Data management gets lost in the enthusiasm around Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Not surprising, when it's an algorithm that decides what search results to show you, guides the self-driving cars on the roads, and powers the anti-fraud bots that monitor every credit card transaction we make. Charles Christian of the Indiana Health Information Exchange speaks for many of us when he asks: "Why can't we do that in healthcare?" Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies across the country have been slow to adopt these advanced analytics. Is our industry somehow special? Or are we just more set in our ways?

First algorithms figured out how to decipher images. That's why you can unlock an iPhone with your face. More recently, machine learning has become capable of generating and altering images and video. In 2018, researchers and artists took AI-made and enhanced visuals to another level. Scroll through these examples to see how software that can make images, video, and art could power new forms of entertainment--as well as disinformation.

Just a few years ago Yuval Noah Harari was an obscure Israeli historian with a knack for playing with big ideas. Then he wrote Sapiens, a sweeping, cross-disciplinary account of human history that landed on the bestseller list and remains there four years later. Like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Sapiens proposed a dazzling historical synthesis, and Harari's own quirky pronouncements--"modern industrial agriculture might well be the greatest crime in history"-- made for compulsive reading. The book also won him a slew of high-profile admirers, including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg. In his new book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Harari offers a grab bag of prognostications on everything from new technology to politics and religion. Although he's become a darling of Silicon Valley, Harari is openly critical of how Facebook and other tech companies exploit our personal data, and he worries that online interactions are replacing actual face-to-face encounters. If computer algorithms can know you better than you know yourself, is there any room left for free will? And where does that leave our politics? Harari is a rapid-fire conversationalist who seems to have an opinion about everything. He's remarkably self-assured and clearly enjoys the role of provocateur.

There's no doubt Artificial Intelligence (AI)–machines that reproduce human thought and actions–is on the rise, both in the scientific community and in the news. And along with AI, there comes "emotional AI," from systems that can detect users' emotions and adjust their responses accordingly, to learning programs that provide emotional analysis, to devices, such as smart speakers and virtual assistants, that mimic human interactions. As the pace of AI development and implementation accelerates–with the potential to change the ways we live and work–the ethics and empathy that guide those designing technology of our future will have far-reaching consequences. It is this moral dimension that concerns me most: do the organizations and software developers creating these programs have an ethical rudder? Long before the concept of AI became commonplace, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov introduced the "Three Laws of Robotics" in his 1942 short story "Runaround" (which was later included in his 1950 collection, I, Robot): Much of Asimov's robot-based fiction hinges upon robots finding loopholes in their interpretations of the laws, which are programmed into them as a safety measure that cannot be bypassed.

It's been another year of relentless artificial-intelligence hype and incremental AI achievement. Machines still beat humans only in carefully constructed environments or at narrow tasks. The good news is that, as the technology progresses, the race for leadership is still wide open, and even Europe, where politicians fret that the continent is lagging behind China and the U.S., is still quite competitive. According to the Artificial Intelligence Index 2018 annual report, whose steering committee includes leading AI scholars such as Yoav Shoham of Stanford University and Erik Brynjolfsson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, AI has progressed on all the measures tracked. Some of the metrics, from the number of published papers and conference attendance, to mentions on corporate earnings calls and in parliamentary hearings, measure the hype.

In March 2017, Jerome Pesenti, now at Facebook, and I were asked by the UK government to review ways the UK could build its own artificial intelligence strategy. The result was a £1 billion package to support the development of AI in industry and academia across the country. In 2019, this investment will start to bear fruit. Our recommendations covered four themes – leadership, skills, adoption and data. Leadership will be provided by a new AI Council, chaired by Tabitha Goldstaub, co-founder of CognitionX and comprising specialists in the sector, including myself as AI Skills Champion.

The future should be here already. So then why do we still receive so much email spam and hear about so many data breaches? You'd think the internet would have matured by now and worked out all the kinks. In reality, issues concerning cybersecurity will be a constant for the entirety of our digital lives. To put this in perspective, there were 5.99 billion recorded malware attacks in the first half of 2018, which doubled the number in 2017 over the same time period.

Companies that make exoskeleton suits are hoping the devices might soon become as commonly provided as wheelchairs. Private medical insurers and at least three state health providers have agreed to cover the cost of the cyborg-type wearables for people unable to walk. Germany made a landmark decision this year when it registered exoskeletons – normally prohibitively expensive at prices in the tens of thousands of pounds – on its official list of medical aids, providing a degree of obligation on insurers to pay. In Italy, the Israeli-made ReWalk suit was added to a state-run workplace insurance body. The US Department of Veterans Affairs has expanded its policy to include the devices at private rehabilitation clinics for veterans with spinal cord injuries.

Backlogs are the bane of government. Delays of weeks, months or even years are too often incurred in executing a number of everyday tasks, including adjudicating claims, scheduling appointments, hiring new employees, procuring services, conducting investigations and approving applications. Few agencies are exempt from these challenges, and the resulting costs are both financial and reputational, as their inability to deliver core services in a timely manner directly impacts their ability to execute the mission. However, for those people whom agencies serve, the stakes are even higher, as delays can have livelihood, peace of mind, or even life and death consequences. These backlogs happen for two reasons: an overreliance on ad hoc, manual processes that create operational inefficiencies and/or a need for subjective, often specialized assessment or adjudication that exceeds capacity.

Cybersecurity defense systems will need to become more sophisticated in order to cope with huge amounts of data. First, we will need to interconnect our defense systems to be able to act in real time. For example, our network gateway will need to share information with our personal devices. Second, the human analyst will not be able to cope with all this information and we will rely on more artificial intelligence to help us in making decisions. We will also need to cultivate the next generation of cyber experts who know how to develop and drive those systems.