On this week's If Then, Slate's April Glaser and Will Oremus try to make sense of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's rare honest assessment of his company's shortfalls, and what new state regulations mean for self-driving cars and trucks. Cody Wilson, the man behind the first 3-D–printed gun, joins the hosts to talk about his vision of a "WikiLeaks for guns" and why he thinks gun control is no longer possible. And as always, Don't Close My Tabs: This week Will looks at the "deepfakes" video phenomenon and April discusses former Trump aide Sam Nunberg's email inbox exhaustion.

Health Catalyst introduced Touchstone at HIMSS18 and, in so doing, described it as a performance discovery, prioritization, benchmarking and recommendation tool. "Touchstone is built from the ground up on the latest AI and software from Silicon Valley," said Dale Sanders, President of Technology, Health Catalyst. "Touchstone's recommendation engine, which borrows from Amazon and Netflix, gives you not just comparative benchmarks but recommendations to improve your performance against benchmarks." The technology includes risk models based on artificial intelligence and anomaly detection algorithms that hospitals can use to pinpoint underperforming areas. Touchstone performs risk-adjusted benchmarking by culling data in claims, cost-accounting systems, EHRs, external benchmarks and operations to risk-adjust benchmarking, to "guide users to the data and analyses of greatest relevance to their work and to the organization's goals," the company said.

In the iconic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, astronaut Dave Bowman must deal with HAL 9000, a sentient artificial intelligence computer that operates his spaceship. The computer is all-knowing and all-controlling, saying at one point, "Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. It portends a dark future for automated AI and space travel. No one wants that outcome for real-world spacecraft and computers, but Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is starting to think about how to automate many spacecraft systems and outsource critical decisions to an on-board computer. Presently, with the International Space Station, flight controllers on Earth monitor the spacecraft's overall health continually, and flight directors relay information to astronauts on board when problems occur. But what happens when humans fly into deep space? Although astronauts are unlikely to venture beyond the Earth-Moon system before the late 2030s--if then--when they do, they will confront significant time delays.

The world is full of connected devices – and more are coming. In 2017, there were an estimated 8.4 billion internet-enabled thermostats, cameras, streetlights and other electronics. By 2020 that number could exceed 20 billion, and by 2030 there could be 500 billion or more. Because they'll all be online all the time, each of those devices – whether a voice-recognition personal assistant or a pay-by-phone parking meter or a temperature sensor deep in an industrial robot – will be vulnerable to a cyberattack and could even be part of one. Today, many "smart" internet-connected devices are made by large companies with well-known brand names, like Google, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung, which have both the technological systems and the marketing incentive to fix any security problems quickly.

"More than a dozen armed drones descended from an unknown location onto Russia's vast Hmeimim air base in northwestern Latakia province, the headquarters of Russia's military operations in Syria, and on the nearby Russian naval base at Tartus," The Washington Post reported. "Russia said that it shot down seven of the 13 drones and used electronic countermeasures to safely bring down the other six." And these drones appeared substantially less sophisticated and maneuverable than a DJI Phantom 4, the leading consumer drone. The National Academy notes that most of the counterstrategies that the Army has developed are "based on jamming radio frequency and GPS signals." The thinking was: Drones needed those information flows to navigate effectively.

A U.S. Air Force MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), carrying a Hellfire missile flies over an air base after flying a mission in the Persian Gulf region on January 7, 2016. A U.S. Air Force MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), carrying a Hellfire missile flies over an air base after flying a mission in the Persian Gulf region on January 7, 2016. A Google spokeswoman said the company provides its TensorFlow application programming interfaces, or APIs, to a pilot project with the Department of Defense to help automatically identify objects in unclassified data. APIs are software-based rules that let computer programs communicate. TensorFlow is a popular set of APIs and other tools for AI capabilities such as machine learning and computer vision.

A report from the Gizmodo technology website suggests that Google has partnered with the US Department of Defense to assist it in developing artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze drone footage. According to sources who spoke on conditions of anonymity, Google's involvement in the so-called Project Maven was not public, but was discussed inside the company when information about it was shared on an internal mailing list, sparking concern among employees. The same sources indicated that the employees of the tech giant were furious with the company's decision to offer resources to the military for surveillance technology involved in drone operations. "We have long worked with government agencies to provide technology solutions. This specific project is a pilot with the Department of Defense, to provide open source TensorFlow APIs that can assist in object recognition on unclassified data," a Google spokesperson told Gizmodo.

The artificial intelligence market is expected to reach USD 190.61 billion by 2025 from USD 21.46 billion in 2018, at a CAGR of 36.62%. The market growth can be attributed to factors such as growing big data, the increasing adoption of cloud-based applications and services, and increasing demand for intelligent virtual assistants. The limited number of AI technology experts is restraining the market growth to a certain extent Software to hold largest market share during forecast period Software is expected to hold the largest share of the artificial intelligence market. Continuous developments have been witnessed in AI software and related software development kits. Also, artificial intelligence software is used in various applications, such as virtual assistants, marketing, search advertising, identity access management, intruder detection, and cybersecurity Market for computer vision technology to grow at highest CAGR during forecast period The artificial intelligence market for computer vision technology is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.

Google has confirmed that it is allowing the Pentagon to use some of its image recognition technologies as part of a military project. The disclosure follows a report by Gizmodo, which said the artificial intelligence tech was being used to analyse drone footage. The news site said that many of the search giant's workers only learned of the collaboration last week via internal emails. It added that some were "outraged". A spokeswoman for Google said that the tie-up involved the provision of software tools to let the US Department of Defense (DoD) make use of its TensorFlow machine learning code.

Illustrator Matt Furie is bidding to reclaim his amphibian character after it was co-opted online as a popular meme associated with white supremacy and neo-Nazi values by members of the so-called alt-right. The lawsuit, filed with a federal court in California, seeks damages from the Alex Jones-fronted brand over a poster featuring the allegedly unauthorised image of Pepe alongside Jones, Donald Trump and a number of other prominent anti-establishment right-wing figures, including Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge and Roger Stone. The poster's slogan reads "MAGA", an acronym standing for President Trump's 2016 campaign slogan "Make America Great Again." Furie's lawyers allege InfoWars used the character's likeness without prior authorisation and made the poster available for purchase in its online store without permission. Originally conceived as a "peaceful frog-dude" in 2005, Furie's cartoon was first drawn on Microsoft Paint and appeared in an early online comic called Boy's Club, popularised on MySpace.