Artificial intelligence is a bit of a buzz term these days – but what do people really mean when they say AI? And why should local governments care? First of all, AI is extremely misunderstood. We aren't talking about HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey," necessarily; we're talking about what Alan Turing speculated about "thinking machines" back in the 1950s. According to the Brookings Institute, AI is generally thought to refer to "machines that respond to stimulation consistent with traditional responses from humans, given the human capacity for contemplation, judgment and intention."

I've always loved movie robots, even the bad ones. But as the machines around us become unnervingly smarter, it's hard not to worry that artificial intelligence with malign intent--some version of the Terminator or HAL--will eventually be unleashed on the real world. Stephen Hawking warned that "the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." And when the Oxford philosopher Toby Ord examined a host of existential threats--asteroids, nuclear war, climate change--for his bracing book The Precipice, he ranked "unaligned artificial intelligence" the most probable of all. Plunging into the latest crop of AI books, I was somewhat comforted by experts' consensus that "the singularity"--the point at which AI surpasses human intelligence--is not imminent; guesses about the timing range from a few decades to centuries from now.

Over the past few days, I've been reading the major plans for what comes after social distancing. You can read them, too. I thought, perhaps naively, that reading them would be a comfort -- at least then I'd be able to imagine the path back to normal. In different ways, all these plans say the same thing: Even if you can imagine the herculean political, social, and economic changes necessary to manage our way through this crisis effectively, there is no normal for the foreseeable future. Until there's a vaccine, the United States either needs economically ruinous levels of social distancing, a digital surveillance state of shocking size and scope, or a mass testing apparatus of even more shocking size and intrusiveness.

Friedrichshafen, 15 April 2020 – CIMON-2, the updated version of the CIMON astronaut assistant, developed and built by Airbus for the German Aerospace Center Space Administration (DLR), has now demonstrated its capabilities during initial tests on the International Space Station (ISS). The free-flying, spherical technology demonstrator with artificial intelligence (AI) showed off a number of its features during interactions with ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano. CIMON-2 started its journey to the ISS on 05 December 2019, launching with the CRS-19 supply mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is scheduled to stay on the ISS for up to three years. Just shy of two months after the successful first use of CIMON-2, the project team has now received the analysis.

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Artificial intelligence is a bit of a buzz term these days – but what do people really mean when they say AI? And why should local governments care? First of all, AI is extremely misunderstood. We aren't talking about HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey," necessarily; we're talking about what Alan Turing speculated about "thinking machines" back in the 1950s. According to the Brookings Institute, AI is generally thought to refer to "machines that respond to stimulation consistent with traditional responses from humans, given the human capacity for contemplation, judgment and intention."

Prior work on generating explanations has been focused on providing the rationale behind the robot's decision making. While these approaches provide the right explanations from the explainer's perspective, they fail to heed the cognitive requirement of understanding an explanation from the explainee's perspective. In this work, we set out to address this issue from a planning context by considering the order of information provided in an explanation, which is referred to as the progressiveness of explanations. Progressive explanations contribute to a better understanding by minimizing the cumulative cognitive effort required for understanding all the information in an explanation. As a result, such explanations are easier to understand. Given the sequential nature of communicating information, a general formulation based on goal-based Markov Decision Processes for generating progressive explanation is presented. The reward function of this MDP is learned via inverse reinforcement learning based on explanations that are provided by human subjects. Our method is evaluated in an escape-room domain. The results show that our progressive explanation generation method reduces the cognitive load over two baselines.

"Mike Kanaan is an influential new voice in the field of AI, and his thoughts paint an insightful perspective. "Kanaan's book makes us aware of the urgent need for international understanding and a formal agreement on AI. Without binding commitments, the future will pose threats, both military and social, that risk our very survival. AI may be a blessing, but it can also be the ultimate curse. The world must agree to draw a red line between the two, and make sure that no one crosses it." "Never have I read a book that did a better job of putting the challenges and prospects of artificial intelligence into context.

Not only will AI help government agencies work faster and more efficiently, but it will also change the game for public safety and national security missions. From securing a public figure to identifying connections to extremist organizations to uncovering immediate insights in voluminous data sets, AI can be leveraged as an entrusted resource and provide agencies with greater and faster data-driven insights than ever before. Veritone is passionate about building a future-proof AI platform and solutions that not only swiftly evaluate and course correct key missions and procedures but also pave the way for an AI-connected government.

The UK government is setting aside £2.6 million for new satellite and drone technology that could deliver essential supplies during the coronavirus lockdown. The UK Space Agency (UKSA) is funding new solutions to deliver equipment such as test kits, masks, gowns and goggles for frontline NHS staff. The joint initiative with the European Space Agency could lead to vital equipment soaring through British skies via drones to support the NHS in tackling COVID-19. Companies can submit their proposals, including ideas for deployment and a pilot phase, on the European Space Agency (ESA) website. The UK's space industry is also looking for ways to combat the spread of coronavirus and preventing future epidemics using satellites.