California's high poverty rate, low wages and frayed public safety net require a new "social compact" between workers, business and government, according to a report by a blue-ribbon commission that highlights the state's widening inequality. In a report released Monday, the Future of Work Commission, a 21-member body appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in August 2019, laid out a grim picture of the challenges facing the world's fifth-largest economy, even as it acknowledged the Golden State's technology leadership, its ethnically and culturally diverse workforce and world-class universities. "Too many Californians have not fully participated in or enjoyed the benefits of the state's broader economic success and the extraordinary wealth generated here, especially workers of color who are disproportionately represented in low-wage industries," the report says. California has the highest poverty rate in the country when accounting for the cost of living, 17.2%, according to the report. Since 2012, wages in the state grew by 14% while home prices increased by 68%.

We have covered a lot of ground within the two articles of the Exploring Artificial Intelligence series (January, February). We have understood that AI is already participating in our lives, overtly and covertly. AI is here and is not going away. To quote the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Don't Panic!". This article has some good news.

Cipher Skin, a startup developing a network of wraparound sensors that can deliver big data diagnostics, today announced it has raised $5 million in a series A round led by Boyett Group. The company says the funds, which bring Cipher's total raised to date to $7.8 million, will bolster development of the company's existing product line and new products in markets like oil, gas, and winemaking. After his career in the U.S. special operations forces, Cipher CEO Phillip Bogdanovich started training in the gym with Craig Weller, a physical coach he met when serving in Baghdad. Bogdanovich says that as soon as he was separated from Weller, he noticed his recovery began slowing. While back in the U.S., Bogdanovich and Weller began brainstorming how the training process could be scaled to allow people at home to experience the equivalent of a coach watching and providing feedback.

Gatik, a startup developing an autonomous vehicle stack for B2B short-haul logistics, today announced it has raised $9 million, with $1 million coming from a partnership with Ontario's Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN). Gatik says the AVIN collaboration -- part of an Ontario government program providing R&D, business, technical, and talent support, as well as vehicle test tracks -- will help it understand how inclement weather affects its vehicles' movements Some experts predict the pandemic will hasten adoption of autonomous vehicles for delivery. Self-driving cars, vans, and trucks promise to minimize the risk of spreading disease by limiting driver contact. This is particularly true with regard to short-haul freight, an estimated 30% of which takes place in snowy and icy conditions. The producer price index for local truckload carriage jumped 20.4% from July to August, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, most likely propelled by demand for short-haul distribution from warehouses and distribution centers to ecommerce fulfillment centers and stores.

For decades, the US government has let the private sector and the free market do their thing, betting this is the surest way to spur innovation and conjure up the advances needed to keep the American economy on top of the world. Now, with China ascendant, the approach is starting to change. Washington is taking baby steps towards something closer to central planning--seeking to inspire, guide, and protect advances in key areas like artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing. The latest evidence of a shift in thinking is the final report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI). The commission was created by the Pentagon in 2018 to study the national security implications of AI and related technologies, and outline a plan to keep the US ahead.

Apache Spark Streaming – Every company produces several million pieces of data every day. Properly analyzed, this information can be used to derive valuable business strategies and increase productivity. Until now, this data was consumed and stored in a persistent. Even today, this is an important step in order to be able to perform analyses on historical data at a later date. Often, however, analysis results are desired in real time.

Computer vision based AI models are being deployed in military contexts. The use of AI in weapon systems is a complex and controversial area, the practical and moral implications of which are still being debated by thought leaders and policy makers. However, AI powered military technology is increasingly being harnessed in order to protect service personnel operating in potentially dangerous situations and environments. By carrying out tasks that would ordinarily require risks to human life military AI applications are helping to protect soldiers and civilians alike. In order to interpret and function well within complex, dynamic environments military computer vision systems require varied and responsive image and video training data.

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds" is a game-changing new book by Rajiv Malhotra, analyzing society's vulnerabilities to the current AI revolution. In an Indian context, this is a one of a kind book, covering critical issues which most leaders and policy makers find uncomfortable, and would prefer to sweep under the rug. The author starts out by explaining how he scopes Artificial Intelligence. The topic of AI evokes extreme reactions from people some view it as a technological revolution that will usher an era of unprecedented progress and prosperity. Others tend to equate AI with the takeover of the world and of human kind by evil robots.

On a recent episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick talked with Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, to unpack how the scope of the First Amendment continues to grow even as it fails in the face of so many of the free speech issues we face today. A portion of their conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, has been transcribed below. Dahlia Lithwick: I think I've had a Post-it note pinned to my screen saying, "Do a First Amendment show" for three years. It sweeps in every news cycle. From the Facebook "Supreme Court," your own litigation around Trump's tweets, cancel culture, the speech defenses that came up at the impeachment trial--I think of the First Amendment as a framework that governs all of those things. As you suggested to me, when we were thinking about this show, the First Amendment is "everywhere but nowhere."

Securing vast and growing IoT environments may not seem to be a humanly possible task--and when the network hosts tens or hundreds of thousands of devices the task, indeed, may be unachievable. To solve this problem, vendors of security products have turned to a decidedly nonhuman alternative: artificial intelligence. "Cyberanalysts are finding it increasingly difficult to effectively monitor current levels of data volume, velocity and variety across firewalls," CapGemini noted in a survey research report, "Reinventing Cybersecurity With Artificial Intelligence." The report also noted that traditional methods may no longer be effective: "Signature-based cybersecurity solutions are unlikely to deliver the requisite performance to detect new attack vectors." In addition to conventional security software's limitations in IoT environments, CapGemini's report revealed a weakness in the human element of cybersecurity.