Washington – A wave of protests over law enforcement abuses has highlighted concerns over artificial intelligence programs like facial recognition that critics say may reinforce racial bias. While the protests have focused on police misconduct, activists point out flaws that may lead to unfair applications of technologies for law enforcement, including facial recognition, predictive policing and "risk assessment" algorithms. The issue came to the forefront recently with the wrongful arrest in Detroit of an African American man based on a flawed algorithm which identified him as a robbery suspect. Critics of facial recognition use in law enforcement say the case underscores the pervasive impact of a flawed technology. Mutale Nkonde, an AI researcher, said that even though the idea of bias and algorithms has been debated for years, the latest case and other incidents have driven home the message.

Click here to read the full article. You could call it a contradiction in terms, or even a paradoxical blending of opposites--the U.S. Army is now designing a lightweight, highly lethal future armored tank that is easy to maneuver while being able to withstand dangerous enemy attacks and offering protection equal to or better than a 70-ton Abrams tank. This goal lies at the center of the Army's Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV), a family of new combat platforms now being developed by the service for future warfare. Its key goals are expeditionary, lightweight, fast, using artificial intelligence, potentially unmanned, extremely lethal and perpetually upgradeable. The effort involves building new infantry carriers, tanks and robotic vehicles networked together as part of an integrated tactical maneuver strategy.

THE WORLD first took notice of Beijing's prowess in artificial intelligence (AI) in late 2017, when BBC reporter John Sudworth, hiding in a remote southwestern city, was located by China's CCTV system in just seven minutes. At the time, it was a shocking demonstration of power. Today, companies like YITU Technology and Megvii, leaders in facial recognition technology, have compressed those seven minutes into mere seconds. What makes those companies so advanced, and what powers not only China's surveillance state but also its broader economic development, is not simply its AI capability, but rather the math power underlying it. The race for AI supremacy has become perhaps the most visible aspect of the great power competition between America and China.

The world is in the midst of a technological revolution. Rapid developments in artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality, edge and quantum computing, autonomous vehicles, precision medicine, nanotechnology and digital biology are transforming the way we live and work, creating new challenges and opportunities. It is essential that federal leaders understand the potential of these breakthrough technologies and capitalize on those with the greatest promise to improve government operations and services. During this time of swift change, the government is taking steps to explore and leverage these emerging technologies. In February, President Trump issued an executive order to strengthen American leadership in artificial intelligence, asserting that the U.S. should "drive technological breakthroughs in AI across the federal government, industry and academia in order to promote scientific discovery, economic competitiveness, and national security."

Artificial intelligence salaries benefit from the perfect recipe for a sweet paycheck: a hot field and high demand for scarce talent. It's the ever-reliable law of supply and demand, and right now, anything artificial intelligence-related is in very high demand. According to Indeed.com, the average IT salary -- the keyword is "artificial intelligence engineer" -- in the San Francisco area ranges from approximately $134,135 per year for "software engineer" to $169,930 per year for "machine learning engineer." However, it can go much higher if you have the credentials firms need. One tenured professor was offered triple his $180,000 salary to join Google, which he declined for a different teaching position.

The space projects have been dominated by government bodies until we saw the ambitious companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin diving into this diverse area. These two are the most prominent names in the private space community and are often put on a face-off due to the similarity of its founders in other areas as well. Owned by two of the most powerful businessmen of all time -- Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, they have been on the competition radar for their interest in the area of autonomous vehicles. Similarly, in the space segment, while the two companies might look quite similar in its attempts to explore space, the ideology and the approach of these companies vary quite significantly. But one thing cannot be denied that they both are developing large, reusable vehicles capable of carrying people and satellites across space. While we have often heard about SpaceX's missions and launches over the past few years, Blue Origin does not come out to be so ambitious in gaining traction.

The federal government continues its halting effort to field an enterprise cloud strategy, with Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who leads the Defense Department's Joint AI Center (JAIC), commenting recently that not having an enterprise cloud platform has made the government's efforts to pursue AI more challenging. "The lack of an enterprise solution has slowed us down," stated Shanahan during an AFCEA DC virtual event held on May 21, according to an account in FCW. However, "the gears are in motion" with the JAIC using an "alternate platform" for example to host a newer anti-COVID effort. This platform is called Project Salus, and is a data aggregation that is able to employ predictive modeling to help supply equipment needed by front-line workers. The Salus platform was used for the ill-fated Project Maven, a DOD effort that was to employ AI image recognition to improve drone strike accuracy.

Each Fourth of July for the past five years I've written about AI with the potential to positively impact democratic societies. I return to this question with the hope of shining a light on technology that can strengthen communities, protect privacy and freedoms, or otherwise support the public good. This series is grounded in the principle that artificial intelligence can is capable of not just value extraction, but individual and societal empowerment. While AI solutions often propagate bias, they can also be used to detect that bias. As Dr. Safiya Noble has pointed out, artificial intelligence is one of the critical human rights issues of our lifetimes.

A projected timeline for treatment and prevention of the novel coronavirus. Although we are living ... [ ] through uncertain times, we are also witnessing one of the greatest moments in science history. Scientists are breaking speed records in their race to develop treatments for the new coronavirus. Some are panning through old molecules hoping to find effective drugs. Others are applying the latest breakthroughs in synthetic biology to engineer sophisticated treatments and vaccines.

China announced in 2017 its ambition to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. While the US still leads in absolute terms, China appears to be making more rapid progress than either the US or the EU, and central and local government spending on AI in China is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars. The move has led--at least in the West--to warnings of a global AI arms race and concerns about the growing reach of China's authoritarian surveillance state. But treating China as a "villain" in this way is both overly simplistic and potentially costly. While there are undoubtedly aspects of the Chinese government's approach to AI that are highly concerning and rightly should be condemned, it's important that this does not cloud all analysis of China's AI innovation.