British Prime Minister Theresa May said Russia's involvement is "highly likely," and she gave the country a deadline of midnight Tuesday to explain its actions in the case. She is reviewing a range of economic and diplomatic measures in retaliation for the assault with what she identified as the military-grade nerve agent Novichok.

Musk worries AI's development will outpace our ability to manage it in a safe way. "So the rate of improvement is really dramatic. We have to figure out some way to ensure that the advent of digital super intelligence is one which is symbiotic with humanity. I think that is the single biggest existential crisis that we face and the most pressing one." To do this, Musk recommended the development of artificial intelligence be regulated.

Water balance models (WBMs) are often employed to understand regional hydrologic cycles over various time scales. Most WBMs, however, are physically-based, and few employ state-of-the-art statistical methods to reconcile independent input measurement uncertainty and bias. Further, few WBMs exist for large lakes, and most large lake WBMs perform additive accounting, with minimal consideration towards input data uncertainty. Here, we introduce a framework for improving a previously developed large lake statistical water balance model (L2SWBM). Focusing on the water balances of Lakes Superior and Michigan-Huron, we demonstrate our new analytical framework, identifying L2SWBMs from 26 alternatives that adequately close the water balance of the lakes with satisfactory computation times compared with the prototype model. We expect our new framework will be used to develop water balance models for other lakes around the world.

When human settlers one day reach distant worlds, they might take refuge inside extensive underground networks known as planetary caves. Scientists in recent years have proposed volcanic caves as a potential place for safe habitats on the moon and Mars. But, to understand how this might work, we must first look at similar systems here at home. A team of ESA-backed researchers recently ventured into the La Cueva de los Verdes lava tube in Spain to map the nearly 5 mile (8 kilometer) 'lava tube' in unprecedented detail, revealing the intricate features of the'volcanic wormhole.' The team used what's known as the point cloud technique to map La Cueva de Los Verdes in unprecedented detail, capturing millions of measurements with lasers and cameras.

Google has quietly secured a contract to work on the Defense Department's new algorithmic warfare initiative, providing assistance with a pilot project to apply its artificial intelligence solutions to drone targeting. The military contract with Google is routed through a Northern Virginia technology staffing company called ECS Federal, obscuring the relationship from the public. The contract, first reported Tuesday by Gizmodo, is part of a rapid push by the Pentagon to deploy state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology to improve combat performance. Google, which has made strides in applying its proprietary deep learning tools to improve language translation, and vision recognition, has a cross-team collaboration within the company to work on the AI drone project. The team, The Intercept has learned, is working to develop deep learning technology to help drone analysts interpret the vast image data vacuumed up from the military's fleet of 1,100 drones to better target bombing strikes against the Islamic State.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Kitty Hawk, an aviation company backed by Google co-founder and Alphabet CEO Larry Page, unveiled its autonomous air taxi, named Cora, on Monday*. The two-person passenger vehicle, which has rotors along its wings so it can take off like a helicopter and then fly like a plane without a runway, has undergone a number of "stealth" test flights in New Zealand since October. Kitty Hawk announced that it has been working with the New Zealand government to prepare a fleet of Coras for commercial use over the past 18 months. The company has also been developing a ride-hailing app for the future travel service. So what exactly is this flying taxi capable of?

A global race is on to develop artificial intelligence -- and it matters enormously who wins. Another reminder of that fact came at the beginning of February when China started equipping its police officers with facial-recognition eyewear. Cameras mounted on sunglasses and linked to a police database will help officers track wanted criminals -- or, presumably, anyone else the Chinese government takes an interest in. Throw in research showing that computers can be trained to recognize traits like homosexuality, and the dystopian narratives start to write themselves. We're just scratching the surface of what we can do with AI.

POLITICO Establishes Global AI Forum for Business Leaders and Policymakers with Accenture as Founding Partner First in series of AI summits will take place on March 19-20, 2018 in Brussels, Belgium BRUSSELS; March 8, 2018 – POLITICO, with Accenture Applied Intelligence as the founding partner, is launching a global artificial intelligence (AI) forum to help business leaders and government policymakers understand the impact of AI innovation and to inform responsible use of AI. As AI-based decisions have an increasing impact on human lives, the initiative aims to empower decision-makers to build a framework for governance in pivotal and unchartered territory. The initiative will hold a series of AI summits and roundtables in multiple cities in Europe and the US. The first AI Summit will take place on March 19-20, 2018 in Brussels, Belgium. Carlos Moedas, European Union Commissioner for Research Science and Innovation, and John Delaney, US Congressman and founder of the bipartisan AI Caucus, are two keynote participants of the event.

World governments have an insatiable need to make incremental improvements in the services they deliver while at the same time tackling the longer-term public sector challenges that limit their socioeconomic potential. As leading nations have discovered, the right use of digital technology is the pathway to achieving both objectives. Successful nations have technology strategies that are both aggressively practical and profoundly aspirational. A breakthrough global public-private partnership recently collaborated to identify the top 10 government technology (govtech) initiatives worldwide that will contribute the most to sustainable improvements in 192 countries' economies and societies. MIT Technology Review Insights and the United Arab Emirates-based World Government Summit (WGS), a non-government organization promoting future-oriented public-private dialogue, worked together to select the most interesting govtech implementations from among the world's more innovative initiatives.

Editor's Note: See, Will Artificial Intelligence Become Its Own Regulator? Last month the Congressional Subcommittee on Information Technology began a three-part series of hearings to break through the myths and the hype to gain a real understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the role it can play in the Federal government. While the first hearing focused on industry and academic experts, Wednesday's hearing saw testimony exclusively from government leaders, including representatives from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), General Services Administration (GSA), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).