A team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is testing a 3D-printed Transformer-like new robot, Shapeshifter, which is capable of morphing into multiple configurations. And it is stated that a similar design could one day be leveraged to explore Saturn's moon Titan. Saturn's moon Titan is one of the most potential targets on any planetary scientist's list for exploration. But any mission to Titan will have to deal with an environment unlike any other – frigid temperatures, cryovolcanoes, caves, and lakes, seas, and rain of liquid hydrocarbons. However, the latest concept could encompass 12 mini robots – cobots (Collaborative Robots) – that can fly or swim, exploring caves and oceans and will go where other robots haven't been able to explore.

Climate action is the latest buzzword among industry circles since the many International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and the recent UN Climate Summit in New York City. Greta Thunberg grabbed the headlines, but industrialists are all wondering: How can we move swiftly and effectively to reduce carbon emissions? How can we use AI and other exponential technologies to do the job better, faster and cheaper? As a business strategist and urban planner, I advise companies to focus on cities since they consume 80% of energy and emit 70% of carbon, so we'll win or lose the carbon battle in the cities. Fortunately, cities can move faster than national governments and, as energy buyers, they can directly negotiate energy types and pricing, giving them enormous economic clout.

In an effort to boost research and development in the context of deepfake detection, Google has shared a database containing 3,000 deepfake videos with the new FaceForensics benchmark, a research project by researchers at the Technical University of Munich and the University Federico II of Naples. Deepfakes are audio or visual content doctored by artificial intelligence (AI). They are considered a major threat because they allow threat actors to spread disinformation and influence public opinion by making it seem like influential individuals including government, corporate and military leaders, candidates in democratic elections, scientists and celebrities, said or did things they didn't actually say or do. The videos released by Google were produced with the help of paid actors. After recording hundreds of videos, Google researchers used publicly available tools to create thousands of deepfake videos.

This year, self-driving cars started getting pretty good. Deep fakes video started getting pretty convincing. Our virtual assistants got to the point where they could understand us well enough to do some simple things, like tell us the weather or get driving directions home. When it comes to artificial intelligence, we have reached an inflection point. The technology is good enough to use. Next year promises to be a breakout year for AI, as it starts to permeate all aspects of our lives. Here are predictions for 2020 from some of the world's top AI experts. Jen Snell is VP of product marketing at Verint, where she leads a product strategy team focused on intelligent self-service, conversational AI, automation, and analytics. She is a frequent speaker and a leading contributor on topics shaping the development and design of interactive technologies. Follow her on Twitter @JenniferLSnell and on LinkedIn.

Many examples of task automation using artificial intelligence exist in private industry. The U.S. military has a great opportunity to exploit these developments and adapt them for use throughout the force, particularly in areas such as logistics and administration, freeing up man-hours and resources for other, more-complex activities.

As lawmakers consider the impact artificial intelligence will have on America's workforce, experts across the government, industry and academia this week urged Congress to confront and prioritize issues around ethics, bias and the increasing interactions between humans and robots. "Thanks to AI some weird and wonderful things are beginning to happen: Cars are learning to drive themselves, machines can now recognize your friends' faces and when you see people walking down the street talking on their phones, you don't know if they're talking to another human, or to a machine and expecting the machine to answer," Erik Brynjolfsson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy said at a House Committee on Science, Space and Technology hearing in Washington. "Just last week, [the smart assistant] Siri tried to join into a conversation I was having about interest rates." Brynjolfsson researches the impacts that emerging information technologies have on business strategies and productivity. When prompted by a question from committee Chairwoman Haley Stevens, D-Mich., he described how considerations around ethics and bias are becoming more and more urgent as AI rapidly advances.

France is poised to become the first European country to use facial recognition technology to give citizens a secure digital identity -- whether they want it or not. Saying it wants to make the state more efficient, President Emmanuel Macron's government is pushing through plans to roll out an ID program, dubbed Alicem, in November, earlier than an initial Christmas target. The country's data regulator says the program breaches the European rule of consent and a privacy group is challenging it in France's highest administrative court. It took a hacker just over an hour to break into a "secure" government messaging app this year, raising concerns about the state's security standards. None of that is deterring the French interior ministry.

A new automated data analytics program is crucial for the early detection of signals and predications for regulated chemicals that may pose highly hazardous health risks at the Food and Drug Administration. The agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition first initiated the project, called the Emerging Chemical Hazard Intelligence Platform. It allows the center to anticipate potential chemicals associated with adverse health events before they get out of control, explained its Office of Food Additive Safety's Informatics and Information Systems Lead and Senior Policy Advisor Ernest Kwegyir-Afful. "Every time we have one these big [food safety] incidents, we have to drop everything so we can actually deal with it," said Kwegyir-Afful at SAS' Unleash Analytics: Making AI & Analytics Real event Aug. 20. This includes U.S. food supply chemical incidents, such as detecting products that increase the production of melanin in babies to measuring arsenic toxicity, he said.

Job training is always important, but in the military it can mean the difference between life and death. Researchers at NC State University are working with the U.S. Army Futures Command (AFC) to develop artificial intelligence (AI) tools that can be used to improve squad training – and save lives. "We're developing AI programs that address two aspects of training, specifically for the synthetic training environments the Army uses to prepare its personnel," says Randall Spain, a research scientist in NC State's Center for Educational Informatics (CEI) who is working on the project. "One tool is focused on assessing team-level communication, which is critical to mission success and soldier safety. The second tool is focused on identifying the most effective ways of providing feedback to trainees."