The Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center has partnered with the General Services Administration to accelerate government's AI use with a new Center of Excellence initiative. "The new GSA-DoD partnership reflects the ongoing success of the Center of Excellence initiative. In alignment with the Administration's strategy for ensuring American leadership in the industries of the future, the AI CoE program will build the capacity to deliver AI solutions throughout the federal government," Chris Liddell, White House deputy chief of staff for policy coordination, said in a statement. JAIC will rely on expertise from the GSA Technology Transformation Services team, and will look to push military advances in AI technology to the civilian sector. "We believe that the opportunities for applying AI in government are significant," TTS Director Anil Cheriyan said in a statement, adding that the effort will "build a foundation to reuse our AI expertise to improve citizen experiences across government."

This timely seminar focuses on the next steps for developing the AI sector in the UK - with sessions discussing the research, investment, skills and ethical challenges which underpin its development. The conference will provide an opportunity to assess the progress of the AI Sector Deal - which sets out the Government's approach to skills, infrastructure, research and finance in the sector. Delegates will consider what has been learnt so far, what more is needed to support the sector, and priorities for the Office of Artificial Intelligence and AI Council - set up to realise the full potential of AI to the economy as part of the Sector Deal. Delegates will discuss the key priorities for meeting the UK's AI skills demand including retaining AI graduates, developing a diverse workforce, and upskilling and reskilling the existing workforce. It follows the skills and talent package announced by the Government in February to support the growth of a world-leading AI sector in the UK - which includes plans for new industry-funded AI Masters, and 16 dedicated UK Research and Innovation AI Centres for Doctoral Training at universities.

Artificial intelligence systems can – if properly used – help make government more effective and responsive, improving the lives of citizens. Improperly used, however, the dystopian visions of George Orwell's " 1984 " become more realistic. On their own and urged by a new presidential executive order, governments across the U.S., including state and federal agencies, are exploring ways to use AI technologies . As an AI researcher for more than 40 years, who has been a consultant or participant in many government projects, I believe it's worth noting that sometimes they've done it well – and other times not quite so well. The potential harms and benefits are significant.

Some of the most innovative approaches to cybersecurity still depend largely on human analysts. With the growing sophistication and volume of cyber threats, it is simply too difficult for analysts to keep pace. Machine learning is all about having an algorithm learn from the data rather than having a human encode the logic. Along with machine learning comes new cybersecurity threats. While artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have been transforming various fields of human activity for some time now, their full transformative potential is yet to be realized.

"Relying on common solutions in places where there's no point in reinventing the wheel has been one of the mainstays of the Estonian digital state," Government Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Deputy Secretary-General for IT and Telecom Siim Sikkut said in a Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications press release. "This is how X-Road and the digital identity were born, for instance, which made developing e-services several times faster and easier for everyone," Sikkut continued. "Now we want to bring the same platform-based approach and acceleration into the field of AI, and I'm glad that the first step in that direction has been taken." The first base component for AI-based solutions added to the source code repository is a text analysis tool created by Texta OÜ, which has been used by many institutions to date for increasing the effectiveness of their work processes and the automation of routine activities. The Ministry of Education and Research, for example, uses the tool for the audit of document management aimed at identifying documents which have gone public without permission.

Kanaan is generally very bullish about AI, partly because he knows firsthand how useful it stands to be for troops. Six years ago, as an Air Force intelligence officer in Afghanistan, he was responsible for deploying a new kind of intelligence-gathering tool: a hyperspectral imager. The instrument can spot objects that are normally hidden from view, like tanks draped in camouflage or emissions from an improvised bomb-making factory. Kanaan says the system helped US troops remove many thousands of pounds of explosives from the battlefield. Even so, it was often impractical for analysts to process the vast amounts of data collected by the imager.

Abu Dhabi: Taking another bold step in the world of artificial intelligence (AI), Abu Dhabi on Wednesday announced the opening of the world's first dedicated AI university – Mohammad Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI). Located in Masdar City with the latest state-of-the-art facilities and equipment, the university will offer both masters (two years) and PhD programmes (four years) for local and international graduate students across three main specialised fields – machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing – as the UAE looks to equip the next generation of students with the latest expertise in the field of AI. Official applications for the university are open from this month, with registrations taking place in August of next year. The first batch of classes will start in September 2020. How are we going to produce the right number of people with the right mindset [and] the right knowledge ... That is what this university is about -- providing that person power over 5 to 10 to 20 years.

Simon Eccles is on a mission to streamline the NHS with technology. His goal is for people's health information and their pathway through care to be seamless. But he isn't pretending this is going to be easy. The chief clinical information officer for the NHS, and deputy chief executive of NHSX, says: "The more work I do internationally, the more I am aware that everybody is finding this a challenge." Five years from now, Eccles thinks NHS tech may not have changed radically.

An international campaign takes its battle to outlaw "killer robots" to the UN this week with a new ally – a "peace robot". Created by an inventor from the BBC programme Robot Wars, the droid, known as David Wreckham, has been recruited to deliver a message to world leaders in New York on Monday. The robot will drop a letter to UN diplomats demanding that robots not guided by human remote control which could accidentally start wars or cause mass atrocities should be outlawed by the same type of international treaty that bans chemical weapons. Unlike drones, which are controlled by military teams often thousands of miles away from where they are deployed, critics say that autonomous killer robots have the potential to do disastrous things they were not originally programmed for. Wreckham will also visit the Manhattan headquarters of hi-tech corporations, calling on them to desist from developing technologies for autonomous weapons.

If you look at the past four years we've been enjoying substantial economic growth, in order for the economy to be resilient to external shocks we have to continue to diversify and explore new niches to sustain our economic growth. So for this reason we have delved into niche economic areas. We started 2 years ago with Blockchain and we've been attracting significant investment to our island, not only in terms of crypto but also in other areas of technological developments. Now we're seeing new development in companies that are investing in technology and coming here to work and operate from Malta. We're also seeing a spill-over effect, such as companies from the iGaming industry who are producing new products supported by blockchain technology.