Amazon may not have much choice but to address mounting criticism over its sales of facial recognition tech to governments. The American Civil Liberties Union has delivered both a petition and a letter from 17 investors demanding that Amazon drop its Rekognition system and exit the surveillance business. While the two sides have somewhat different motivations, they share one thing in common: a concern for privacy. Both groups are worried that Amazon is handing governments surveillance power they could easily use to violate civil rights, particularly for minorities and immigrants. They could use it to track and intimidate protesters, for instance.

Neurala, Inc. developed The Neurala Brain--deep learning neural network software that makes devices and products like drones, mobile phones and cameras more intelligent, engaging and useful. Neurala provides customized solutions ranging from high-end applications to inexpensive everyday consumer products. With The Neurala Brain and an ordinary camera, products can learn people and objects, recognize them in a video stream, find them in the video, and track them as they move. The Neurala Brain is based on technology originally developed for NASA and the U.S. Air Force. Follow Neurala on Twitter @Neurala and on Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

A group of Amazon shareholders is asking CEO Jeff Bezos to stop selling and marketing facial recognition technology to governments after civil liberties groups warned of the potential for abuse. Earlier this year, a group of advocacy organisations led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a report detailing how Amazon was marketing its Rekognition tool to American law enforcement agencies. In addition to touting the technology as helping to find suspects, Amazon has said it could be used to preemptively identify "persons of interest" and prevent crimes. A letter signed by 19 shareholders - and provided to The Independent by the ACLU - urges Mr Bezos to halt the tool's expansion until those concerns can be addressed. Amazon supplier investigated over'mistreatment' of workers in China How Alexa recorded a family's conversation then sent it to someone Amazon told to stop selling facial recognition tools to police Amazon supplier investigated over'mistreatment' of workers in China How Alexa recorded a family's conversation then sent it to someone Furnishing police and sheriff's departments with the tool would bolster "government surveillance infrastructure technology" and could drive down Amazon's value, the letter warned. It also echoed concerns about the potential for misuse. "While Rekognition may be intended to enhance some law enforcement activities, we are deeply concerned it may ultimately violate civil and human rights", the letter said.

The 1985 deal has less than 8,000 words and contains just 22 articles, mostly dedicated to tariffs, agricultural restrictions, import licensing and rules of origin – what Harvard economist Dani Rodrik calls conventional trade topics . While these issues are also covered in the US-Singapore deal, most of its 20 chapters and 70,000 or so words deal with other topics such as anti-competitive business conduct, e-commerce, intellectual property, investment rules, labour rights and the environment. AI has already proved its worth in the comparable field of law. A two-month test pitting 20 lawyers against LawGeek's AI showed that humans were no match for a robot in spotting risks within the legal documentation for non-disclosure agreements – deals meant to protect confidential information such as new manufacturing processes and marketing schemes. In terms of accuracy, the lawyers scored an average of 85%, compared to the robot's 94%.

If you've read the many predictions about the future of AI, you've likely found them to be wildly different. They range from AI spelling doom for humanity, to AI ushering in Golden Age of peace, harmony and culture, to AI producing barely a blip on society's path toward ever-greater technological achievement. Those three views – dystopian, utopian and organic – present issues we need to consider as we move deeper toward an AI-integrated future. Yet they also contain exaggerations and false assumptions that we need to separate from reality. Those with a dystopian view of emerging technologies point to studies such as the often-quoted 2013 Oxford report on the susceptibility of more than 700 job categories to automation. This report predicts that 47% of jobs are under threat of automation. Other predictions are even more dire, predicting up to 97% future unemployment as a result of AI.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is planning a series of lunar missions beginning next year aimed at developing the capacity for a return to the moon, said Cheryl Warner, a spokeswoman for NASA's Human Exploration Directorate.

As the Federal government looks to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) to help improve citizen services and lower government costs, applications that enable this new computer-based intelligence via application programming interfaces (APIs) might be the least disruptive and inexpensive way for agencies to get started. The Trump administration's plans to establish the Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence as part of an overall effort to coordinate Federal AI research and development initiatives while working with industry and academia is a sign the government is getting more serious about the importance of AI. Some of the issues holding back Federal agency adoption of AI technologies are the high cost of supercomputing resources and the reliance on legacy systems that were not developed with AI applications in mind, Gary Newgaard, public sector vice president with Pure Storage, a provider of data storage technologies, told MeriTalk in an interview in May. Pure Storage has teamed-up with NVIDIA, a leader in the graphics chip space, to develop a comprehensive AI infrastructure to make the technology more accessible to government. However, as AI moves toward becoming a core component of modern applications, AI-enabling certain enterprise applications might be a route an agency can take to add intelligence at an affordable price point.

A space launch every three hours could soon be a reality. Alabama-based startup, Aevum, is testing a rocket-drone plane that can send small satellites into orbit from a normal runway. The firm claims that its fully autonomous system will drive down the cost of launches and make them as frequent as commercial flights. The rocket-drone plane will send small satellites into orbit from a normal runway. 'Ravn is designed to launch every 180 minutes,' Jay Skylus, Aevum's CEO and chief launch architect, told Space.com.

The European Commission (EC), which proposes and administers European Union (EU) law and policy, has created a new High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, the aim of which is to advise on the crafting and implementation of the EU's strategy on artificial intelligence. Among the 52 experts are several people who work in philosophy. You can read more about the group here.

In 2017, the world witnessed a cyberattack of hideous proportions. The WannaCry ransomware attack infected hundreds of thousands of computers in more than 150 countries, throwing a wrench in the digital gears of many businesses and bringing several industries to their knees with malicious software designed to block access to files until a "ransom" was paid. One industry that was hit particularly hard was health care, including organizations such as the National Health Service (NHS) in the U.K. and Merck in the U.S. One study found that last year, 78 percent of health-care providers reported a ransomware or malware attack. And perhaps we shouldn't be surprised: Patient records are filled with valuable and private information, and ineffective cybersecurity measures make it far too easy to hold those records hostage. Health care is an easy target for malware.