize the structures in a city. We want to simulate the impact of hazards on all the buildings in a region, but we don't have a description of the building attributes."

Kate Crawford studies the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She is a research professor of communication and science and technology studies at the University of Southern California and a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research. Her new book, Atlas of AI, looks at what it takes to make AI and what's at stake as it reshapes our world. You've written a book critical of AI but you work for a company that is among the leaders in its deployment. How do you square that circle?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the new terrain of contestation in international relations, wrapped in uncertainty about loss of technological control and human oversight. 'Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world', Russian President Vladimir Putin famously stated in 2017 (RT, 2017). Since then, a plethora of public and private actors have issued statements on how AI would change society for the better or for the worse, highlighting infrastructural developments, military applications and impact on jobs and human relations. Some of these statements revealed concrete plans to address AI-related challenges, but the majority remained principled positions on limiting risks associated with disruptive technologies (Ulnicane et al., 2020, Jobin et al., 2019). As recognition grows that tools based on algorithmic processing and machine learning bring about as many promises as commotions, governments are under increased pressure to react for the wellbeing of their citizens and for their raison d'être (Taeihagh, 2021).

Geoffrey Hinton is a legendary computer scientist. When Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio were given the 2018 Turing Award, considered the Nobel prize of computing, they were described as the "Godfathers of artificial intelligence" and the "Godfathers of Deep Learning." Naturally, people paid attention when Hinton declared in 2016, "We should stop training radiologists now, it's just completely obvious within five years deep learning is going to do better than radiologists." The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first AI algorithm for medical imaging that year and there are now more than 80 approved algorithms in the US and a similar number in Europe. Yet, the number of radiologists working in the US has gone up, not down, increasing by about 7% between 2015 and 2019.

The phone in your hand, the network it runs on, the public transportation app you're using to commute… It's likely that each of them contains a touch of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make your experience more efficient, seamless, secure, and personalized. At Cisco, we develop innovative services that advance healthcare, enhance education, provide remote working, improve government services to citizens, expand accessibility, and strengthen cybersecurity. We deliver technological advances that help us go beyond what is manually possible to secure a more sustainable future for all. For example, Cisco has invested in AI technologies such as virtual assistant, noise removal, real time translations from English to 100 languages and speech enhancement in our collaboration solutions such as Webex. In line with Cisco's purpose, we choose to use technology responsibly to power an inclusive future for all.

The tech sphere is showering money recently. For the past two decades, artificial intelligence was encountering significant growth across many domains. But thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, the adoption was further accelerated. The sudden surge in disruptive technologies' usage has eventually opened the door for investments in artificial intelligence. Investors are also looking to back AI companies that will one day flourish like Apple, Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc. Artificial intelligence is an umbrella term that covers many topics including machine learning, data analytics, data science, natural language processing, etc.