The U.S. White House has advised the European Union to avoid heavily regulating artificial intelligence until risk assessments and cost-benefit analyses have been carried out, Euractiv reports. The U.S. takes this position in a set of regulatory principles that will be formally announced during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "Europe and our allies should avoid heavy-handed innovation-killing models, and instead consider a similar regulatory approach," a statement from the White House said. "The best way to counter authoritarian uses of AI is to make sure America and our international partners remain the global hubs of innovation, shaping the evolution of technology in a manner consistent with our common values."

The number of patents for inventions based on artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning continues to grow rapidly. Some of these inventions relate to AI technology per se, and some relate to the use of AI in specific applications, including many in healthcare, financial services and blockchain, among other industries. The USPTO has addressed various aspects of intellectual property issues with these technologies in various ways, including in an event it hosted entitled "Artificial Intelligence: Intellectual Property Policy Considerations (January 2019)." Due to some of the unique issues with these technologies, the USPTO is considering whether it should make any changes to how it handles examination of these applications. As part of this analysis, the USPTO issued a request for public comments on protection and examination of these inventions.

Twenty IT leaders look into their crystal balls to predict the technologies and trends that will drive the sector in 2020. CIO Australia asked Australian technology bosses about their top line predictions for 2020, the technologies that will have the greatest impact next year, and what top trends will impact the IT and business landscape. Here are the predictions from IT leaders across vendor land to CIOs and CTOs across a host of industries. Intelligent systems (machine learning, artificial intelligence and automation) are the top trends in 2020. Intelligent systems will have a significant impact on increasing situational awareness (insights) and using these insights to enhance decision making – to deliver optimal outcomes for customers.

In all likelihood, your co-workers pay taxes. But what happens if your boss replaces them with sophisticated software or dexterous machines--ones that perform the same tasks for less money (at least over the long run) and contribute nothing in payroll taxes? One seemingly flip answer is starting to gain some attention: Just tax the robots. Bill Gates has called for a robot tax, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio detailed a plan for one in his short-lived presidential campaign. If the future means far fewer workers and far more machines, tax revenue could drop and the daily rhythms of steady employment could become erratic.

One decade passes away, another decade comes – and it makes people think. For starters, we think about what to call the decade about to end: the "twenty-teens", the "twenty-tens"? Awkward to refer to, it may prove harder to classify. The 1920s were "Roaring," but how do you categorize a decade rife with such stark contrasts: Obama and Trump, globalism and nationalism, free trade and trade wars, prosperity and income inequality, recession (at the start) and long bull market, world peace (generally) and "permanent wars." The present is too much with us to gain perspective on what, if anything in particular, this decade will come to mean – other than the mishmash of counter-trends it appears to have been.

The US presidential election campaign is in its final days. Donald Trump is behind in the polls and the pundits are predicting a win for his Democrat challenger, former vice president Joe Biden. He boasts that he will win again. With two weeks to go, his campaign unleashes an offensive in the crucial swing states: adverts, Facebook posts, WhatsApp groups and tweets. They warn of violent crime and civil unrest driven by immigrants and gangs, playing up Trump's endorsement by evangelicals and smearing Biden as a closet atheist. The initiative works and Trump snatches another unlikely victory.

Federal agencies will soon have to demonstrate that any proposed regulations for artificial intelligence technologies in the private sector abide by a new, "first-of-its-kind" series of 10 principles set forth by the Trump administration this week. In a preview call with reporters Monday and subsequent op-ed in Bloomberg Tuesday morning, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios and other senior administration officials from the White House Office of Science and Technology detailed the principles proposed to govern the future development and private sector use of AI technologies. The guidelines, published in a draft memorandum Tuesday afternoon, are "a first of their kind--from any government" insiders said, though they also emphasized that the U.S. government's own use of the budding technology is outside the purview of the document. "On its face, the guidance we describe provides agencies with a common sense, pro-innovation approach to deal with various AI regulatory issues," Kratsios said on the call. "As countries around the world grapple with similar questions around the appropriate regulation of AI, [the principles] demonstrate America is leading the way to shape the evolution of AI in a way that reflects our values of freedom, human rights and civil liberties."

The Trump administration is proposing new rules to guide future federal regulation of artificial intelligence used in medicine, transportation and other industries. But the vagueness of the principles announced by the White House is unlikely to satisfy AI watchdogs who have warned of a lack of accountability as computer systems are deployed to take on human roles in high-risk social settings, such as mortgage lending or job recruitment. A document from the White House said that in deciding regulatory action, U.S. agencies "must consider fairness, non-discrimination, openness, transparency, safety, and security." The rules won't affect how federal agencies such as law enforcement use AI; they are specifically limited to how federal agencies devise new AI regulations for the private sector. There's a month-long public comment period before the rules take effect.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has become the Tripoli government's last major patron, providing armed drones, armored vehicles and, in the past week, Turkish troops. Turkish officials say their troops will act mostly in an advisory role and avoid front-line combat. But there are indications, from American officials and from videos posted on the internet, that Ankara has deployed Syrian irregulars to Libya, drawn from units that fought the Kurds in northeastern Syria last year. The increasingly prominent foreign role drew an angry rebuke from the United Nations envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salamé, who told reporters on Monday that "probably thousands" of foreign mercenaries had arrived in Libya to participate in the fight. The battle has displaced 300,000 people and caused over 2,200 deaths.

DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – Iran's launching of more than a dozen missiles at American-led forces in Iraq on Wednesday came after years of preparing for a confrontation with its superpower foe, whose forces are vastly larger and more advanced. The Persian Gulf country has more than 500,000 active-duty personnel, including 125,000 members of its elite Revolutionary Guard, according to a report last year by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. But international sanctions and restrictions on arms imports have made it hard for Iran to develop or buy more sophisticated weaponry. To compensate for the imbalance, Iran has developed "asymmetric" responses -- ballistic missiles, deadly drones and a web of militia allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, among other things -- with the aim of being able to inflict pain while avoiding the traditional battlefield. "From a conventional military perspective, they would get absolutely hammered," said a British former military commander who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.