We're wrapping up our Google I/O coverage today, but we've also taken a behind-the-scenes look at how the Guardians of the Galaxy got a redesigned ship, a possible due date on the end of Net Neutrality and a robot frolicking in a field. I didn't sign up to take a Turing Test today. While the Duplex AI demo Google showed during I/O was impressive, it creeped many of us out by pretending to be human. On a phone call with apparently unaware restaurant and salon workers, the system peppered its conversation with "umms" and "ahhs" while setting up appointments. That tech might make it more comfortable to talk to, but now Google has confirmed that when it starts testing the feature in Google Assistant this summer, it will let people know they're talking to an automated system. How long does the battery last at full sprint?

The White House unveiled a hands-off regulatory approach to foster the development of artificial intelligence at a gathering of more than 40 companies in Washington Thursday. A top White House technology adviser, Michael Kratsios, told representatives of companies including Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Facebook Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Boeing Co. that they'll have the greatest possible latitude to develop AI, according to a copy of his remarks that was provided to Bloomberg. "We didn't cut the lines before Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call," Kratsios said in his prepared remarks. "We didn't regulate flight before the Wright Brothers took off at Kitty Hawk." Kratsios also announced the formation of a committee on artificial intelligence consisting of senior federal R&D officials within the National Science and Technology Council of the White House.

Artificial intelligence is perhaps the biggest buzzword in federal technology today. For the government--and society at large--to truly benefit from AI's potential, government, industry and academia will have to come together to foster this nascent technology, according to the president's top tech adviser. The White House convened a summit Thursday of top thinkers in the field of AI, during which Michael Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president for technology policy and current head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, announced a new Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence made of up the leading AI researchers in government. "In the summer of 1956, a dozen American scientists gathered on Dartmouth's campus with the goal to, 'find how to make machines solve the kinds of problems now reserved for humans,'" Kratsios said, according to prepared remarks provided to Nextgov by OSTP. "Now, nearly 62 years later, the age of artificial intelligence is here, and with it the hope of better lives for the American people."

I had the pleasure of attending this year's Dublin Tech Summit which took place at Dublin's Convention Centre on April 18th and April 19th. A number of famous faces were there, from the "e-celebrities" like YouTuber Casey Neistat to the geekier such as Jordan Evans of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). There was something for everyone and there was generally somebody that you had heard of giving a presentation. While Casey Neistat focused on his life growing up and how he became a YouTuber, Jordan Evans talked about the work JPL was currently undertaking and their hopes for the future. Both presentations came with a lot of "fun" attached – information laced in with some comedy.

In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), we've often looked for signs of intelligence, technology and communication that are similar to our own. But as astronomer and SETI trailblazer Jill Tarter points out, that approach means searching for detectable technosignatures, like radio transmissions, not searching for intelligence. Now scientists are considering whether artificial intelligence (AI) could help us search for alien intelligence in ways we haven't even thought of yet. As we think about extraterrestrial intelligence it's helpful to remember humans are not the only intelligent life on Earth. Chimpanzees have culture and use tools, spiders process information with webs, cetaceans have dialects, crows understand analogies and beavers are great engineers.

If you've walked around any security conferences recently, you'll have heard dozens of vendors talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. But what do they actually do? Are they really going to usher in a grand age of cybersecurity? And are security analysts about to be collectively out of a job? Recently, Recorded Future co-hosted a webinar with SANS Institute with the goal of helping security conscious organizations understand how machine learning can help them process an almost infinite number of inputs into a small number of actionable outputs.

The White House and President Donald Trump are creating an artificial intelligence task force. Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios announced the new committee on Thursday in Washington, D.C., during an AI summit with government officials, members of academia, and several companies like Google (goog), Microsoft (msft), and Amazon (amzn), according to news site FedScoop. The new Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence will operate under the National Science and Technology Council and consist of several federal officials from various government agencies like the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the report said. "As artificial intelligence transforms everything from agriculture to manufacturing to transportation, the potential for AI remains breathtaking," Kratsios said in prepared remarks. "But we cannot be passive. To realize the full potential of AI for the American people, it will require the combined efforts of industry, academia, and government."

The development of new artificial intelligence (AI) technology is often subject to bias, and the resulting systems can be discriminatory, meaning more should be done by policymakers to ensure its development is democratic and socially responsible. This is according to Dr. Barbara Ribeiro of Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at The University of Manchester, in On AI and Robotics: Developing policy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a new policy report on the role of AI and Robotics in society, being published today. Dr. Ribeiro adds because investment into AI will essentially be paid for by tax-payers in the long-term, policymakers need to make sure that the benefits of such technologies are fairly distributed throughout society. She says: "Ensuring social justice in AI development is essential. AI technologies rely on big data and the use of algorithms, which influence decision-making in public life and on matters such as social welfare, public safety and urban planning."

Roughly one month ago, news broke that Apple had poached Google AI chief John Giannandrea, and he was quickly replaced by Jeff Dean, leader of the Google Brain research division. The longtime Googler took over as AI chief at a time when AI continues to spread to all Google products and services and the company is making AI into its own division. Google Research recently even changed its name to Google AI. On Tuesday, as the company rolled out dozens of new features and updates -- including ML Kit for mobile app developers, plans for a third generation of tensor processing unit chips, and AI for Google Assistant that can make phone calls on your behalf -- Dean shared his vision of the future. On the horizon, Dean sees opportunities for AI to create new products and find solutions to problems humans haven't even considered before.

The Federal Government's investment in unclassified R&D for AI and related technologies has grown by over 40% since 2015, in addition to substantial classified investments across the defense and intelligence communities. In the annual guidance to heads of executive departments and agencies, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the White House Office Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directed agencies to focus on emerging technologies including machine learning and autonomous systems. President Trump's FY2019 Budget Request was the first in history to designate artificial intelligence and autonomous and unmanned systems as Administration R&D priorities. The Federal Government's investment in unclassified R&D for AI and related technologies has grown by over 40% since 2015, in addition to substantial classified investments across the defense and intelligence communities. In the annual guidance to heads of executive departments and agencies, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the White House Office Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directed agencies to focus on emerging technologies including machine learning and autonomous systems.