In recent years, humanity has been being faced with a technological development that may result in radical changes in post-industrial revolution economic, social, cultural, political and military fields. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be able to shape the future and manage the world, according to Vladimir Putin. So, what exactly is artificial intelligence, that has the potential to instigate such important changes? The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the United States considers the development of AI in three stages. At the first stage, the rules derived from the information that are collected from a specific area are uploaded to the computers via algorithms.

The science-fiction writer and futurist Stanisław Lem was well acquainted with the way that fictional worlds can sometimes encroach upon reality. In his autobiographical essay "Chance and Order," which appeared in The New Yorker, in 1984, Lem recalls how as an only child growing up in Lvov, Poland, he amused himself by creating passports, certificates, permits, government memos, and identification papers. Equipped with these eccentric toys, he would then privately access fictional places "not to be found on any map." Some years later, when his family was fleeing the Nazis, Lem notes that they escaped certain death with the help of false papers. It was as if the child's innocent game had prophesied a horrific turn in history, and Lem wonders if he'd sensed some calamity looming on the horizon--if his game had sprung "perhaps from some unconscious feeling of danger."

The annual perm secs round-up published by PublicTechnology sister publication Civil Service World sees Whitehall's senior leaders open up on their biggest challenges and opportunities - as well as their thoughts on how best to mark the festive season. Here National Archives chief executive and keeper Jeff James opens up on the organisation's plan to establish a "disruptive digital archive". What was your highlight of 2018? In September, we held our very first'Archives and AI' digital symposium, in collaboration with the Forum of National Archivists, a section of the International Council on Archives. Artificial intelligence presents almost limitless potential to archivists.

China has for the first time released video showing its latest stealth drone in flight, state media said Sunday. China Central Television (CCTV) on Saturday ran video featuring the "saucer-like" Sky Hawk drone, and state-run Global Times claimed that the new drone's cutting-edge technology will allow it to fly faster, farther and escape detection. The Global Times, quoting the CCTV report, said the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp.-developed drone, known as the Sky Hawk, had conducted the flight test at an undisclosed location in the country. Video showed the drone taking off and landing, marking the first time that the aircraft has been publicly seen in flight, according to the reports. The drone reportedly made its maiden flight last February, but no video had been published before Saturday's broadcast.

Unlike the holiday fruitcake we've all been avoiding the past couple of weeks, 2018 was far from stale. The year was riddled with controversies, excitement, and disappointments -- from Facebook selling it's soul … err, our souls, to the battle over net neutrality to Apple hitting over a trillion dollars to cryptocurrencies' nosedive. While already used on a wider basis in China, we will see facial recognition systems launched in the U.S. on a test-basis in large public venues in 2019. There are various technical and public policy issues to overcome, but this could be the start of a Minority Report-like world with advertising thrown into our view based on this technology. While listening to a talk by Timothy Chou, cloud computing pioneer and former President of Oracle On Demand, a few months ago combined with my SparkLabs Group co-founder's, HanJoo Lee, constant yapping about the future of the cloud, I have to agree that future of enterprise analytics can be as big as the trillion dollar workflow platform space (Oracle, Salesforce, SAP, and others).

Modern societies are formed on concepts of free will and self-governance. Societal authority is put on opinions and feelings of people. While people have common ideas around universal concepts like voter knows best, customer is always right etc., subconsciously, free will itself is influenced by a lot of data points - cultural, spiritual, personal etc. In this age, AI can automatically manage and manipulate these data points at a massive scale- in effect, hacking human feelings, attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and in essence, changing the very fibre of society itself. AI with deep learning neural networks improve themselves by learning on more and more data and establishing complex associations and patterns.

Bio-hybrids providing new energy sources, AI helping shoppers to try before they buy, currencies becoming a free-for-all and algorithmically-driven peak journey planners helping train operators avoid congestion are just some of the future forces that will shape 2018. A key overarching theme is digital decentralisation: where technology is empowering brands and communities to seize the initiative and challenge centralised ways of doing things. This trend is being seen across all sectors but specifically in finance, in the form of cryptocurrencies and energy with the rise of micro-grids. Trends are less about forecasting the future than reshaping the present by unlocking possibilities and helping businesses to deepen their understanding of what is achievable. In 2018 the most interesting techno-societal changes are happening in energy, retail, mobility and money.

"Killer robots" are taking over. Also known as autonomous weapons, these devices, once activated, can destroy targets without human intervention. The technology has been with us for years. In 1959, the US Navy started using the Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, an autonomous defense device that can spot and attack anti-ship missiles, helicopters and similar threats. In 2014, Russia announced that killer robots would guard five of its ballistic missile installations. That same year, Israel deployed the Harpy, an autonomous weapon that can stay airborne for nine hours to identify and pick off enemy targets from enormous distances.

As we gear up towards ASDAiRE, I felt it was important to assess the state of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as it pertains to security. A lot of articles have been published lately about the employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft staging protests in opposition to their companies working with the Department of Defense and the sale of facial recognition software to law enforcement. The fear is that AI will be used as a weapon of war or police surveillance and cause more harm than good. As a result of these protests, Google dropped a $10 Billion bid to build the Pentagon's cloud computing project. DARPA which is the research arm of the US Department of Defense, has allocated over $2 Billion dollars to fund and promote AI related Ventures.

Editor's Note: As 2018 comes to a close, War on the Rocks is publishing a series of year-end reflections on what our editors and contributors learned from the publication's coverage of various national security topics. These reflections will examine how War on the Rocks coverage evolved over the year, what it taught us about the issue in question, and what questions remain to be answered in 2019 and beyond. Enjoy, and see you next year! What will advances in artificial intelligence (AI) mean for national security? This year in War on the Rocks, technical and non-technical experts with academic, military, and industry perspectives grappled with the promise and peril of AI in the military and defense realms.