The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded BAE Systems the second phase of an existing $12.8 million contract to develop digital tools to test and evaluate technologies for space command and control. The second phase focuses on the use of machine learning for space and situational awareness, the company announced Aug. 13. BAE Systems originally won the contract for the Hallmark Tools, Capabilities, and Evaluation Methodology (Hallmark-TCEM) program in November 2017. The program is to help operators improve their understanding of space events and their ability to take actions in response to situations that might affect U.S. satellites in space. The work is being performed by BAE Systems' Fast Labs research and development division.

The U.S. Department of Commerce's Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is asking for the help of experts and the broader public to determine the impact AI will have on intellectual property and "whether new forms of intellectual property protection are needed." A call for public comment was published in the Federal Registrar by the USPTO today in search of answers about such issues as how AI is reshaping perceptions of inventions or whether additional information should be required to claim a deep learning system as an invention since they can have a large number of hidden layers and weights that evolve. To help solicit responses, the notice in the federal registrar comes along with a series of questions such as "what is an AI invention and what does it contain?" "What are the different ways that a natural person can contribute to conception of an AI invention and be eligible to be a named inventor? Structuring data in order to train a model?

The sentiment across the legal technology community is that this year's ILTACON was a smashing success. More than 1500 members and 1700 exhibitors attended the conference in Orlando this year. Their vibe was energetic and people were definitely in good spirits. The need for and growth of technology continues and that's ultimately why we were there. We spent time in the exhibit hall and demo rooms talking to companies in the legal technology space to identify what's new and interesting.

The sentiment across the legal technology community is that this year's ILTACON was a smashing success. More than 1500 members and 1700 exhibitors attended the conference in Orlando this year. Their vibe was energetic and people were definitely in good spirits. The need for and growth of technology continues and that's ultimately why we were there. We spent time in the exhibit hall and demo rooms talking to companies in the legal technology space to identify what's new and interesting.

A team of MIT researchers is making it easier for novices to get their feet wet with artificial intelligence, while also helping experts advance the field. In a paper presented at the Programming Language Design and Implementation conference this week, the researchers describe a novel probabilistic-programming system named "Gen." Users write models and algorithms from multiple fields where AI techniques are applied -- such as computer vision, robotics, and statistics -- without having to deal with equations or manually write high-performance code. Gen also lets expert researchers write sophisticated models and inference algorithms -- used for prediction tasks -- that were previously infeasible. In their paper, for instance, the researchers demonstrate that a short Gen program can infer 3-D body poses, a difficult computer-vision inference task that has applications in autonomous systems, human-machine interactions, and augmented reality.

The 3-0 decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco over Facebook's facial recognition technology exposes the company to billions of dollars in potential damages to the Illinois users who brought the case. It came as the social media company faces broad criticism from lawmakers and regulators over its privacy practices. Last month, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion fine to settle a Federal Trade Commission data privacy probe. "This biometric data is so sensitive that if it is compromised, there is simply no recourse," Shawn Williams, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the class action, said in an interview. "It's not like a Social Security card or credit card number where you can change the number.

We need to discuss the systems in which it will be a critical component, Genevieve Bell, Katherine Daniell, and Amy McLennan write. Defining artificial intelligence (AI) is messy. Ask 10 experts to define AI and you will get 10 different answers. It is easy to think that the most important policy question, then, is a definitional one that tidies up the mess: what is AI? But AI is not a singular thing.

PARIS (Reuters) - France and Germany are to make proposals in the coming months to invest public money in data storage facilities in order to wean Europe off of foreign centers and spur artificial intelligence investment, France's finance minister said on Wednesday. France's Bruno Le Maire said the investments would be based on a recent joint initiative to finance the development of batteries, which France and Germany want in order to avoid becoming dependent on Chinese batteries. "We will make proposals with Germany in the coming months to invest public money in data storage for artificial intelligence so that European data is protected," Le Maire told journalists on the sidelines of an annual end-of-summer business forum. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said that Europe had fallen behind and that alternative had to be found in order not to become dependent on U.S. and Chinese companies. "We have an interest in Europe to keep our data in Europe. We have an interest in creating sovereign data structures," Altmaier said at the same conference.

How we adopt – and adapt to – artificial intelligence in the workplace will be crucial to the future of our region's economic growth and the very nature of employment. The 4th Industrial Revolution is already bringing many changes. And, policymakers, employers, and civil society organizations across the Asia Pacific are looking for innovative and inclusive ways to maximize the opportunities created by AI. They also want to manage the challenges. Among these is the need to understand what the evidence is telling us. In particular, governments want to see what the likely outcomes are so that they can invest today in policies to re-skill for an AI-driven future.

After years of organizations being stuck in a reactive security posture, proactive prevention is finally possible thanks to machine learning backed by artificial intelligence math models, says John McClurg of BlackBerry Cylance. See Also: Webinar Passwords: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? Be Careful What You Wish For. McClurg is vice president of security and trust at BlackBerry Cylance. He previously served as the CSO of Dell.