To the right, young software engineers sit in front of their laptops in the windowless, artificially lit rooms. To the left, computer science professor Pedro Domingos opens the door to his office, which has a view of the massive trees on campus. Domingos' book "The Master Algorithm," about the technology of artificial intelligence (AI), made him famous and is also considered a standard reference work. The best-selling book, published in 2015, describes how machines that can learn are changing our everyday lives -- from the social networks and science to business and politics and right up to the way modern wars are waged. The book drew praise from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Recently, a third prominent figure noted that he'd read the book: Chinese President Xi Jinping. When state television broadcast his new year's speech this year, viewers discovered that next to Marx's "Capital" and "Selected Works" by Mao Zedong, he also has a copy of "The Master Algorithm" on his bookshelf. "The book is much read in China," says Domingos. "That's probably why Xi and his people became aware of it. It's possible that it has now become even more popular."

Despite how human-like they may act and appear, giving rights to robots may not be the best move. That was the consensus of 150 experts who weighed in on the discussion on Thursday, in light of the European Parliament's recent question of whether or not robots need special rights. A team of 150 experts in robotics, artificial intelligence, law, medical science and ethics wrote an open letter to the European Union advising that robots not be given special legal status as "electric persons," CNN reported. The letter says that giving robots human rights would be unhelpful. "From an ethical and legal perspective, creating a legal personality for a robot is inappropriate whatever the legal status model," the letter states.

Discussions will focus on how the technological developments will shape the future of Europe and building a strong Digital Single Market with increased investment and digital skills is crucial. After last year's Digital Day in Rome that triggered successful cooperation in areas such as high-performance computing, connected mobility and the digitisation of industry, the Commission is repeating the initiative to encourage more cooperation on digital issues. Within a year, major progress has been made towards a Digital Single Market. The end of roaming charges and the portability of online content are now part of the lives of Europeans. Stronger rules on the protection of personal data and the first EU-wide rules on cybersecurity will become a reality in May 2018.

US army researchers have developed a convolutional neural network and a range of algorithms to recognise faces in the dark. "This technology enables matching between thermal face images and existing biometric face databases or watch lists that only contain visible face imagery," explained Benjamin Riggan on Monday, co-author of the study and an electronics engineer at the US army laboratory. "The technology provides a way for humans to visually compare visible and thermal facial imagery through thermal-to-visible face synthesis." The thermal images are processed and passed to a convolutional neural network to extract facial features using landmarks that mark the corners of the eyes, nose and lips to determine its overall shape. The system, dubbed "multi-region synthesis" is trained with a loss function so that the error between the thermal images and the visible ones is minimized, creating an accurate portrayal of what someone's face looks like despite only glimpsing it in the dark.

"Remote patient monitoring is essentially going to put a rocket launcher on telemedicine," says Waqaas Al-Siddiq, due to years of experimentation in healthcare technology with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the lowering of costs. He credits the lowered cost for chips and connectivity, along with the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), with creating a cross-pollination process – where technological advances in one area drive progress in another by clearing barriers to accessible, intelligent medicine. Al-Siddiq is the CEO of Biotricity, a remote patient monitoring company, and as such, is uniquely qualified to weigh in on emerging trends in healthcare and AI technology. Biotricity was created to fill a growing need for remote, proactive health monitoring. The company's real-time, high-precision mobile telemetry solution enhances a physician's ability to monitor a patient's condition while enabling the patient to take an active role in managing their condition.

Pentagon technology chief Mike Griffin last week announced US military plans to form an office dedicated to procuring and deploying artificial intelligence technology. Meanwhile, the White House still doesn't have a science adviser.

The United States and the United Kingdom are leading this initiative. Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Spain are also involved (see go.nature.com/2hebxnt). Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to revolutionize this activity.

WASHINGTON – China is slightly ahead of South Korea and the United States in the race to develop fifth generation wireless networks, or 5G, a U.S. study showed Monday. The study released by the CTIA, a U.S.-based industry association of wireless carriers, suggested that the United States is lagging in the effort to deploy the superfast wireless systems that will be needed for self-driving cars, telemedicine and other technologies. The report prepared by the research firm Analysys Mason found that all major Chinese providers have committed to specific launch dates and the government has committed to allocate spectrum for the carriers. The 10-nation study said the U.S. is in the "first tier" of countries in preparing deployment of 5G, along with China, South Korea and Japan. In the second tier are key European markets, including France, Germany and Britain, with Singapore, Russia and Canada in the third tier.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--With ransomware and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on the rise, the average number of focused cyberattacks per organization has more than doubled this year compared to the previous 12 months (232 through January 2018 versus 106 through January 2017). In the face of these growing cyber threats, organizations are demonstrating far more success in detecting and blocking them, according to a new study from Accenture (NYSE:ACN). Yet, despite making significant progress, only two out of five organizations are currently investing in breakthrough technologies like machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, indicating there is even more ground to be gained by increasing investment in cyber resilient innovations and solutions. The study was conducted from January to mid-March 2018 and investigated focused attacks defined as having the potential to both penetrate network defenses and cause damage, or extract high-value assets and processes from within organizations. Despite the increased pressure of ransomware attacks, which more than doubled in frequency last year, the study found organizations are upping their game and now preventing 87 percent of all focused attacks compared to 70 percent in 2017.

An influential body of UK policymakers said regulators should stop major tech companies from dominating the field of artificial intelligence, and also warned on the potential of widespread unemployment due the technology. British anti-trust regulators should be mindful that large datasets on which artificial intelligence depends on are not monopolised by a handful of large technology companies, such as Alphabet, IBM and Microsoft, the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence said in a report published Monday. "Large companies which have control over vast quantities of data must be prevented from becoming overly powerful within this landscape," the report, which followed a nine-month inquiry into all aspects of AI development in the UK, said. The committee received 223 pieces of written evidence and interviewed 57 witnesses during the course of the investigation. However, it stopped short in recommending the creation of an overarching new ministry to serve as a watchdog on the emerging technology.