Artificial intelligence may still be in its infancy, but it's moving fast. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the data-rich health sector. AI has the potential to provide more precise, personalised care, as well as help us to shift our focus from treatment to prevention and tackle some of the world's biggest global health issues. The WHO estimates that achieving the health-related targets under the Sustainable Development Goals – from ending tuberculosis to ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services by 2030 – will cost between $134bn-$371bn (£97bn-£270bn) a year over current health spending. AI startups raised $15.2bn last year alone, adding to investments made by tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Alibaba and a host of research institutions.

New technology allows U.S. Soldiers to learn 13 times faster than conventional methods and Army researchers said this may help save lives. At the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, scientists are improving the rate of learning even with limited resources. It's possible to help Soldiers decipher hints of information faster and more quickly deploy solutions, such as recognizing threats like a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device, or potential danger zones from aerial war zone images. The researchers relied on low-cost, lightweight hardware and implemented collaborative filtering, a well-known machine learning technique on a state-of-the-art, low-power Field Programmable Gate Array platform to achieve a 13.3 times speedup of training compared to a state-of-the-art optimized multi-core system and 12.7 times speedup for optimized GPU systems. The new technique consumed far less power too.

While the Lords may have made headlines last week voting against the Government's latest Brexit Bill, they were also tackling an issue that could prove to be an even greater challenge for the UK in the coming decade. The Lords select committee on artificial intelligence released its latest report into the opportunities and challenges of this new technology, and, at a hefty 183 pages, you could forgive a few people for dosing off on the red benches. However, unlike many reports on artificial intelligence, the committee didn't suggest that the greatest threat to the UK was mass unemployment or rogue terminators, but rather the ethical implications of adopting such complex software.

Expectations that Artificial Intelligence will transform the world economy have become commonplace. A recent RSA analysis suggested that 15% of British private sector jobs or about four million could be at risk in the next decade. The thinktank Reform estimated that 250,000 public sector jobs are at risk of automation over the next 15 years. Neither of these numbers are at the high range of current estimates. On the flip side, PwC has estimated that global GDP could increase by as much as 14% or $15.7 trillion due to the impact of AI.

U.S. federal prosecutors asked for the right to use AI to sort through the documents removed from Michael Cohen's office in a five-page request to a judge, according to a story in MIT Technology Review. According to CNN, prosecutors are investigating Cohen, the personal attorney for the President, for his payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her alleged affair with Trump out of the news. The FBI also is reviewing emails, tax documents and business records, including communications between Trump and Cohen, for potential fraud. The court appointed Barbara Jones, an independent attorney and retired judge, to review the documents to decide what qualifies as "privileged" material, which will be excluded, according to The Wall Street Journal. The five prosecutors asked for "Technology Assisted Review," or TAR to sort through the files a few days after the seizure.

Walking the enormous exhibition halls at the recent RSA security conference in San Francisco, you could have easily gotten the impression that digital defense was a solved problem. Amidst branded t-shirts and water bottles, each booth hawked software and hardware that promised impenetrable defenses and peace of mind. Artificial intelligence that, the sales pitch invariably goes, can instantly spot any malware on a network, guide incident response, and detect intrusions before they start. That rosy view of what AI can deliver isn't entirely wrong. But what next-generation techniques actually do is more muddled and incremental than marketers would want to admit.

US: The US Geological Survey (USGS) has selected Hexagon US Federal to upgrade the machine learning-based Land Cover Mapping (LCM) tool. Through more than a decade of success using the LCM tool powered by Hexagon's ERDAS IMAGINE, the USGS has continued to achieve its mission of supplying timely, relevant, and useful information about the earth and the changes experienced by the national land cover. Since 2005, the LCM tool has generated USGS's National Land Cover Database that collects public domain information on the 3.8 million miles of land cover in the United States and Puerto Rico. This information provides complete, current, and consistent information critical to government managers and officials that seek to understand how land cover changes over time. "We're proud to be part of this worthwhile mission and provide critical tools and support to USGS," said Brad Ward, Hexagon US Federal senior vice president for geospatial solutions.

In a bid to prevent falling behind China and the US, the European Commission has outlined its plan to invest €20 billion in ethical artificial intelligence. The cash will be used to boost artificial intelligence research in the private and public domains, prepare for the socio-economic changes advancements will bring about, and ensure frameworks are in place for its legal and ethical development. "Just as the steam engine and electricity did in the past, AI is transforming our world. It presents new challenges that Europe should meet together in order for AI to succeed and work for everyone. We need to invest at least €20 billion by the end of 2020. The Commission is playing its part: today, we are giving a boost to researchers so that they can develop the next generation of AI technologies and applications, and to companies, so that they can embrace and incorporate them."

Space makes an excellent hub for testing scientific theories and conducting a wide range of experiments. We have already sent human sperm and Budweiser barley seeds to the International Space Station (ISS) and now, the next thing flying towards orbit will be cotton! In a bid to optimize cotton farming on Earth, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the organization managing ISS' U.S. National Lab under NASA's authority, will be sending three sophisticated cotton projects to the space station. These experiments, selected through a competition called the Cotton Sustainability Challenge, will primarily focus on improving cotton production without using as much water as currently required. As part of the effort, each of the three projects will get in-orbit access to the U.S. National Laboratory and hardware implementation assistance to go ahead with the main mission.

As electronic entry procedures usher arriving passengers more quickly through immigration control at airports around the world, one of the casualties of progress is the time-honored passport stamp. While many travelers welcome the improved efficiency, those who regard passport stamps as souvenirs of their travels are going to miss the memories that an immigration stamp can trigger of the far-off destinations they have visited. "There is a trend to eliminate the passport stamp to shorten processing times, especially in advanced countries," a Japanese airport official said. With air travel growing, airports are looking for ways to prevent congestion, and ditching the tradition is one of the solutions. In Japan, this has seen the use of biometric identification, including facial recognition, emerge as a way to replace passport stamping to track people entering and leaving the country.