Are our current institutions and global governance architecture sufficient to solve the new challenges the world is currently facing? According to Lee Howell, an executive of the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum, the existing institutions and systems around the world, created in the 20th century, are no longer capable of dealing with today's challenges. These have been triggered by multiple geopolitical, economic and environmental crises, as well as newly emerging issues involving innovative technologies. That is why it is important to have conferences like Davos, Howell said in a recent interview in Tokyo, referring to the WEF's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The meeting will see some 3,000 global leaders from politics, business, academia and nongovernmental organizations gather to discuss pressing issues across different sectors. The meeting, dubbed the Davos conference, will kick off on Jan. 22 with discussions on problems ranging from climate change to trade issues and geopolitics to the "Fourth Industrial Revolution," in which artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies are expected to drastically transform how humans work and live.

Welcome to the consultation on the Draft AI Ethics Guidelines of the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG). The AI HLEG was established by the European Commission in June 2018 to support the implementation of its Strategy on Artificial Intelligence and to prepare two deliverables: (1) AI Ethics Guidelines and (2) Policy and Investment Recommendations. The first draft of the Guidelines, published on 18 December, is now open for consultation until 1 February (i.e. a two-week extension from the original deadline of 18 January, in order to allow the opportunity for more feedback). You can comment on or contribute to the individual sections of the draft, as well as provide your general feedback through the following consultation form. The AI HLEG also published a Definition on artificial intelligence which accompanies its deliverable.

According to Nicole Eagan, CEO of software company Darktrace, only two out of every ten cybersecurity experts typically embrace artificial intelligence (AI) as a key component of threat detection. The others, she explains, tend to be "totally resistant" or agree to "give [AI] a try" but don't put in the effort required to make the most of the tech post-purchase. Granted, information security professionals are known to be risk-averse, which has the flip side of sometimes making them resistant to try out new tech -- and for good reason: Protecting the company against risk is the number one job. Yet, theoretically, AI has the potential to more quickly identify a larger number of problems. Mike Small, senior analyst for research firm KuppingerCole, believes many actually do -- they just might not think of it as AI.

An ancient species of shark measuring up to two feet (0.6 metres) long has been discovered in the same rock as the famed T-rex fossil Sue. The shark has been dubbed Galagadon nordquistae after its teeth were found to look like the mini spaceships in the game Galaga. Only the teeth of the animal remain in tact as the cartilaginous body of the ancient fish is far harder to preserve than bone. Its teeth were the size of a sand grain, about four-hundredths of an inch long (1 millimeter). It was found in the leftover two tons of rock from where Sue, the most complete and best-preserved T. Rex ever unearthed, was extricated in the 1990s.

Computer vision has made the transition from being the subject of sci-fi movies to an actual technology which you can find in top hospitals. This visual branch of artificial intelligence is helping more doctors better diagnose patients, prescribe the right treatments and monitor the evolution various diseases. Technopedia defines computer vision as a distinctive field of computer science which helps computers to see, identify, and process images in a way which is similar to the way humans perform this task. It is part of artificial intelligence since to identify objects and take decisions based on what it sees it is necessary to make an in-depth analysis. Predicting the applications of a computer vision solution for medical use has to do with extending current ways this technology is already being used and adding a layer of creativity and imagination.

The field of artificial intelligence will be one of the biggest areas where different players will be working to establish regulatory guardrails and answer ethical questions in the future. Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote his influential laws of robotics in the first half of the 20th century, and reality is now catching up to fiction. Questions over the ethics of AI and its potential applications are numerous: What constitutes bias within the algorithms? What privacy measures should be employed? And just how much control should humans retain in applying AI-driven automation?

The population of older adults is growing, because of aging baby boomers and longer life expectancies. The number of people over age 65 in the United States grew by 37.2 million from 2006 to 2016, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. At the same time, the ratio of younger to older family members is declining, creating a shortage of family caretakers down the line. This is coupled with an increasing shortage of professional home health workers. With the right technology, older people could stay in their own homes longer, and unpaid family caretakers could keep their jobs or spend less money on hired health aids.

Hello, here I am again after a while. I hope you had a good start into 2019. I enjoyed being offline for a while, then got busy with not much time to blog. So, here is a roundup of things going on. The anual World Economic Forum in Davos, CH, reminded me of writing a blog.

The human body is frail and people end up in intensive care units for all kinds of reasons. Whatever brings them there, more than half of adults admitted to an ICU end up sharing the same potentially life-threatening condition: kidney damage known as acute kidney injury. The Veterans Administration thinks artificial intelligence could reduce the toll. In a project that drew on roughly 700,000 medical records from US veterans, the agency worked with Google parent Alphabet's DeepMind unit to create software that attempts to predict which patients are likely to develop AKI. The VA hopes to test whether those predictions can help doctors prevent people from developing the condition.

It's a bright September morning in San Carlos, California, and Masayoshi Son, chairman of SoftBank, is throwing me off schedule. I'd come, as he had, to meet with the people he's tapped to run the Vision Fund, his $100 billion bet on the future of, well, everything. After almost four decades of building SoftBank into a telecom conglomerate, Son, an inveterate dealmaker, launched this unprecedented venture two years ago to back startups that he believes are driving a new wave of digital upheaval. He has staked everything on its success–his company, his reputation, his fortune. We'd both arrived with the same basic question: Where is this massive vehicle heading? But because I wasn't the one footing the 12-figure allowance, I understood that I'd be the one to wait. When I finally arrive at the Vision Fund's offices, just off California's Highway 101, I'm struck by how mundane they are. Son is known for big, showy statements. He reportedly paid $117 million for a home in Woodside in 2013, the highest price ever in the U.S. This glass and concrete building, on the other hand, could be found in any part of suburban America. The room where I wait is spartan.