The Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is recruiting businesses to help prepare military data for use with AI. The solicitation released March 31 is a sign of the AI office's shifting role from product developer to provider of AI readiness services for Defense Department components. The basic ordering agreement would allow those components and federal partners to issue task orders for the work to get data in shape for artificial intelligence -- that could include everything from capturing data to sorting it for storage to modeling how employees will use it with AI to get better insights. The Data Readiness for Artificial Intelligence Development (DRAID) Services ordering agreement will "help the DoD and Government users prepare data for use in AI applications by providing an easily accessible path to access the cutting-edge commercial services needed to meet the complex technical challenges involved in preparing data for AI," the solicitation read. "The services addressed by the DRAID span the entire AI data preparation lifecycle, from data ingestion, through labeling, right up to before model training begins," an April 1 blog post from the JAIC states.

Deepfakes, an emerging form of manipulated photo and video content, could be the next frontier that businesses have to tackle in cybersecurity. Deepfakes recently have been the subject of entertainment news, such as viral videos of a fake Tom Cruise or a newly trending app that transforms user's photos into lip-syncing videos, but more sophisticated versions could one day pose national security threats, according to experts. The term "deepfakes" is a combination of "deep learning"--a type of artificial intelligence--and "fakes," describing how video and images can be altered with AI to create believable fabrications. The FBI last month warned that attackers "almost certainly" will leverage synthetic content, such as deepfakes, for cyber- and foreign influence attacks in the next 12 to 18 months. There haven't been documented cases of malicious use of deepfakes in healthcare to date, and many of the most popular deepfakes--such as the viral Tom Cruise videos--took weeks of work to create and still have glitches that tip off a close watcher.

The 24 March, 2020 will be remembered by some for the news that Prince Charles tested positive for Covid and was isolating in Scotland. In Athens it was memorable as the day the traffic went silent. Twenty-four hours into a hard lockdown, Greeks were acclimatising to a new reality in which they had to send an SMS to the government in order to leave the house. As well as millions of text messages, the Greek government faced extraordinary dilemmas. The European Union's most vulnerable economy, its oldest population along with Italy, and one of its weakest health systems faced the first wave of a pandemic that overwhelmed richer countries with fewer pensioners and stronger health provision. One Greek who did go into the office that day was Kyriakos Pierrakakis, the minister for digital transformation, whose signature was inked in blue on an agreement with the US technology company, Palantir. The deal, which would not be revealed to the public for another nine months, gave one of the world's most controversial tech companies access to vast amounts of personal data while offering its software to help Greece weather the Covid storm. The zero-cost agreement was not registered on the public procurement system, neither did the Greek government carry out a data impact assessment – the mandated check to see whether an agreement might violate privacy laws. The questions that emerge in pandemic Greece echo those from across Europe during Covid and show Palantir extending into sectors from health to policing, aviation to commerce and even academia.

Breathtaking drone video taken in the Arctic Circle captured a spellbinding reindeer'cyclone.' When threatened, reindeer will begin to stampede in a circle, making it hard for a predator to find an individual target. In the clip, the herd's fawns and does are in the middle of the swirl with the bucks running around them in a protective'dance.' The deer stampede was captured by a photographer last week in Murmansk, Russia, right before a veterinarian was about to give the herd its anthrax vaccinations. Such behavior has been observed in dolphins, bison and even elephants, but the aerial view--coupled with the herd's speed and size--makes for a truly hypnotic visual.

VP Data & AI at ECS, roles have included co-founder at a data analytics startup, VP AI at Booz Allen, and Global Analytics Lead at Accenture. The 2020 LinkedIn U.S. Emerging Jobs Report identified the top 15 jobs over the previous five years and emphasized that "artificial intelligence and data science roles continue to proliferate across nearly every industry." Artificial intelligence specialist (No. 1) showed 74% annual growth, and data scientist (No. 3) and data engineer (No. 8) followed with 37% and 33% annual growth. But the problem is: we don't have enough skilled talent to fill these jobs, and it's a national imperative that we change the way we imagine, educate, recruit and upskill our technical workforce. We must abandon the flawed idea that AI jobs are only for people with master's degrees or PhDs with decades of experience.

As the U.S. economy rebounds from its pandemic slump, a vital cog is in short supply: the computer chips that power a wide range of products that connect, transport and entertain us in a world increasingly dependent on technology. The shortage has already been rippling through various markets since last summer. It has made it difficult for schools to buy enough laptops for students forced to learn from home, delayed the release of popular products such as the iPhone 12 and created mad scrambles to find the latest video game consoles such as the PlayStation 5. But things have been getting even worse in recent weeks, particularly in the auto industry, where factories are shutting down because there aren't enough chips to finish building vehicles that are starting to look like computers on wheels. The problem was recently compounded by a grounded container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week, choking off chips headed from Asia to Europe.

Before the Marine Corps can fully utilize the power of AI technology and the efficiencies it brings, the service must overcome one major hurdle: trust. "We're going to have to trust artificial intelligence," he said during remarks at the National Defense Industrial Association's Expeditionary Warfare Conference in February. Whether it's "sensor-to-shooter or fuel to a frontline unit, we put humans in the loop at about 16 places because we don't trust it yet," he said. The best way to boost confidence in the technology is to have Marines train machines, he said. Gen. Eric Austin, director of the Marine Corps' Capabilities Development Directorate, said building that faith in artificial intelligence will unlock its potential.

Our ecosystem is changing fast, and your ability as a leader to clearly distinguish between the powers of emerging technologies is important for the success of your business. Poor investments into new ventures can threaten your competitiveness and waste valuable resources. If you invest into an AI venture, but you treat it as a software venture, then you are doing it wrong. Despite the huge business potential of AI technologies, many AI ventures are poorly executed and miss significant business opportunities. There are many reasons for this poor execution, e.g., ill-prepared culture and strategy, insufficient access to talent, and poor data and infrastructure preparedness.

At first glance at this image, you'd be forgiven for mistaking it as a still from the latest science fiction blockbuster. But the photo is very much real, and was snapped by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover this week. The selfie shows the rover alongside a rock formation dubbed'Mont Mercou', a nickname taken from a mountain in France. And while the photo is impressive on its own, it was actually taken to celebrate Curiosity's 30th sample to date, after the rover drilled a hole at a nearby rock sample nicknamed'Nontron.' The selfie shows the rover alongside a rock formation dubbed'Mont Mercou', a nickname taken from a mountain in France So far 2021 has been the'year of Mars' with three spaceships from Earth arriving at the Red Planet.

Creating complex data and analysis pipelines has never been easier. You'll be inundated with tutorials online. You can learn the language at every turn. Keeping track of it all is not so easy. Learning the programming basics is easy, but keeping track of the technological possibilities only grows with experience. We present you Awesome Python Data Science libraries and frameworks for free that you should know.