The launch of the AI Task Force allows the Army to better connect with the broader artificial intelligence community and focus their efforts in this dynamic field. Artificial intelligence capabilities are relevant to all services and each of the Army's cross-functional teams (CFT's). The Army AI Task Force, located at Carnegie Mellon University, is subordinate organization of Army Futures Command. On November 19th, during Capital Factory's Defense Innovation Summit, five technology startup finalists will be judged by a panel of successful entrepreneurs, defense industry leaders and venture capitalists. One will walk away with a $100,000 investment that day!

The implications of climate change are considered by many to be the greatest crisis confronting us globally. Most focus on the doomsday scenarios of melting glaciers, rising flood waters engulfing coastal cities, and species becoming extinct. The other challenge is feeding the world's growing populace. There are currently about 7.7 billion people living on Earth, and that number is projected to increase to almost 10 billion by 2050. Estimates put the number of those people who are chronically hungry at almost 1 billion even now.

Speaking in Washington, D.C. earlier today, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger said he's convinced of AI's potential to fundamentally alter human consciousness--including changes in our self-perception and to our strategic decision-making. He also slammed AI developers for insufficiently thinking through the implications of their creations. Kissinger, now 96, was speaking to an audience attending the "Strength Through Innovation" conference currently being held at the Liaison Washington Hotel in Washington, D.C. The conference is being run by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which was set up by Congress to evaluate the future of AI in the U.S. as it pertains to national security. Kissinger, who served under President Richard Nixon during the Vietnam War, is a controversial figure who many argue is an unconvicted war criminal.

Since its establishment 100 years ago in 1919, the UK Government Actuary's Department (GAD) has been at the heart of actuarial advice, serving the public interest by providing specialist risk and finance advice to public policymakers. This is directly related to a requirement of the IFoA Royal Charter, under which the profession has a duty to put the public interest first. GAD's role has changed significantly since its inception. In the early years, it advised the National Health Insurance Joint Committee, providing advice to support the financial management of the newly introduced old age pension and health insurance systems. Over time, its influence widened as it provided advice on public service pensions, expanding social security benefits and population projections.

As part of that strategy, the Library began seeking a collaboration to test machine learning across different materials, since the library's collections are …

A clampdown on video face recognition systems is spreading around major cities, as politicians police and others continue to argue its merits. Meanwhile, a tightening of rules on other AI and smart technologies is on the way. Chatbots are the latest to feel the effect with a Californian law banning bots that fail to identify themselves as such. When any new technology arrives, there are people who want pragmatic laws to protect users and bystanders – think the red flags that had to be waved in front of early cars. There are also crazy laws passed to try and protect vested interests or big business. Look at all the roadblocks thrown in front of solar power and electric cars to keep big oil happy.

One of the big robotics storylines of 2018, at least in the mainstream press, was the arrival of multiple sex robots on the market. Most of these take a female form, anthropomorphic fantasies like Synthea Amatus's Samantha and RealBotix's Harmony, which have raised eyebrows and prompted international coverage, spurred in no small part by boisterous founders and burgeoning rivalries. Also: It's complicated: Love in the age of apps CNET Robot brothels, meanwhile, have popped up in Toronto and Paris, and another was barred from doing business in Houston. Pontificators have pontificated about whether this is a good thing or a sign of a society on the skids, and much of the criticism has (rightly, in my opinion) focused on how these robots represent women, both in appearance and as passive objects of desire. Almost like clockwork, "male" robots with bionic penises are now on their way.

Artificial intelligence should respect human rights, diversity and privacy -- while being a far cry from Terminator-style robots -- according to new federal ethics guidelines. Technology Minister Karen Andrews will today release an eight-point guidance she wants companies to adopt in a bid to prevent people from being exploited. The guidelines stipulate all AI should benefit individuals, society and the environment. It should prevent discrimination, respect privacy and only operate in accordance with their intended purpose. The guidelines also recommend human oversight of AI always be enabled and there should be timely processes to allow people to challenge the use or output of information.

Microsoft Corp. has fresh momentum in the cloud wars. For starters, Microsoft was recently awarded the U.S. Department of Defense's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure or JEDI contract. For another, the company has just announced a broad range of enhancements to its Azure cloud portfolio that will almost certainly help to win it new business in the tooth-and-nail battle with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform and others. This week at its Ignite 2019 conference, Microsoft launched both new and enhanced data-centric solutions for its cloud solution portfolio. For information technology professionals managing their firms' investments in cloud technologies, these were the chief announcements of interest at Ignite 2019: For developers and users, the chief announcements addressed multicloud-spanning data warehousing (the new Azure Synapse Analytics, the evolution of Azure SQL Data Warehouse), automated data-science DevOps workflows (a.k.a.

Imagine an autonomous vehicle navigating a smoke-filled mine looking for survivors, personal belongings or any other clues to find anyone who might be alive. It identifies objects it sees and decides which paths to take first. As it reaches the limit of where it can explore, a drone sitting on the vehicle flies off to explore the hard-to-reach corners of the mine. All of this is done without any communication with the outside world. Team Explorer from Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University did exactly this to win the first event of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Subterranean Challenge.