When it comes to artificial intelligence, the United States has a tradition of betting on crazy ideas. This week, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) showcased projects that are part of a new five-year, $2 billion plan to foster the next round of out-there concepts that will bring about new advances in AI. These include efforts to give machines common sense; to have them learn faster, using less data; and to create chips that reconfigure themselves to unlock new AI capabilities. Speaking at the event, Michael Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president for technology policy at the White House, said the agency's efforts are a key part of the government's plan to stay ahead in AI. "This administration supports DARPA's commitment, and shares its intense interest in developing and applying artificial intelligence," Kratsios said. President Trump signed an executive order last month to launch the US government's AI strategy, called the American AI Initiative. Kratsios, who is also the government's deputy chief technology officer, has been the driving force behind White House strategy on AI.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be an effective tool in anti-corruption work. Its potential for handling big data is unique, its ability to detect anomalies or patterns, for example in financial transaction data, unparalleled. Some of the ways AI is applied in society also raise sceptic voices who fear a society under ever more surveillance where privacy and individual freedom is at risk. The risks and opportunities of new technologies for anti-corruption is up for discussion at the OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum conference in Paris on March 20-21. Ethical dilemmas, perils and promises, in short, AI's potential and pitfalls as a tool in and for anti-corruption in development programming are up for debate.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez closed the Spanish Strategy for R&D i in Artificial Intelligence workshop, held in Granada. During his speech, Sánchez highlighted that technologies related to artificial intelligence are already one of the main factors of growth, and hence Spain and Europe have to make a joint effort to move forward on this important line for social and economic progress. Pedro Sánchez explained that the document presented on Monday is the first step in drawing up the National Strategy on Artificial Intelligence, which 11 ministerial departments will work on and which will be ready later this year. Sánchez stressed the importance of science, innovation and universities for the present and future of the country. In this regard, he highlighted the creation of a specific ministerial department for these fields, the approval of a fundamental Royal Decree-Law to make the functioning of scientific bodies more flexible and the strengthening of equal opportunities, as well as the approval, last Friday, of the Research Personnel Statute on Training, the stabilisation of 1,500 temporary positions on public research bodies, which account for 10% of the total research workforce.

What does a day in the life of a woman working with robots look like? We asked members of WomeninRobotics.org to volunteer "a paragraph and a picture" for this first patchwork representation of the field. And if you're a woman working in robotics or interested in the field, join us! (pictured in order of arrival – go Aussies!) Australian Nurse: Anne Elvin, recently travelled to Brisbane to present a talk at the Queensland eHealth Innovation Showcase. Anne presented an insider's perspective about what it was like to be working with Softbank's Pepper robot at the Townsville Hospital. Pepper's message about flu and the importance of vaccination and hand hygiene was very simple, but the user experience provided by the incredible programming by our collaborative partners at the Australian Centre of Robotics Vision was extraordinary. As part of an innovation project created by Anne, Pepper brought a new layer of engagement in health and the robot became very popular amongst staff, patients, and volunteers at the Townsville Hospital.

Paris, Mar 7 (Prensa Latina) Participants in a conference held at the UNESCO headquarters defended a governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) focused on the human element, according to a communiqué from the UN agency. 'The challenges posed by artificial intelligence are not technological, they concern our own humanity; they are scientific, political, philosophical and ethical dilemmas,' UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay said at a meeting held this week. According to the French politician, 'it is time to define the ethical principles to frame that technical disruption and assure that artificial intelligence will be at the service of collective interests and will be based on humanistic values.' When referring to the work by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in terms of AI, Azoulay noted that they will work on the basis of the first report by the World Ethics and Scientific Ethics Commission, which is'devoted to artificial intelligence and will undoubtedly provide major scientific support for reflection and initiatives by the member States'. For his part, the secretary general of the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development (OCED), Angel Gurria, noted the need to cooperate so that AI can be a vector of integrating and sustainable growth.

Brain to Computer Interfaces (BCI) are a tough subject to write on. The most current technology is likely in the research stage and is not yet being publicly reported. So let's take a look at what has been reported over the last couple of years with the understanding that scientists are likely years ahead. In other words, the technology is here….we The first publicly reported successful and non-non-invassive BCI was reported in a press release and titled the "Brainternet" by the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

A new machine learning paper shows how AI can take footage of someone and duplicate the video with the subject looking an age the researchers specify. The team behind the paper, from the University of Arkansas, Clemson University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Concordia University in Canada, claim that this is one of the first methods to use AI to tackle aging in videos. The system was trained on an expanded dataset of photos of showing individuals at different ages. Reinforcement learning, a technique that rewards an AI model for getting a task correct, comes into play by rewarding the system when the synthesized features, like wrinkles, appear similarly across consecutive video frames. Similar approaches power the "deepfake" technology that has raised alarms about the prospect of AI-powered video propaganda.

The European Commission has chosen Time Machine as one of the six proposals retained for preparing large-scale research initiatives to be strategically developed in the next decade. Time Machine foresees to design and implement advanced new digitisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to mine Europe's vast cultural heritage, providing fair and free access to information that will support future scientific and technological developments in Europe. The Time Machine Project, which involves FAU as well as several other institutions, will create advanced AI technologies to make sense of vast amounts of information from complex historical data sets. This will enable the transformation of fragmented data – with content ranging from medieval manuscripts and historical objects to smartphone and satellite images – into useable knowledge for industry. In essence, a large-scale computing and digitisation infrastructure will map Europe's entire social, cultural and geographical evolution.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) specialists across the industry, the academic world and government have since quite a while ago approached the Trump organization to make the improvement of artificial intelligence a noteworthy priority. President Trump signed an executive order recently intended to encourage the improvement and management of artificial intelligence, an innovation that numerous specialists believe will characterize the fate of everything from consumer products to healthcare to military operation. China discharged a plan for AI two years back and it was accounted for that several billions of dollars have been diverted into the advancement of the technology, while the U.S. has been deficient in the national policy region. The historical backdrop of computing and artificial intelligence has consistently been inherently linked to government spending and technique, individuals regularly refer to state funding that made the Internet, however more consideration ought to be given to the way that the principal computers, most supercomputers, inside parts, for example, RAM, and much more, were all initially based on the government's dime. Along these lines, endless artificial intelligence advancements can be followed back to government support, Apple's Siri, for instance, was an outgrowth from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's CALO venture.

Last week, several members of Congress began pushing the resolution with the aim of "supporting the development of guidelines for ethical development of artificial intelligence." It was introduced by Reps. Brenda Lawrence and Ro Khanna -- the latter of whom, crucially, represents Silicon Valley, which is to the ethical development of software what West Virginia is to the rollout of clean energy. This has helped make Khanna a national figure, in part because, far from being a tech industry cheerleader, he's publicly supported cracking down on the data Wild West his home district helped create. For example, he has criticized the wrist-slaps Google and Facebook receive in the wakes of their regular privacy scandals and called for congressional action against Amazon's labor practices.