A startup funded by Microsoft owner Bill Gates is looking for permission to test a radar-powered drone detector system at the Superbowl this Sunday. Echodyne has filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) to experiment with the technology during the NFL's marquee event in Atlanta. It is capable of detecting drones up to 0.6 miles away and remotely disable them. The radar focused tech company from Seattle hopes to operate two experimental radars'in the immediate vicinity' of the stadium. It will be operated alongside the FBI and'alert authorities' of any unidentified drone activity during the event if it receives authorisation for the project.

In an era of digital disruption where Internet of Things (IoT) and mobility are invading IT perimeters, artificial intelligence is emerging as the future of cybersecurity. With the expansion of the modern threat landscape, the inclusion of AI in the security strategy has become imperative for the establishment and maintenance of an effective security posture. Given the urgent need for protecting both data and high-value assets, organisations have started incorporating elements of machine learning and AI. With a series of investments, a raft of new products, and a rising tide of enterprise deployments, artificial intelligence is making a splash in the IoT ecosystem. Large organisations across sectors are already exploring and leveraging the power of AI with IoT to deliver new offerings and operate more efficiently.

This week I was invited to speak at the Oxford Union in England on the topic: AI: An inhumane future? In this panel there was Kenneth Cukier, a senior editor of The Economist, D Catherine Havasi, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist and Professor Sir Adrian Smith, the director of The Alan Turing Institute. As I was preparing for this talk, I was reminded of the famous British author Charles Dickens who in his classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, famously characterised the French Revolution as follows: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair." Artificial Intelligence (AI) is catalysing another revolution and not the French one…but the fourth industrial revolution (4IR). While the French revolution ushered new improved ways of human relations, it also ushered the cruelty of political factions.

In July 2018, the battle between Apple and Samsung to be the world's most popular smartphone maker was finally interrupted. After eight years, a Chinese upstart had entered the fray to challenge Samsung – but few people outside of Asia had ever heard of them. Huawei had overtaken Apple by selling more than 54 million units in the space of three months, largely helped by the success of its hugely popular flagship phones that boasted some of the most impressive specs on the market. Yet various political issues meant only a few thousand of those sales came from the highly lucrative US market. Since then, several other western governments have raised concerns about Huawei in relation to the firm's alleged ties with the Chinese government, with allegations that Huawei devices are being used as spy tools by Beijing.

Looking back, we can see the value these emerging innovations offered, but in the moment, their promise seemed less clear. It is, therefore, remarkable how quickly organizations across sectors and regions navigated through the so what and into the now what for these trends and went on to successfully traverse the new digital landscape. This journey from uncertainty to digital transformation informs our latest offering, Tech Trends 2019: Beyond the digital frontier. A persistent theme of every Tech Trends report has been the increasing, often mind-bending velocity of change. A decade ago many companies could achieve competitive advantage by embracing innovations and trends that were already underway. Today, this kind of reactive approach is no longer enough. To stay ahead of the game, companies must work methodically to sense new innovations and possibilities, make sense of their ambitions for tomorrow, and find the confidence to boldly go beyond the digital frontier. So here's to the next decade of opportunity, whatever it may be. Along the way, embrace that queasy feeling of uncertainty.

What a surprise to find a comic strip on Artificial Intelligence written by somebody called Montaigne!: Marion Montaigne présente l'Intelligence artificielle: https://youtu.be/DtdoNksCtmE Indeed, Montaigne discusses in the Essays whether the savages found mainly in Brazil are human beings or not and whether they should be considered humans, the way the barbarians in Ancient Greece have been finally recognised as such. As it is growing more and more difficult to recognise an artificial intelligence from a human being; I think reconsidering this classic is relevant as it challenges again human identity. From the conquistadors until now the concept of humanity has evolved. On the other hand, what is common to humanity, at each step, from the cannibals till now; is some human beings' will to build weapons to kill others.

The intelligence community is investing in artificial intelligence as a way to augment the capabilities of intelligence analysts, with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency promoting computer vision technology and the CIA looking to AI and machine learning to help it sift through large volumes of data. Yet AI is only as strong and useful as the protections around it. That's why the intelligence community's research arm is looking for ways to predict if AI has been tampered with. In a draft broad agency announcement released last month, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity sought industry input on its TrojAI program. The program is designed to create software to automatically inspect an AI system and predict if it contains a "Trojan" attack that has tampered with its training.

Call it a "Forrest Gump moment;" an instance of being in the right place at the right time for no other reason than just plain luck. A "Forrest Gump moment" is based upon Tom Hanks' character in the movie "Forrest Gump," a guy who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time meeting Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon at critical points in American history. I too have had a Forrest Gump moment in meeting President Reagan, however, my deeper Forrest Gump moments have been my long association with the history of analytics. I was fortunate to be at the birth of the Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse era while working for Metaphor Computers to deploy Decision Support Systems across Procter & Gamble in the late 1980's. And was fortunate again in the late 2000's to be at the launch of the Data Science era while building Advertiser Analytics at Yahoo.

Over an 11-month period--May 2016 to April 2017--51% of all noise complaints in the focus area were related to after-hours construction activity (6 P.M.–7 A.M.), three times the amount in the next category. Note combining all construction-related complaints adds up to 70% of this sample, highlighting how disruptive to the lives of ordinary citizens this particular category of noise can be. Figure 4c includes SPL values (blue line) at a five-minute resolution for the after-hours period during or immediately preceding a subset of the complaints. Dotted green lines correspond to background levels, computed as the moving average of SPL measurements within a two-hour window. Dotted black lines correspond to SPL values 10dB above the background, the threshold defined by the city's noise code to indicate potential violations.

Agricultural businesses usually have a massive number of trackable assets (plants, livestock, and machinery), often operate in wide geographic areas in which these assets are located, and are subject to operational factors often beyond their control, such as the amount of sunlight or rainfall they receive, or temperature fluctuations. As such, agriculture is ripe for the adoption of new technologies to help monitor and manage assets on a granular level, and everything from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, robots, and drones are being used by farms around the globe. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture notes that the farms of today are avid users of agriculture technologies such as robots, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial imaging, and GPS technology, which are more precise and efficient than humans alone, and allow for safer, more efficient, and more profitable operations. One example of how technology enables new farming techniques is the use of robotic harvesting on indoor farms, which today account for a tiny fraction of the 900 million acres of traditional farmland in the U.S. However, these indoor farms are well suited to the growth of vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce, and other leafy greens, are highly sustainable, generally feature an average yield per acre more than 10 times higher than that of outdoor farms, and represent a continuation of the agricultural sector's trend toward incorporating precision agriculture techniques to improve yields and become more sustainable.