MPs today warned Mark Zuckerberg they are ready to issue a formal summons to force him to give evidence on the Facebook data scandal. The Culture Committee has written to the billionaire insisting the 40million UK users of his site deserve'answers'. There was fury last week after it emerged Mr Zuckerberg has agreed to give evidence to the European Parliament - despite still snubbing the House of Commons inquiry. He has already appeared before the US senate, but sent a deputy to be grilled by the MPs. The Culture Committee has written to the billionaire insisting the 40million UK users of his site deserve'answers' Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairman Damian Collins stunned his colleagues by revealing the development while they grilled another executive sent in Mr Zuckerberg's place In a letter to Facebook UK's head of public policy Rebecca Stimson, committee chairman Damian Collins wrote: 'Following reports that he will be giving evidence to the European Parliament in May, we would like Mr Zuckerberg to come to London during his European trip. We would like the session here to take place by 24 May.

At AcademyHealth's 2018 Health Datapalooza on Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration offered a vote of confidence for artificial intelligence in healthcare, promising more refined strategies for regulation, touting its tech incubator for AI innovation and announcing a new machine learning partnership with Harvard. "We're implementing a new approach to the review of artificial intelligence," said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD. As one example, he pointed to the agency's approval earlier this year of a new clinical decision support software that uses AI algorithms to help alert neurovascular specialists of brain deterioration faster than existing technologies. "AI holds enormous promise for the future of medicine, and we're actively developing a new regulatory framework to promote innovation in this space and support the use of AI-based technologies," said Gottlieb. "So, as we apply our Pre-Cert program – where we focus on a firm's underlying quality – we'll account for one of the greatest benefits of machine learning – that it can continue to learn and improve as it is used."

US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved IDx-DR AI; an artificial intelligence diagnostic device that doesn't need a specialized doctor to interpret the results and can detect a form of eye disease by looking at photos of the retina. IDx-DR is part of a growing trend of algorithms learning how to spot and diagnose disease. The best or say the unique part of this AI is, it is autonomous i.e there is no specialist looking over the system, which means it makes the clinical decision on its own, which again means that this technology can be used by a nurse or doctor who's not an eye specialist. In one clinical trial, this IDx-DR AI system was given more than 900 images and this system has correctly detected retinopathy about 87 percent of the time, moreover, it could correctly identify those who didn't have the disease about 90 percent of the time, which is appreciative in the field of artificial intelligence. For your info; Diabetic retinopathy is the most common vision complication people with diabetes, but is still fairly rare -- there are about 200,00 cases per year.

According to many of the world's smartest people, the greatest crisis faced by what is left of civilization is not the appalling concentration of wealth in the hands of the global meritocracy or stagnant wages or unemployment or the vicious internal contradictions of globalized free trade or our dumpster-like attitude toward the splendors of creation or even nuclear war. It's evil computers, like the ones in Terminator, which at some undisclosed point will try to kill us all. In a recent public letter Google's Sergey Brin outlined his fears about a world in which our safety is threatened by machines with "sci-fi style sentience." His comments echoed those made on various occasions by Tesla's Elon Musk, whose far-out theories about the "existential threat" of artificial intelligence are either moronic or too heady for this mere earthling. Some hackers believe it is possible that in the not-too-distant future an omnipotent, omniscient computer program called "Roko's basilisk" will consume the entire universe and punish foolish mortals out of pure mechanical spite for all of eternity.

Facebook is set to hold its annual F8 developer conference, expected to reveal software updates and its latest advances in virtual reality. But more significant than what will be unveiled is what isn't - highlighting how this event couldn't come at a worse time. Around 5,000 attendees will watch CEO Mark Zuckerberg take to the stage at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in California at 6am PDT (6pm BST), in what will be an extraordinary exercise in damage limitation. The company continues to reel from revelations that the UK data firm Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook user data for the purpose of political propaganda during the 2016 US Presidential elections and Brexit campaign. Less than a month ago, Mr Zuckerberg was sat before Congress answering questions about how this was able to happen, while just this week one of the company's board members left Facebook over an apparent clash over privacy policy.

Algorithms trained on mountains of Chinese data may soon be making decisions that deeply affect the lives of people in the US. Take Yitu Technology, a Shanghai-based artificial intelligence start-up that won top honours in two AI competitions in the US last year for its facial recognition technology. The system was built for Chinese law enforcement using data collected by the authorities. Or as the company boasts, it was honed on the "world's largest portrait system, covering more than 1.5bn people." Yitu is now looking for customers in the US to put its software to work.

Artificial intelligence (AI), robots, automation and machine learning are concepts that are appearing more frequently in mainstream media as the technology behind them is constantly improved. But do people in the UK see these making a real difference to how they live their lives? According to a survey this week by Lightspeed, 83% of UK adults believe that AI will one day be smart enough to take over from humans in many types of job, with 27% of respondents claiming this day will come'in my lifetime.' Will machines take over from real people in manufacturing and industry? With Brexit (and a drop in the cost of robots), it's hardly surprising that so many people see this scenario on the horizon.

We've reached a tipping point where it is now high time that we start the conversation of regulating Face Recognition Artificial Intelligence (AI). In a previous post, I explored some ideas of how we may regulate AI. I looked at several regulations in other fields and explored how they might apply for AI. The most compelling argument against AI regulation has been that it isn't clear for many as to precisely what needs to be regulated. However, in recent days, it has come to my attention that a specific kind of AI algorithm needs serious thought for regulation.

The French Government has designed a new law making it compulsory for the drones to be fitted with signalling lights. The proposal would mandate the installation of beacons on all unmanned aircraft. The proposed beacon would run on unlicensed spectrum allocation and the signalling message takes place in the payload part of Wi-fi frame including- the code for drone's manufacturer, drone's serial number, its latitude, longitude and altitude, its speed and timestamp. The light to be used must not contain the colours used for manned aviation, i.e. red, white, or green. The proposal especially signifies that a single beacon will be acceptable for a swarm of drones.

Russia operatives used an armed robot in a gunfight that left 11 jihadists dead - as they try to stamp out extremism ahead of the World Cup. Counter-terrorism forces engaged extremists in the volatile Islamic region of Dagestan over several days. Dramatic footage shows police marksman firing on a house from an armored vehicle. A compact armed robot is seen approaching the property to engage the jihadists. The bullet-ridden bodies of six men were later shown in pictures released by investigative authorities.