WASHINGTON – Amazon, Microsoft and Intel are among leading tech companies putting the world at risk through killer robot development, according to a report that surveyed major players from the sector about their stance on lethal autonomous weapons. Dutch NGO Pax ranked 50 companies by three criteria: whether they were developing technology that could be relevant to deadly AI, whether they were working on related military projects, and if they had committed to abstaining from contributing in the future. "Why are companies like Microsoft and Amazon not denying that they're currently developing these highly controversial weapons, which could decide to kill people without direct human involvement?" The use of AI to allow weapon systems to autonomously select and attack targets has sparked ethical debates in recent years, with critics warning they would jeopardize international security and herald a third revolution in warfare after gunpowder and the atomic bomb. A panel of government experts debated policy options regarding lethal autonomous weapons at a meeting of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva on Wednesday.

MOSCOW – Russia on Thursday launched an unmanned rocket carrying a life-size humanoid robot that will spend 10 days learning to assist astronauts on the International Space Station. Named Fedor, for Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research with identification number Skybot F850, the robot is the first ever sent up by Russia. Fedor blasted off in a Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft at 6:38 a.m. The Soyuz is set to dock with the space station on Saturday and stay till Sept. 7. Soyuz ships are normally manned on such trips, but on Thursday no humans are traveling in order to test a new emergency rescue system. Instead of cosmonauts, Fedor was strapped into a specially adapted pilot's seat, with a small Russian flag in his hand.

Continuing to build on its vision of'Digital Telangana', Google India and the Telangana Government have signed an MoU to improve and get more local language content online using Google's digital publishing tool, Navlekha. The effort has already rolled out several initiatives aimed towards bridging the digital divide, mentoring local startups and enabling small and medium businesses to gain from the internet. As part of the MoU, Google will work with the state government to help digitise the government's content in Telugu to make it easier for the common man to get access to all the information and services on government sites in their local languages. Besides, Google will also collaborate with the government to support its digital literacy vision and aid in the overall digitization agenda of the state. "Google has been a trusted partner for Telangana who have already set up their office in Hyderabad and are in the process of setting-up their 2nd largest campus in Hyderabad. We have identified that availability of content in native language over the internet is essential for all citizens of Telangana to use internet actively," said Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary ITE&C and Industries Department, Telangana government.

In another sign that the future of work is already here, JPMorgan Chase has signed a five-year deal with a software startup that uses artificial intelligence to write marketing copy, following a successful pilot with the technology. In tests, JPMorgan Chase found that Persado's machine-learning tool crafted better ad copy than its own writers could muster, as measured by the higher click rates--more than double in some case--on digital ads for Chase cards and mortgages. In one such matchup, an ad written by a human read, "Access cash from the equity in your home." The more successful version, from Persado, read, "It's true--You can unlock cash from the equity in your home." "Persado's technology is incredibly promising," Kristin Lemkau, chief marketing officer at JPMorgan Chase, said in a statement.

On August 9, 2019, Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker signed into law first-of-its-kind legislation regulating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Illinois. As previously reported by Troutman Sanders on June 26, 2019, the Illinois legislature, in what has been described as the most momentous legislative session in decades, passed the privacy statute aimed at regulating an ever-growing issue in HR: the use of AI in the hiring process. With the Governor's signature, the statute will become effective January 1, 2020. While the use of AI in the employment decision-making process might sound futuristic, many U.S. companies already use AI to streamline hiring and make the process more objective, including scanning resumes, scheduling interviews, and recently, actually conducting the first round of job interviews. These AI interviewing programs have different algorithms and methods, but essentially, they measure an applicant's facial expression, word choice, body language, and vocal tone, among other factors.

We live in times of high-tech euphoria marked by instances of geopolitical doom-and-gloom. There seems to be no middle ground between the hype surrounding cutting-edge technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and their impact on security and defence, and anxieties over their potential destructive consequences. AI, arguably one of the most important and divisive inventions in human history, is now being glorified as the strategic enabler of the 21st century and next domain of military disruption and geopolitical competition. The race in technological innovation, justified by significant economic and security benefits, is widely recognised as likely to make early adopters the next global leaders. Technological innovation and defence technologies have always occupied central positions in national defence strategies.

Recovery of low-rank matrices from a small number of linear measurements is now well-known to be possible under various model assumptions on the measurements. Such results demonstrate robustness and are backed with provable theoretical guarantees. However, extensions to tensor recovery have only recently began to be studied and developed, despite an abundance of practical tensor applications. Recently, a tensor variant of the Iterative Hard Thresholding method was proposed and theoretical results were obtained that guarantee exact recovery of tensors with low Tucker rank. In this paper, we utilize the same tensor version of the Restricted Isometry Property (RIP) to extend these results for tensors with low CANDECOMP/PARAFAC (CP) rank. In doing so, we leverage recent results on efficient approximations of CP decompositions that remove the need for challenging assumptions in prior works. We complement our theoretical findings with empirical results that showcase the potential of the approach.

BERLIN – A German city that's been the subject of a long-running online light-hearted conspiracy theory claiming it doesn't really exist is offering big bucks to whoever proves that's true. Officials in Bielefeld said Wednesday they'll give 1 million euros ($1.1 million) to the person who delivers solid proof of its nonexistence. They said there are "no limits to creativity" for entrants, but only incontrovertible evidence will qualify for the prize. The idea that Bielefeld doesn't exist was first floated by computer expert Achim Held, who posted the satirical claim on the internet in 1994 in an effort to poke fun at online conspiracy theories. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel once jokingly cast doubt on the existence of Bielefeld, which is allegedly located about 330 kilometers (205 miles) west of Berlin.

Fox News Flash top headlines for August 19 are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com Bernie Sanders has called for a complete ban on the police use of facial recognition. The Vermont senator's proposal to "ban the use of facial recognition software for policing" is part of his broader criminal justice reform agenda. Facial recognition technology has drawn the ire of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, some of whom have called for a "time out" on its development.

Science-fiction can sometimes be a good guide to the future. In the film Upgrade (2018) Grey Trace, the main character, is shot in the neck. His wife is shot dead. Trace wakes up to discover that not only has he lost his wife, but he now faces a future as a wheelchair-bound quadriplegic. He is implanted with a computer chip called Stem designed by famous tech innovator Eron Keen – any similarity with Elon Musk must be coincidental – which will let him walk again.