Election officials and social media firms already flummoxed by hackers, trolls and bots are bracing for a potentially more potent weapon of disinformation as the 2020 election approaches -- doctored videos, known as "deep fakes," that can be nearly impossible to detect as inauthentic. In tech company board rooms, university labs and Pentagon briefings, technologists on the front lines of cybersecurity have sounded alarms over the threat, which they say has increased markedly as the technology to make convincing fakes has become increasingly available. On Tuesday, leaders in artificial intelligence plan to unveil a tool to push back -- it includes scanning software that UC Berkeley has been developing in partnership with the U.S. military, which the industry will start providing to journalists and political operatives. The goal is to give the media and campaigns a chance to screen possible fake videos before they could throw an election into chaos. The software is among the first significant efforts to arm reporters and campaigns with tools to combat deep fakes.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become one of the most popular buzzwords in the IT industry today. It's boosted the confidence of tech pundits but also instilled fear in the hearts of the salaried professionals and small business owners. Some businesses believe that AI technology is coming after their jobs and companies. Whether you are in favor of the widespread implementation of AI or not, the technology is here to say. It's matured considerably over the past few years, and new-age solutions are already being devised and implemented across various industries.

The idea that machines will take over all jobs by 2050 is too simplistic: a close look at how artificial intelligence will affect the human resources department -- including recruitment and monitoring performance -- reveals a complex picture. The days of reading CVs and covering letters then holding interviews will give way to AI-led candidate assessment. Jobseekers will be sifted by algorithms and face exercises that test everything from problem-solving skills and creativity to how they respond to stress. Catalyte, an AI employment platform, is an early indication of what could change. Michael Rosenbaum was an adviser in President Bill Clinton's White House when he came up with the idea for Catalyte.

America's national security depends on the government getting access to the artificial intelligence breakthroughs made by the technology industry. So says a report submitted to Congress Monday by the National Security Commission on AI. The group, which includes executives from Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and Amazon, says the Pentagon and intelligence agencies need a better relationship with Silicon Valley to stay ahead of China. "AI adoption for national security is imperative," said Eric Schmidt, chair of the commission, and formerly CEO of Google, at a news briefing Monday. "The private sector and government officials need to build a shared sense of responsibility."

Lateral phishing attacks – scams targeting users from compromised email accounts within an organization – are becoming an increasing concern in the U.S. Whereas in the past attackers would send phishing scams from email accounts external to an organization, recently there's been an explosion of email-borne scams in which an attackers compromise email accounts within organizations, and then uses those accounts to launch internal phishing emails to fellow employees – the kind of attacks known as lateral phishing. And when a phishing email comes from an internal account, the vast majority of email security systems can't stop it. Existing security systems largely detect cyber attacks that come from the outside, relying on signals like IP and domain reputation, which are ineffective when the email comes from an internal source. Lateral phishing attacks are also costly. FBI data shows that these cyberattacks caused more than $12 billion in losses between 2013-2018.

Virginia Dignum is professor at the Department of Computing Science at Umea University in Sweden. She is also member of, among others, the European Commission High Level Expert Group on AI, the World Economic Forum Council on AI, the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethically Aligned Design of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems and the European Global Forum on AI (AI4People). She has written a series of blogs for the website Medium.com, on which the content of this blogpost is based. You can find the hyperlinks to her blogs at the bottom of this page. Facing the challenge of bringing together many views from different disciplines on what AI exactly entails, Virginia's definition of AI offers an overarching perspective: "(…) AI is the discipline of developing computer systems that are able of perceiving their environment, with the ability to deliberate how to best act in order to achieve its own goals, while taking into account that the environment contains other actors similar to itself." She continues by explaining that AI is about the autonomy on deciding how to act, adapting to changes in the environment, including to actions and aims of other agents in that environment and then deciding how to act.

Killer robots, whether they're the product of scaremongering or a real threat to the international power balance, now have their very own set of ethical rules. However, the newly published Pentagon guidelines on the military use of AI are unlikely to satisfy its critics. The draft guidelines were released late last week by the Defense Innovation Board (DIB), which the Department of Defense (DoD) had tasked in 2018 with producing a set of ethical rules for the use of AI in warfare. The DIB has spent the past 12 months studying AI ethics and principles with academics, lawyers, computer scientists, philosophers, and business leaders – all chaired by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt. What they came up with had to align with the DoD's AI Strategy published in 2018, which determines that AI should be used "in a lawful and ethical manner to promote our values".

Philippe Starck is a name that became a brand. From the habitation module on the new international space station to Steve Jobs' yacht, Philippe Starck's list of achievements speaks volumes. I interviewed one of most emblematic figures of design in the Peninsula's bar Felix in Hong Kong–a bar that he designed, of course. Philippe Branche: How do you see the future of design? Philippe Starck: I don't see one.

Technology's fine--I definitely like texting, and some of the shows on Netflix are tolerable--but the field's got some serious kinks to work out. Some of these are hardware-related: when, for instance, will quantum computing become practical? Others are of more immediate concern. Is there some way to stop latently homicidal weirdos from getting radicalized online? Can social networks be tweaked in such a way as to not nearly guarantee the outbreak of the second Civil War?

Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have the potential to transform health care by deriving new and important insights from the vast amount of data generated during the delivery of health care every day. Medical device manufacturers are using these technologies to innovate their products to better assist health care providers and improve patient care. The FDA is considering a total product lifecycle-based regulatory framework for these technologies that would allow for modifications to be made from real-world learning and adaptation, while still ensuring that the safety and effectiveness of the software as a medical device is maintained. Artificial Intelligence has been broadly defined as the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs (McCarthy, 2007). Artificial intelligence can use different techniques, including models based on statistical analysis of data, expert systems that primarily rely on if-then statements, and machine learning.