US lawmakers have asked the Government Accountability Office to examine how face recognition technology is being used by companies and law enforcement agencies. The questioners: A group of Democrats from both the House of Representatives and the Senate sent a letter to the GAO asking to examine which agencies are using the technology, and what safeguards the industry has in place. Some form of government regulation could eventually be imposed. Eye spies: There is growing concern that unfettered use of facial recognition could enable greater government surveillance and automate discrimination. Some companies also appear concerned.

The technology will allow the Defense Department to better compete with nations including China and Russia, said Mr. Sullivan, who leads the analytics business for Booz Allen. "Part of this is (about) making sure our government has the access to the best technology and using it responsibly in service of our citizens and warfighters," he said. The use of AI systems such as neural networks that mimic the human brain could help the Defense Department sift through the "overwhelming" amount of data related to such areas as national security and health care. In turn, soldiers and military members can be freed up to identify threats on the battlefield sooner, spend more time with military patients and work on problems that require higher-level contextual reasoning, Mr. Sullivan said. For example, hundreds of soldiers today watch video feeds from drones and cameras and do basic labeling and object identification, he said.

China's massive investment in artificial intelligence technologies may soon leave the U.S. at a major disadvantage, a top Air Force general said Thursday. "Speed is of the essence in the digital age," said Lt. Gen. VeraLinn "Dash" Jamieson, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance on the Air Staff at the Pentagon. She painted a grim picture: While "great instigator" Russia has the desire to do ambitious experiments with A.I., China already has the means. For example, China is building several digital artificial intelligence cities in a military-civilian partnership to understand how A.I. will be propagated as it strives to become the global leader in technology. The cities track human movement through artificial facial recognition software, watching citizens' every move as they go about their day.

Late in June, a SpaceX Dragon rocket took off for the International Space Station. A small, spherical robot equipped with artificial intelligence. If it seems like something out of a science fiction it's for good reason. No other AI robot has ever been launched into space, making it the perfect plot inspiration for a film. The purpose of the robot is to assist astronauts on the International Space Station with any number of tasks.

Inspired by the ability of artificial intelligence to excel at complex board games, China is working towards harnessing the technology to plot foreign policy. The country's foreign ministry is understood to be trialling several prototype AI systems to assess risks to overseas investment projects, such as coups or terrorism. One system, created by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is said to search for patterns in a vast amount of data, ranging from diplomatic cocktail-party chatter to satellite images, to offer insight into potential strategies. The system was first reported by the South China Morning Post. "Cutting-edge technology, including big data and artificial intelligence, is causing profound changes to the way people work and live," the foreign ministry told the newspaper.

"We create open platforms and share our technology because it helps new ideas get out faster," Pichai said. Then he namechecked TensorFlow, the machine learning software Google developed and uses internally. The company open sourced the code in 2015, and it has since been downloaded more than 15 million times. "We created TensorFlow to make it possible for anyone to use AI," Pichai said. Such homilies to openness have become standard from the large tech companies competing intensely to develop AI technology.

DAKAR, Senegal – The U.S. military in Africa has taken steps to increase the security of troops on the ground, adding armed drones and armored vehicles and taking a harder look at when American forces go out with local troops, the head of the U.S. Africa Command says. Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser told reporters on Monday the U.S. also has cut the response time needed for medical evacuations -- the result of a broad review in the wake of last year's ambush in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers and four of their Niger counterparts. "Since that happened, there were significant things to change and learn," Waldhauser said. "We've done a thorough scrub really on every level, whether it's at a tactical level ... or how we conduct business at AFRICOM." A report is due in mid-August on actions taken in response to the findings, Waldhauser said.

The safety of our online lives has become increasingly important. Whether it be interference in elections, attacks by hostile forces, or online fraud, the security of the web feels fragile. Cybersecurity has reached a crossroads and we need to decide where it goes next. The outcome will touch each of us – will we pay more and yet still be less safe? Will we face higher insurance premiums and bank charges to cover the rising number of cyber-incidents?

Although Einstein himself made many advances in physics, from special and general relativity to the photoelectric effect and statistical mechanics, there were many problems he couldn't solve during his life. How much better could AI have done? At the dawn of the 20th century, there were a number of crises in physics. Radiating objects like stars emitted a finite, well-defined amount of energy at every wavelength, defying the best predictions of the day. Newton's laws of motion broke down and failed when objects approached the speed of light.

China's progress towards its goal of becoming the world's leader in AI by the year 2025 remains unchecked. While its efforts still lag behind the US, thanks to the likes of Google and Microsoft, there's an alarming amount of research indicating the gap is shrinking. It's only been a year since TNW reported China's announcement it was shifting its national strategy to claim the artificial intelligence crown. In that time China has advanced its agenda to a startling degree, at least according to the experts. Air Force General VeraLinn "Dash" Jamieson, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance on the Air Staff at the Pentagon, spoke last Thursday at a military event. She told attendees she was concerned that China is taking AI more seriously than other nations.