You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. It took nearly a century of trial and error for human scientists to organize the periodic table of elements, arguably one of the greatest scientific achievements in chemistry, into its current form. "Instead of feeding in all of the words and sentences from a collection of texts, we fed Atom2Vec all the known chemical compounds…" Called Atom2Vec, the program successfully learned to distinguish between different atoms after analyzing a list of chemical compound names from an online database. The unsupervised AI then used concepts borrowed from the field of natural language processing--in particular, the idea that the properties of words can be understood by looking at other words surrounding them--to cluster the elements according to their chemical properties. "We wanted to know whether an AI can be smart enough to discover the periodic table on its own, and our team showed that it can," says study leader Shoucheng Zhang, a professor of physics at Stanford University.

In 2013, an algorithm determined Eric Loomis' six-year prison sentence in Wisconsin for attempting to flee a traffic officer and operating a motor vehicle without the owner's consent. No one knew how the software, Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, or COMPAS, worked--not even the judge who delivered the sentence. Analyses conducted by ProPublica later found the predictive artificial intelligence used in this case, which attempts to gauge the likelihood of an offender committing another crime, to be racially biased: A two-year study involving 10,000 defendants found that the A.I. routinely overestimated the likelihood of recidivism among black defendants and underestimated it among whites. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Eric Loomis' case, so the sentence stands. Increasingly, A.I. has the power to alter the course of people's lives.

With increasing institutional use of Al and machine learning methods, more and more industry regulators are making use of such software to provide financial stability through services and systemic risk surveillance. Central to the UK Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) agenda is their intent to develop "both their technology side – cloud analytics – as well as building out our human side – our data science capability" to allow an "osmotic" expansion across the wider organisation, "effectively enabling us to leverage machine learning," says head of regtech and advanced analytics at FCA, Nick Cook. Investigations of suspicious transactions are highly time-consuming, and often, due to overly-defensive mechanisms, fall victim of unsuccessful outcomes. Through the identification of intricate patterns, machine learning would flag up serious, rather than harmless transactions, and, consequently require the attention of supervisors. For instance, with the aid of Al and machine learning, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) examines suspicious transactions that require further analysis and attention, which, in turn, enables supervisors to spend their time and resources on higher risk transactions.

A few days ago, some of the world's most renowned entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists in the technology industry warned for the dangers of artificial intelligence and that of lethal autonomous weapons. Over 150 companies and 2400 individuals from 90 countries signed the lethal autonomous weapon pledge at the 2018 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. I signed it as well, as I believe that we should do whatever it takes to stop lethal autonomous weapons as they can seriously destabilise the global society. Already, artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly advanced, and it is poised to play a major role in every industry; not only the military industry but every industry. With that, it will become a central component in our lives, affecting most of the decisions that we take on a daily basis.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Google may launch a censored version of its search engine in China in a move that would largely reverse its 2010 decision to withdraw from the country, The Intercept reported. The news outlet says Google has been working on a project called Dragonfly since last year and has demonstrated a version of the censored search engine to Chinese officials. The Android app could launch in six to nine months as part of a joint venture with an unnamed partner company, likely in China. It would automatically block websites blacklisted by Beijing as well as search terms on human rights, democracy, religion, and peaceful protest, The Intercept said. "We provide a number of mobile apps in China, such as Google Translate and Files Go, help Chinese developers, and have made significant investments in Chinese companies like JD.com. But we don't comment on speculation about future plans," Google said in a statement.

Why are so many AI researchers so worried about lethal autonomous weapons? What makes autonomous weapons so much worse than any other weapons we have today? And why is it so hard for countries to come to a consensus about autonomous weapons? Not surprisingly, the short answer is: it's complicated. In this month's podcast, Ariel spoke with experts from a variety of perspectives on the current status of LAWS, where we are headed, and the feasibility of banning these weapons. Guests include ex-Pentagon advisor Paul Scharre (3:40), artificial intelligence professor Toby Walsh (40:51), Article 36 founder Richard Moyes (53:30), Campaign to Stop Killer Robots founders Mary Wareham and Bonnie Docherty (1:03:38), and ethicist and co-founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, Peter Asaro (1:32:39). You can listen to the podcast above, and read the full transcript below. You can check out previous podcasts on SoundCloud, iTunes, GooglePlay, and Stitcher. If you work with ...

New Delhi: India is considering the military usage of Artificial Intelligence for national security and military strategic purposes and the government is studying a report recommending the duel use of technology in aviation, naval, land systems, cyber, nuclear and biological warfare. Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre told the Lok Sabha that the ministry has initiated the process of preparing Indian defence forces in their use of Artificial Intelligence and leveraging India's capabilities in machine learning sectors. This, he said, has a potential to fuel technology driven economic growth and provide military superiority. To study the strategic implications of Artificial Intelligence on national security, a multi-stakeholder task force comprising the government, services, academia, industry, professionals and start-ups was constituted in February this year. The group led by Natarajan Chandrasekharan, Chairman Tata Sons, was tasked to prepare a road map for Artificial Intelligence for national security purposes.

China's relationship with Google is fractious at best, but it's no secret that the search giant wants to make inroads in what is a largely untapped market. However, its latest alleged plan could send tech's political sphere into a tailspin. According to The Intercept, Google is working on a censored version of its search engine for the country -- one which will blacklist websites and search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and protest. The project, codenamed Dragonfly, has been in the works since spring 2017 and could be ready to launch within the next six to nine months, according to unnamed sources familiar with the plan. Apparently the project was given the go-ahead during a meeting between Google's CEO Sundar Pichai and a top Chinese government official, although it still needs final approval from China.

Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, the UAE's minister of state for Artificial Intelligence, and Deepak Bagla, the managing director and CEO of Invest India, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to create a bilateral Artificial Intelligence Bridge that envisages the generation of $20 billion in economic benefits during the next decade. WAM said that the AI Bridge aims to spur discussion and explore options for the UAE and India to grow their Artificial Intelligence economies, according to an announcement after the signing ceremony by Invest India, the national investment promotion ad facilitation agency of the Indian government. The UAE Minister said that in the coming years, "how a country chooses to embrace Artificial Intelligence will have a tremendous impact on its ability to innovate and prosper. Data and processing will be a catalyst for innovation and business growth and serve as the backbone of more effective and efficient service delivery system." The designated Indian signatory said his country, which is "the world's fastest expanding market opportunity with its talent pool of human capital, well-acknowledged for innovation – and the UAE, a hub of cutting edge technologies – are natural partners in the field of Artificial Intelligence."

Unless you have been living in a cave for the past month, you will know that the NHS has recently had its 70th birthday. However, you could be forgiven for not knowing that artificial intelligence (AI) is celebrating the same anniversary. It was in July 1948 that Alan Turing's Intelligent Machinery report was delivered to the National Physical Laboratory. It started with the words: "'You cannot make a machine to think for you.' This is a commonplace that is usually accepted without question. It will be the purpose of this paper to question it."