From iPhone's Siri to Amazon's Alexa, from Google Maps to Netflix recommendations, and from customer service chatbots to the airplanes' autopilot, artificial intelligence (AI) has seeped into our daily lives. It will soon impact every facet of our daily lives from driverless cars to smart homes. Where AI is making a real difference is in catching criminals. Globally, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that 2-5% of global GDP, or $800 billion to $2 trillion, is laundered annually. Money laundering is closely tied to other serious offenses such as terror financing, drug trade, human trafficking and corruption.

The head of the U.S. space agency said that he's sure that investigators will determine the cause of a mysterious hole that appeared on the International Space Station, which his Russian counterpart has said was deliberately drilled. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine also said that collaboration with Russia's Roscosmos remains important, despite recent comments by agency head Dmitry Rogozin that Russia wouldn't accept a'second-tier role' in a NASA-led plan to build an outpost near the moon. The hole that appeared in a Russian Soyuz capsule docked to the ISS caused a brief loss of air pressure in August before being patched. Sabotage: Russian astronaut Sergei Prokopyev showed the original'drilled hole' during a video released by the space agency Roscosmos The incident sparked wide speculation and consternation. 'I strongly believe we're going to get the right answer to what caused the hole on the International Space Station and that together we'll be able to continue our strong collaboration,' Bridenstine said.

Entity resolution seeks to merge databases as to remove duplicate entries where unique identifiers are typically unknown. We review modern blocking approaches for entity resolution, focusing on those based upon locality sensitive hashing (LSH). First, we introduce $k$-means locality sensitive hashing (KLSH), which is based upon the information retrieval literature and clusters similar records into blocks using a vector-space representation and projections. Second, we introduce a subquadratic variant of LSH to the literature, known as Densified One Permutation Hashing (DOPH). Third, we propose a weighted variant of DOPH. We illustrate each method on an application to a subset of the ongoing Syrian conflict, giving a discussion of each method.

MOSCOW – The head of the U.S. space agency said Tuesday that he's sure that investigators will determine the cause of a mysterious hole that appeared on the International Space Station, which his Russian counterpart has said was deliberately drilled. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine also said that collaboration with Russia's Roscosmos remains important, despite recent comments by agency head Dmitry Rogozin that Russia wouldn't accept a "second-tier role" in a NASA-led plan to build an outpost near the moon. The hole that appeared in a Russian Soyuz capsule docked to the ISS caused a brief loss of air pressure in August before being patched. The incident sparked wide speculation and consternation. "I strongly believe we're going to get the right answer to what caused the hole on the International Space Station and that together we'll be able to continue our strong collaboration," Bridenstine said.

Google is dropping out of the bidding for a huge Pentagon cloud computing contract that could be worth up to $10 billion, saying the deal would be'inconsistent with its principles'. The decision by Google leaves a handful of other tech giants including Amazon and Microsoft in the running for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract aimed at modernizing the military's computing systems. Google said in a statement'we couldn't be assured that [the JEDI deal] would align with our AI Principles and second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.' The principles bar use of Google's artificial intelligence (AI) software in weapons as well as services that violate international norms for surveillance and human rights. Google was provisionally certified in March to handle U.S. government data with'moderate' security, but Amazon.com and Microsoft Corp have higher clearances.

This opinion piece was written by Petra Molnar and Samer Muscati, of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto. It also appears on our refugees and migration newsfeed. The detention of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in every single case presented; the wrongful deportation of 7,000 foreign students accused of cheating on a language test; racist or sexist discrimination based on social media profile or appearance -- what do these seemingly disparate examples have in common? In every case, an algorithm made a decision with serious consequences for people's lives. Algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) are starting to augment human decision-making in Canada's immigration and refugee system, with significant implications for the fundamental human rights of those subjected to these technologies.

A robot is set to become the first non-human to appear as a witness before the UK Parliament. The Commons Education Select Committee invited Pepper the robot from Middlesex University to give evidence at a hearing taking place next week about artificial intelligence, robotics and the fourth industrial revolution. "If we've got the march of the robots, we perhaps need the march of the robots to our select committee to give evidence," Committee chair Robert Halfon told Tes. "The fourth industrial revolution is possibly the most important challenge facing our nation over the next 10, 20 to 30 years." The Independent has reached out for more details about the appearance. Despite dystopian predictions and dire warnings of robots and AI taking over people's jobs, the government has previously expressed interest in the potential of robotic technology.

Google has dropped out of a competition that could've won the company a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud (JEDI) contest's purpose is to find a solution for the military to transfer massive amounts of data and processing power to the cloud. It believes that by doing so, it can give military officials quick access to data wherever they are, allowing them to make quicker and better decisions while on the battlefield. A spokesperson told Bloomberg that it's no longer bidding on the JEDI contract, because the tech giant couldn't be assured that its terms would align with its AI Principles. Back in May, Mountain View conjured up a set of rules to help guide the company when figuring out which AI projects to develop and be involved with.

An NHS hospital trust has become the first to use AI robots as secretaries in an effort to cut costs. Ipswich Hospital, run by East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Trust, has'employed' three virtual workers to free up staff from'mundane and repetitive tasks', such as submitting scans and blood test results. This is thought to allow real medical secretaries more time to focus on patient care, with the system being eight times more productive than human staff, the trust claims. The system, which is run by a computer, has been in place since July and has saved more than 500 hours of work, according to the trust's deputy director of ICT Darren Atkins. Over the next nine months, the AI programme will save them £220,000, he added.

Tallinn Digital Summit 2018 will host government ministers, entrepreneurs, and innovators from digitally minded countries around the world. The McKinsey Global Institute, the Lisbon Council, the Centre for Public Impact, and the European Centre for International Political Economy are amongst those bodies taking part. AI is a burning issue which requires immediate action, said Estonian Prime Minister Jüri Ratas. "AI will bring major changes in the near future and we cannot leave this to chance," Mr Ratas said. "We need a common legal framework, and guidelines on ethics and technology which would boost development and innovation while ensuring safety and trust. That's why Tallinn Digital Summit will focus on AI and the global free trade of data, as well as their impact on governance, entrepreneurship and society,'' he continued. IT minister Rene Tammist (SDE) added Estonia aims to lead the international discussion on the legal issues surrounding AI. "Everyone who uses Google or Facebook has been exposed to AI.