Artificial intelligence could aid in the search for life on alien planets and detection of nearby asteroids, according to NASA officials. NASA hopes to use artificial intelligence, or A.I., technologies such as machine learning to interpret data that will be collected by future telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope or the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission, according to a statement from the space agency. "These technologies are very important, especially for big data sets and especially in the exoplanet field," Giada Arney, an astrobiologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in the statement. "Because the data we're going to get from future observations is going to be sparse and noisy. It's going to be really hard to understand. So using these kinds of tools has so much potential to help us."

As a national health system, the VA has amassed a significant amount of data--possibly giving it a leg up because lack of trustworthy and accessible data has traditionally been one of the major roadblocks to AI development. In other health technology news: a website helps patients with rare diseases find more information about them. Modern Healthcare: VA Dives Into Artificial Intelligence R&D The Department of Veterans Affairs has opened a new artificial intelligence institute to pursue research and inform national strategy. The National Artificial Intelligence Institute, a joint initiative of the VA's office of research and development and the VA secretary's center for strategic partnerships, will work with public and private partners to carry out AI research and development projects, including efforts to apply AI to identify veterans at high risk for suicide or to help reduce patient wait times. The Washington Post: Rare Diseases Lack Data But This Website Aims To Help Achondrogenesis, Noonan syndrome and sialadenitis aren't household names.

An expert on artificial intelligence has called for all algorithms that make life-changing decisions – in areas from job applications to immigration into the UK – to be halted immediately. Prof Noel Sharkey, who is also a leading figure in a global campaign against "killer robots", said algorithms were so "infected with biases" that their decision-making processes could not be fair or trusted. A moratorium must be imposed on all "life-changing decision-making algorithms" in Britain, he said. Sharkey has suggested testing AI decision-making machines in the same way as new pharmaceutical drugs are vigorously checked before they are allowed on to the market. In an interview with the Guardian, the Sheffield University robotics/AI pioneer said he was deeply concerned over a series of examples of machine-learning systems being loaded with bias.

A drone with a machine gun attached can hit targets with high precision, according to its makers. Turkey is set to become the first country to have the drone, when it gets a delivery this month. The 25-kilogram drone has eight rotating blades to get it in the air. Its machine gun carries 200 rounds of ammunition and can fire single shots or 15-round bursts. Many countries and groups already use small military drones that can drop grenades or fly into a target to detonate an explosive.

In the financial world, neural networks are helping investigators find and stop fraud by uncovering trends across millions of transactions. ERGO, a German insurance company, is using predictive analytics from SAS to find unjustified claims. Customers also use neural networks in their buildings to optimize power usage and predict mechanical failures. Through the use of decision trees, we've helped rapidly growing Wake County, North Carolina, make property tax assessments fairer and more accurate. We are working with many tax authorities to uncover tax fraud and find citizens that have underdeclared their income.

Me: "Alexa, tell me what will happen in 2020." Amazon AI: "Here's what I found on Wikipedia: The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship…[continues to read from Wikipedia]" Me: "Alexa, give me a prediction for 2020." Amazon AI: "The universe has not revealed the answer to me." Well, some slight improvement over last year's responses, when Alexa's answer to the first question was "Do you want to open'this day in history'?" As for the universe, it is an open book for the 120 senior executives featured here, all involved with AI, delivering 2020 predictions for a wide range of topics: Autonomous vehicles, deepfakes, small data, voice and natural language processing, human and augmented intelligence, bias and explainability, edge and IoT processing, and many promising applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies and tools. And there will be even more 2020 AI predictions, in a second installment to be posted here later this month. "Vehicle AI is going to be ...

The mission of Ocean Protocol is to unlock data for more equitable outcomes, using a thoughtful application of both technology and governance -- notably to advance the creation of Artificial Intelligence. One of our high-level steps towards achieving that goal over the past year has been the development of our Commons Marketplace, and it is critical that this influx of new data be used for good, to solve some of our planet's most critical problems. The United Nations see the use of AI for Good as a key tool towards reaching their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) -- a collection of 17 ambitious global goals to achieve by the year 2030. Every year in May, the United Nations hosts the annual AI for Good Summit in Geneva, Switzerland. Now on it's 3rd year, Ocean Protocol was honoured to be invited back after an impactful visit last year.

Artificial intelligence in autonomous systems (i.e., drones) can address human error and fatigue issues, but also, in the future, concerns over ethical behaviour on the battlefield. Installing an algorithmic "moral compass" in AI, however, will be challenging. A common theme among many discussions concerning the military uses of artificial intelligence (AI) is the "Skynet" trope: the fear that AI will be self-aware and decide to turn on its masters. Inherent in this argument is the contention that AI does not share the same ethical constraints that humans do. While almost certainly an over-exaggeration, the Skynet scenario does highlight the problem of ensuring that the ethical behaviour we believe is incumbent on humans in combat is not lost as we increasingly devolve battlefield decision-making to autonomous systems.

With parents using artificial intelligence to scan prospective babysitters' social media and an endless slew of articles explaining how your résumé can "beat the bots," you might be wondering whether a robot will be offering you your next job. We're not there yet, but recruiters are increasingly using AI to make the first round of cuts and to determine whether a job posting is even advertised to you. Often trained on data collected about previous or similar applicants, these tools can cut down on the effort recruiters need to expend in order to make a hire. Last year, 67 percent of hiring managers and recruiters surveyed by LinkedIn said AI was saving them time. But critics argue that such systems can introduce bias, lack accountability and transparency, and aren't guaranteed to be accurate. Take, for instance, the Utah-based company HireVue, which sells a job interview video platform that can use artificial intelligence to assess candidates and, it claims, predict their likelihood to succeed in a position.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), defined as a system's ability to correctly interpret external data, to learn from such data, and to use what it learns to achieve specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation, will doubtlessly lead to a multitude of changes in today's world. Given the significant uncertainties around artificial intelligence, it is not astonishing that the opinions on it reach from highly euphoric like the vision of best-selling author Raymond Kurzweil to straight out alarmist as frequently expressed by tech entrepreneur and investor Elon Musk. Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking called AI "either the best, or the worst thing, ever happen to humanity". For at least three reasons, ethics as well as a human approach to AI and its progress are an absolute imperative. First, an AI system will do whatever assignment it has been asked to do, independent of whether these tasks are illegal, unethical, or simply produce negative outcomes.