JERUSALEM/BERLIN (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that a roughly one-billion-euro ($1.18 billion) drone deal with Germany would strengthen bilateral security relations and give a boost to Israel's defense industry.

It is undeniable that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain are two of the major technologies that are driving the pace of innovation and introducing radical shifts in rapidly growing list of industries. As Artificial Intelligence advances, the need for enhanced security is becoming apparent and therefore Blockchain is becoming more common in the market. Leaders in tech are more and more infusing the two cutting edge technologies to create innovative products and increase efficiencies. One of the factors driving this trend is the nature of the two technologies as they work well together hand in hand. It's projected that Blockchain and AI will eventually become inseparable as intelligent platforms evolve and become more mainstream.

Rahim pointed at recent reports of Google's involvement in the Pentagon's Project Maven, which involves harnessing AI image recognition technology to rapidly process photos taken by drones. Google recently unveiled new AI ethics policies and has said it won't continue with the project once its current contract expires next year after high-profile employee dissent over the project. It's unclear which other tech companies are still involved in the project and in what capacity, as many have declined to comment. For Amnesty International, one concern is that potentially deadly AI systems will operate on the battlefield with limited human supervision. "Compliance with the laws of war requires human judgement–the ability to analyze the intentions behind actions and make complex decisions about the proportionality or necessity of an attack," Rahim writes.

Nasa is keeping close watch on the Opportunity rover in hope that it will wake up again. The until now unstoppable robot has run into trouble as it moves around the surface of Mars. The red planet is rapidly being encircled by a vast and unprecedented dust storm, meaning that it could be months until there is enough light to charge the rover's batteries and wake it back up again. Officials say they are hopeful the rover will make it through. But there will be no way to know until Opportunity wakes back up again – or doesn't, leaving it dead on the planet's surface.

The High-Level Expert Group will make recommendations on how to address mid-and long-term challenges and opportunities related to artificial intelligence (AI). The recommendations will feed into the policy development process, the legislative evaluation process and the development of a next-generation digital strategy. The Group will also prepare draft ethics guidelines that will build on the work of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies and of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in this area. The guidelines will cover issues such as fairness, safety, transparency, the future of work, and more broadly the impact on upholding fundamental rights, including privacy and personal data protection, dignity, consumer protection and non-discrimination. The draft guidelines will be finalised by the end of the year and presented to the Commission at the beginning of 2019.

"I don't think Homo sapiens-type people will exist in 10 or 20 years' time," Getnet Assefa, 31, speculates as he gazes into the reconstructed eye sockets of Lucy, one of the oldest and most famous hominid skeletons known, at the National Museum of Ethiopia. "Slowly the biological species will disappear and then we will become a fully synthetic species," Assefa says. "Perception, memory, emotion, intelligence, dreams--everything that we value now--will not be there," he adds. Assefa is a computer scientist, a futurist, and a utopian--but a pragmatic one at that. He is founder and chief executive of iCog, the first artificial intelligence (AI) lab in Ethiopia, and a stone's throw from the home of Lucy. Their desks are cluttered with electronic components and dismembered robot body parts, from a soccer-playing bot called Abebe to a miniature robo-Einstein.

Modern day artificial intelligence machines learn and improve themselves based on ever-increasing amounts of data that humans and machines generate with each passing day. This happens largely through supervised learning which is a major branch of Artificial Intelligence. But such machines also make mistakes. In the new Brookings India Development Seminar, Vasant Dhar, Professor, Stern School of Business, New York University, will walk us through various situations in our everyday lives – investing, playing sports, riding in driverless cars, using social media platforms – to encourage us to question the faith we put in technology. He proposes methods to inform executive and policy makers in evaluating the risks associated with data infrastructure initiatives, such as those proposed in his recent Hindustan Times editorial.

FILE - In this April 6, 2017, file photo, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks in New York. The Justice Department's internal watchdog is expected to criticize the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation, stepping into a political minefield as it details how a determinedly non-partisan law enforcement agency came to be entangled in the 2016 presidential race. President Donald Trump will look to the inspector general report to provide a fresh line of attack against the FBI's two former top officials, Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, as he claims that a politically tainted bureau tried to undermine his campaign and, through the Russia investigation, his presidency.

With Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis-led delegation in Canada, the government inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with their firms to give a boost to the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the state. On Tuesday, Fadnavis and Quebec deputy prime minister Dominic Anglade held talks at Montreal in Canada about use of artificial intelligence in various sectors. "Artificial intelligence will not lead to loss of jobs, but will create more job opportunities," said Fadnavis, speaking at a seminar organised by the International Economic Forum of the Americas on administration and artificial intelligence. "The gap between the rich and poor will be bridged with resolution of many problems." According to the chief minister's office (CMO), as part of the MoU between FRQNT of Quebec government and the state government, an international study group will be set up to increase the use of AI in agriculture technology, soil management and pest control.

For the military, video surveillance delivered by drones is a blessing and a bit of a curse. The advantages of having eyes in the sky are obvious, whether they're over broad swaths of land or more focused areas. The widely used MQ-9 Reaper, for example, can fly for 27 hours at 25,000 feet, covering about 1,500 miles, and unarmed drones can stay aloft for even longer. Smaller, man-portable and micro drones can see over the hill, around the corner, or watch over an entire town. They provide a view that commanders otherwise wouldn't have, and they do it without putting personnel at risk.