China is poised to overtake the United States in artificial intelligence with a surge in academic research on the key technology, an analysis published Wednesday showed. The analysis by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence showed China has already surpassed the US in published papers on AI--although many of these were considered "medium-quality" or "low-quality." But the researchers said China is likely to top the US in the most-cited 50 percent of papers this year, the most-cited 10 percent of papers next year, and in the top one percent by 2025. The findings highlight concerns in Washington and Silicon Valley that China is racing ahead of the US in key areas of technology such as autonomous vehicles, virtual reality and fifth-generation wireless networks. Allen Institute researchers Field Cady and Oren Etzioni said the surge in AI investment in China began more than a decade ago, well before the 2017 announcement by Beijing that it planned to become the world leader in the sector by 2030.

The robotics group at the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Fla., has an enormous amount of experience with walking robots. They came in second at the DARPA Robotics Challenge with their Running Man Atlas, one of just three teams to score a perfect 8 out of 8, and they've continued to advance bipedal locomotion using both Atlas and NASA's Valkyrie. We write about their research all the time--just a few months ago, they taught Atlas to walk with straight legs, much like a human does. Humans set a very high standard for bipedal mobility. We're well designed for it in both hardware and software, and we can do some absolutely amazing things.

NASA's Opportunity Rover took one last stunning image of Mars's landscape, before losing touch with it after 15 years last month. The incredible 360-degree panorama shows what would been Opportunity's final resting spot in Perseverance Valley. It gives a view of the rim of the Endeavour Crater in the distance, rover tracks from Opportunity, and to the far right and left is the bottom of Perseverance Valley. The space agency lost contact with Opportunity after its years exploring the surface of the planet, laying the groundwork for future missions. A dust storm blanketed its location in June last year.

China is poised to overtake the United States in artificial intelligence with a surge in academic research on the key technology, an analysis published Wednesday showed. The analysis by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence showed China has already surpassed the US in published papers on AI -- although many of these were considered "medium-quality" or "low-quality." But the researchers said China is likely to top the US in the most-cited 50 percent of papers this year, the most-cited 10 percent of papers next year, and in the top one percent by 2025. The findings highlight concerns in Washington and Silicon Valley that China is racing ahead of the US in key areas of technology such as autonomous vehicles, virtual reality and fifth-generation wireless networks. Allen Institute researchers Field Cady and Oren Etzioni said the surge in AI investment in China began more than a decade ago, well before the 2017 announcement by Beijing that it planned to become the world leader in the sector by 2030.

HEJERE, ETHIOPIA - Canada joined much of the world in barring the Boeing 737 Max 8 jet from its airspace on Wednesday, saying satellite tracking data show possible but unproven similarities between the Ethiopian Airliner crash that killed 157 people and a previous crash involving the model five months ago. The decision left the U.S. as one of the few remaining countries to allow the planes to keep flying. Canadian Transport Minister Marc Garneau said a comparison of vertical fluctuations found a "similar profile" to the Lion Air crash that killed 187 people in October. Garneau emphasized that the data are not conclusive but crossed a threshold that prompted Canada to bar the Max 8. He said the new information indicated the Ethiopian Airliner jet's automatic system kicked in to force the nose of the aircraft down after computer software determined it was too high.

While it may not lead to the next Cold War, the growing rivalry between the United States and China has certainly led to some frosty competition between the great powers. This is especially true of the tech sector, where some analysts liken the U.S. and China's heavy strategic investments in cybersecurity, quantum computing, 5G, and artificial intelligence to a digital arms race, one that, because of China's long-term positioning and access to vast amounts of data to train on, that country will win. But Anne-Marie Slaughter argues that when it comes to the world-shifting technology of artificial intelligence, the narrative isn't so simple. She explains why she is putting her money on the United States. Great power conflict isn't the only thing we at Future Tense have been fretting about this week.

At the perfect intersection of technology and civil service, every government process will be an automated one, streamlining benefits, outcomes, and applications for every citizen within a digitally-enabled country. With that approach comes a significant layer of protocol that is necessary to ensure citizens feel empowered regarding decision-making processes and how their government addresses needs from a digital perspective. Right now, Canada is leading the world in AI, thanks largely to huge government investments like the Pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy. The growing field is pervasive right now--there is hardly an industry it has not disrupted, from mining to legal aid. In fact, government might be one of the most obvious choices as to where automated decision processes can save time and money.

But U.S. officials have stood by their decision to keep the Boeing aircraft operating. The Federal Aviation Administration released a statement Tuesday that reaffirmed officials' trust in the safety of the jet, saying the aviation authority hasn't found any issues that would trigger an immediate grounding of the aircraft. The statement was released following a Dallas Morning News report that claimed pilots previously alerted U.S. officials about concerns regarding the model's autopilot system. In a separate report, the Times said Boeing's chief executive also personally called President Donald Trump to express his confidence in the jets.

In the midst of a political climate already fraught with distrust, the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to be weaponized is giving pause to tech executives, over half of whom state that regulation of AI is "critical for its safe development," according to the 2019 Edelman Artificial Intelligence survey, conducted in coordination with the World Economic Forum (WEF). The survey found that 54% of tech executives and 60% of the general population said they believe that regulation is necessary. The report cites cases in which AI is used to evaluate attributes about someone's life: "Loan analyses including credit card applications are now often performed using AI algorithms. Yet, how can an algorithm be held accountable if a customer feels that a decision about their credit card application was wrong? Many argue that people have a right to know how decisions that affect them are being made."

Earlier Tuesday, the Dallas Morning News reported that pilots made five complaints about the Boeing aircraft to federal authorities in the months leading up to Sunday's crash. The complaints, voluntarily made in the FAA's incident database, referenced problems with an autopilot system that occurred during the aircraft's ascent after takeoff, according to the Morning News. An FAA spokesman told the paper that such reports were filed directly to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.