We're excited to share an interview with Dr. Mark Traill, who is the owner of MammoBot LLC. Mammobot is a cloud-based startup that offers a double reading of screening 2D or 3D mammograms using artificial intelligence algorithms. Clients can upload mammogram studies that become part of the investigational protocol prior to pending FDA approval of the algorithm. Review of the mammogram study by AI algorithms has the potential of detecting early breast cancer that was missed on the initial human review of images. Ambra Health: When did Mammobot begin?

In this Oct. 31, 2018 photo, Huang Yongzhen, CEO of Watrix, demonstrates the use of his firm's gait recognition software at his company's offices in Beijing. Chinese authorities have begun deploying a new surveillance tool: "gait recognition" software that uses people's body shapes and how they walk to identify them, even when their faces are hidden from cameras.

When U.N. member states unanimously adopted the 2030 Agenda in 2015, the narrative around global development embraced a new paradigm of sustainability and inclusion--of planetary stewardship alongside economic progress, and inclusive distribution of income. This comprehensive agenda--merging social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability--is not supported by current modes of data collection and data analysis, so the report of the High-Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda called for a "data revolution" to empower people through access to information.1 Today, a central development problem is that high-quality, timely, accessible data are absent in most poor countries, where development needs are greatest. In a world of unequal distributions of income and wealth across space, age and class, gender and ethnic pay gaps, and environmental risks, data that provide only national averages conceal more than they reveal. This paper argues that spatial disaggregation and timeliness could permit a process of evidence-based policy making that monitors outcomes and adjusts actions in a feedback loop that can accelerate development through learning. Big data and artificial intelligence are key elements in such a process. Emerging technologies could lead to the next quantum leap in (i) how data is collected; (ii) how data is analyzed; and (iii) how analysis is used for policymaking and the achievement of better results. Big data platforms expand the toolkit for acquiring real-time information at a granular level, while machine learning permits pattern recognition across multiple layers of input. Together, these advances could make data more accessible, scalable, and finely tuned. In turn, the availability of real-time information can shorten the feedback loop between results monitoring, learning, and policy formulation or investment, accelerating the speed and scale at which development actors can implement change.

Using an AI design process, engineers at software company Autodesk and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory came up with a new interplanetary lander concept that could explore distant moons like Europa and Enceladus. Its slim design weighs less than most of the landers that NASA has already sent to other planets and moons. Autodesk announced its new innovative lander design today at the company's conference in Las Vegas -- revealing a spacecraft that looks like a spider woven from metal. The company says the idea to create the vehicle was sparked when Autodesk approached NASA to validate a lander prototype it had been working on. After looking at Autodesk's work, JPL and the company decided to form a design team -- comprised of five engineers from Autodesk and five from JPL -- to come up with a new way to design landers.

A collective eyebrow was raised by the AI and robotics community when the robot Sophia was given Saudia citizenship in 2017 The AI sharks were already circling as Sophia's fame spread with worldwide media attention. Were they just jealous buzz-kills or is something deeper going on? Sophia is not the first show robot to attain celebrity status. Yet accusations of hype and deception have proliferated about the misrepresentation of AI to public and policymakers alike. In an AI-hungry world where decisions about the application of the technologies will impact significantly on our lives, Sophia's creators may have crossed a line.

Alan Turing's famous test of whether machines could fool us into believing they were human – "the imitation game" – has become a mundane, daily question for all of us. We are surrounded by machine voices, and think nothing of conversing with them – though each time I hear my car tell me where to turn left I am reminded of my grandmother, who having installed a telephone late in life used to routinely say goodnight to the speaking clock. We find ourselves locked into interminable text chats with breezy automated bank tellers and offer our mother's maiden name to a variety of robotic speakers that sound plausibly alive. I've resisted the domestic spies of Apple and Amazon, but one or two friends jokingly describe the rapport they and their kids have built up with Amazon's Alexa or Google's Home Hub – and they are right about that: the more you tell your virtual valet, the more you disclose of wants and desires, the more speedily it can learn and commit to memory those last few fragments of your inner life you had kept to yourself. As the line between human and digital voices blurs, our suspicions are raised: who exactly are we talking to? No online conversation or message-board spat is complete without its doubters: "Are you a bot?" Or, the contemporary door-slam: "Bot: blocked!" Those doubts will only increase. The ability of bots – a term which can describe any automated process present in a computer network – to mimic human online behaviour and language has developed sharply in the past three years.

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA – The top U.S. military officer said Saturday that it's problematic that American tech companies don't want to work with the Pentagon but are willing to engage with the Chinese. U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford told the Halifax International Security Forum that the U.S. and its allies are the "good guys." "I have a hard time with companies that are working very hard to engage in the market inside China … then don't want to work with the U.S. military," he said. "I just have a simple expression: "We are the good guys." Earlier this year, thousands signed a petition asking Google's chief executive to cancel Project Maven, which provides the Pentagon with the company's artificially intelligent algorithms to interpret video images and improve the targeting of drone strikes. Google later said it would scuttle the project, according to published reports. Dunford avoided mentioning Google by name, but said companies that share intellectual property with Chinese entrepreneurs are essentially sharing it with the Chinese military. Google is reportedly worked on a mobile version of its search engine that will comply with strict censorship controls in China. "This is not about doing something that's unethical, illegal or immoral," he said. "This is about ensuring that we collectively can defend the values for which we stand.

ATAQ, YEMEN – The United States has waged a drone war in Yemen for 16 years, trying to suppress al-Qaida's branch there. But the campaign has had a hidden cost: civilians cut down by the drones' missiles. There is no comprehensive count of civilian deaths because of the difficulty of confirming identities and allegiances of those killed. But in an examination of drone strikes this year alone, AP found that at least 30 of the dead likely did not belong to al-Qaida. That is around a third of all those killed in drone strikes so far in 2018.

When Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the US Congress, technology experts quickly realized how poorly informed his questioners were. As much as Congress wanted to regulate the tech behemoth, it was clear they had no idea how. Instead, they let him get away with grandiose claims about how AI would solve all the company's problems. For Dipayan Ghosh, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), the hearing emphasized the pressing need to bring US policymakers up to speed on major technology issues--and AI in particular. "AI is a tremendous technology, but there are really salient problems that we've seen take a life of their own in society," says Ghosh, who was a technology policy advisor in the Obama administration.

In 2013, a group of British intelligence agents noticed something odd. While most efforts to secure digital infrastructure were fixated on blocking bad guys from getting in, few focused on the reverse: stopping them from leaking information out. Based on that idea, the group founded a new cybersecurity company called Darktrace. The firm partnered with mathematicians at the University of Cambridge to develop a tool that would use machine learning to catch internal breaches. Rather than train the algorithms on historical examples of attacks, however, they needed a way for the system to recognize new instances of anomalous behavior.