During the second world war, IBM supplied the Nazis with technology used to help transport millions of people to their deaths in the concentration camps. The American technology company leased punch-card machines through a German subsidiary for the purpose of tabulating a population census, which allowed the Nazis to identify and track the movements of Jews all the way to the gas chambers. So helpful were IBM's machines that Hitler awarded a special medal to the company's CEO, Thomas Watson, in recognition of his services to the Third Reich. This shameful episode in IBM's history highlights an uncomfortable predicament for companies pursuing lucrative government contracts, and one that's recently reared its head for Google, Microsoft and Amazon: should they be held accountable for how their customers deploy their technologies? The question has come to the fore for Microsoft, after it was revealed that the company's Azure cloud computing arm was working with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).

It's a pretty safe bet to say that former US President Theodore Roosevelt would have loved machine learning, writes Derek Canfield, the general manager for Business Analytics at TEOCO. He left behind a treasure trove of quotes, but one of his most famous ones is perhaps even truer today than it was for Teddy. "I believe the more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future." There's a lesson right there for today's communications service providers (CSPs), many of whom are preparing to face the future while struggling to overcome the challenge of digital business transformation. Faced with new potential content partnerships, the introduction of new revenue streams, and the opportunities of the Internet of Things (IoT), the options for CSP reinvention are endless and there are almost too many choices and decisions to make.

Have you noticed that AI has finally passed into everyday reality? No one needs to reference science fiction apologetically to talk about it. And now that it's real, our questions about it need to get real in response. No, I don't mean, "Will the robots rise up and take over?" Rather, now that AI is growing up and gaining power, our questions have to grow up with it.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 21, 2018 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Cerego, an AI-driven platform that optimizes how people learn, today announced the launch of Cerego Insights, as well as a Cerego skill for Amazon Alexa, onstage at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector Summit 2018. Cerego Insights uses machine learning models to objectively understand learners' cognitive and behavioral strengths, and predict future performance. The new Cerego Insights offering goes beyond the company's core competency of knowledge acquisition and memory management. Instructors and managers can now instantly access each individual and group's cognitive and behavioral profile. These attributes include specific, validated scores for Agility, Diligence, and Knowledge.

We are in the midst of an ever accelerating and expanding global revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, with enormous implications for future economic and military competitiveness. Consequently, there is perhaps no debate more important than how the United States and other democratic powers exploit advances in AI and the associated technologies, sub-disciplines, and methods used to create intelligent machine behavior–within the moral, ethical, political, and legal boundaries acceptable to their leaders and citizens. The idea of establishing boundaries for AI is vitally important in democratic societies. The general public reaction to the prospect of a future where more and more tasks and decisions are delegated to machines is decidedly mixed, having been indelibly shaped for decades by science fiction writing, television, and movies. As early as 1927, Metropolis, one of the first full-length sci-fi movies ever made, told the story of a scientist who builds a robot to replace his lost love. But the robot gets other ideas and ultimately holds sway over an entire city.

The US and China are leagues ahead of any other country when it comes to AI technology. And it's because they know how to prioritize their own programs. Rather than waste time discussing the dangers of AI with the UN, or crafting global policy, the two countries have become AI nationalists. Artificial intelligence research was a dying field just a decade ago. Now, AI companies like Google and Baidu are among the richest in the world.

SYDNEY – Australia will invest 7 billion Australian dollars ($5.2 billion) to develop and buy high-tech U.S. drones for joint military operations and to monitor waters including the South China Sea, it said Tuesday. Canberra has been embarking on its largest peacetime naval investment through a massive shipbuilding strategy that includes new submarines, offshore patrol vessels and frigates to shore up its defense capabilities. As part of this, the government will spend AU$1.4 billion to buy the first of six MQ-4C Triton maritime surveillance drones, with the aircraft to enter service from mid-2023, complementing seven P-8A Poseidon planes currently in use. "Together these aircraft will significantly enhance our anti-submarine warfare and maritime strike capability, as well as our search and rescue capability," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a statement. "This investment will protect our borders and make our region more secure."

Australia will buy six U.S. Triton remotely piloted aircraft to beef up its maritime patrols, with the initial investment of A$1.4 billion ($1 billion) for the first drone, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Tuesday. The government said the Triton drones, made by Northrop Grumman Corp, would be used alongside P-8A Poseidon aircraft for long range operations and intelligence gathering, and would improve anti-submarine warfare and marine strike capability. "This investment will protect our borders and make our region more secure," Turnbull and Australia's defence ministers said in a joint statement. The total cost for the six drones, including facilities upgrades and support, will be A$6.9 billion, a person familiar with the transaction said. Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne's office declined to comment on the total cost of the aircraft, which can fly for up to 24 hours and have sensors that can view the surrounding area over 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 kms).

Two years after originally announcing it, Medtronic and IBM Watson have launched their joint platform the Sugar.IQ, a digital diabetes assistant. "It is designed for people who are currently using Guardian Connect; so made for people on multiple daily injections. It is a personal assistant a little bit like Alexa or Siri," Huzefa Neemuchwala, global head of digital health solutions and AI at Medtronic, said in a Facebook live informational session. "It is an intelligent assistant that keeps track of all of your information and has all of your information in one place. Then through Watson technology we use this information to power insights so we can better manage your diabetes so that you can spend more time in range."

It's been just over 30 years since the last major overall of the U.S. tax code. In that time the world has been transformed - the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall fell, dot coms boomed and busted, terrorism struck and launched the U.S. into the longest war in its history. A financial crisis shook the country and the world to its knees, and the rise of big data, artificial intelligence, genomics, new materials, cloud computing, blockchain, the sharing and gig economies, and many other new, advanced technologies and business models signaled the start of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In that time, tax law and accounting practices have struggled to keep pace with innovations, sometimes leading to a wild West free for all for businesses and consumers, some of who managed to profit while others lost or were swindled of their life savings. Even today tax laws still fail to address the issues that the Age of Computer and the Internet brought, such as the internet sales tax, which may be heading to the US Supreme Court in the next year or so. As President Trump and the U.S. Congress are poised to pass and celebrate the passage of reforming the U.S. tax code for the first time in 30 years, missing from the discussion by both parties is how tax law and accounting principles should be altered to account for the realities of how AI, automation and the Fourth Industrial Revolution are reshaping businesses and the labor markets today and will continue to transform them in the years to come.