This month's senate intelligence meeting is probably the most important two-hour video you should make time to watch this week, especially if you are interested in the intersection between AI, DI, and national security. Also some important cautions about Internet of Things (IOT) security. Admiral Mark Rogers: "Clearly I think we are not where need to be…the challenge I think is that we have [multiple areas of knowledge and insight within the federal government and within the private sector, how do we bring this together and create and integrated team, with some real-time flow back and forth." Admiral Mark Rogers: "I wonder how bad does this have to get before we realize that we have to do something fundamentally differently…[IOT will]…get, much much worse, exponentially from a security perspective." Senator Richard Burr: "The widespread proliferation of artificial intelligence is expected to prompt new national security concerns" General Ashley: " …when you think about artificial intelligence, our near-peer competitors are pursuing this…when you look at the volume in big data and what's available…artificial intelligence will be integral to that….it's Mark Rogers: "We are victims of our own success..the ability to access data at increased levels brings its own set of challenges…[China] there clearly is a national strategy designed to harness the power of artificial intelligence to generate strategic outcomes…to generate positive outcomes…" Mark Rogers: "…with the power of machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data analytics…data concentrations are a target….

The United States is no laggard on investment and advances in artificial intelligence technologies, Steven Walker, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, told reporters on Thursday, disputing assertions by top U.S. technology executives that China was racing ahead. "I think I'd put our AI, our country's efforts, up against anybody," Walker said at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group. DARPA "helped create the field in the early 1960s" and since then has consistently invested in the three waves of artificial intelligence technologies, Walker said. DARPA is "investing pretty heavily" in so-called third-wave AI systems, where machines understand the context and the environment in which they operate and are able to explain their reasoning and decision making to human operators, Walker said. "These are very nascent efforts but they're going to be important if you want the warfighter to trust the machine and help him or her make decisions."

Members of a U.S. national security panel are locked in a dispute over a hostile takeover bid for chip giant Qualcomm Inc., QCOM -0.06% pitting officials in the departments of Justice and Defense against Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. In a meeting Tuesday, members of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., known as CFIUS, debated whether the panel has the right to weigh in on Singapore-based Broadcom Ltd.'s AVGO -1.28% bid of $117 billion for Qualcomm before a deal is struck, according to people briefed on the matter. Qualcomm is a leader in semiconductor technology and the development of standards for 5G, the next generation of wireless technology that could enable self-driving cars and other innovations. Some members are concerned that if Broadcom buys Qualcomm, it could sell parts of the company and hobble American prospects of eclipsing China in the race to develop the technology, the people familiar with the matter said. CFIUS, which can advise the president to block takeovers by foreign companies on national security grounds, is chaired by the Treasury Department and includes members from other agencies, including Justice, Homeland Security, Defense and Energy.

In recent years many of us have begun to relying on Alexa, Siri, and other virtual assistants to play our music, set our alarms, and schedule our appointments. Now, the Airbus company is designing a similar mission assistant to help astronauts complete everyday tasks on the International Space Station. Airbus is developing the Crew Interactive MObile CompanioN (nicknamed CIMON) in collaboration with Space Administration at the German Aerospace Center. It's set to be the first time that artificial intelligence (AI) has been used on the ISS in this manner. CIMON takes the form of a spherical, free-flying robot that can move independently around the station It's about the size of a medicine ball, and weighs roughly 11 pounds.

The debate over artificial intelligence (AI) in public services took a new turn recently, with the publication of a report by PwC that forecast three waves of implementations and that it could affect a third of jobs in the sector by the mid 2030s. Its title, Will robots really steal our jobs? is bound to prompt some trepidation, but it takes a measured look at the impact across the economies of 29 countries, identifying opportunities and risks with the evolution of the technology. Report author Rob McCargow, AI programme leader for the consultancy, comes across as a cautious optimist, generally welcoming the development of AI, but highlighting the risks and making clear that it has to be applied carefully. "On one hand there is the increase maturity of technology offering solutions to intractable problems; but on the other there are new risks," he says. Perhaps the largest is one that has been identified from several quarters, that the algorithms used in AI to support decision making could reflect the biases of the people who programmed them.

In his 1954 novel Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov imagined seas filled with life and underwater cities on our neighboring planet. It wasn't long, however, before we discovered what really lurks beneath Venus's thick cloud cover. In the 1960s and 1970s, the United States' and Soviet Union's spacecraft found a dense, toxic atmosphere on Venus full of carbon dioxide and clouds of sulfuric acid. On the surface, temperatures were hot enough to melt lead, and the crushing pressure was akin to that found in Earth's deep oceans. All of this means that Venus is violently hostile to life.

When it comes to industries that offer entrepreneurs big opportunities, they often fall into the following categories: they're highly fragmented, outdated, or just generally reviled. The industries below are, accordingly, ready for big changes. Several innovative, well-funded startups already have taken notice and are busy muscling their way in with products and services designed to change the status quo. Here are five industries--and their disruptive startups--to watch in 2018. Just about everybody needs insurance, but few people get excited about it: The health insurance industry consistently lands near the bottom of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, and life and property insurance companies aren't exactly known for their ability to inspire.

To some Chinese, it seems their movements, habits and thoughts can be tracked by a government with unchecked power. So is a digital dictatorship all powerful? That's a question that author Wang Lixiong set out to answer in his dystopian novel "Ceremony." Released by Taiwan's Locus Publishing in December, "Ceremony" describes a China in 2021 that isn't far off from how the nation is today. The leader wants to stay in office beyond mandated term limits and uses an anticorruption campaign to vanquish rivals.

President Trump has invited representatives of the video game industry to a meeting at the White House next week, days after he suggested a link between violent games and a recent spate of deadly school shootings including in Parkland, Fla. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced the upcoming session during her press briefing Thursday, though she and other White House officials did not immediately offer an official list of attendees. In the aftermath of the attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which left 17 students dead, Trump said that the "level of violence on video games is really shaping young people's thoughts." In 2013, President Barack Obama called on Congress to set aside $10 million and allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study whether violent video games and other media contributed to gun violence. But lawmakers never lifted a ban on the agency that prevents it from conducting such research.

To some Chinese, it seems their movements, habits and thoughts can be tracked by a government with unchecked power. So is a digital dictatorship all powerful? That's a question that author Wang Lixiong set out to answer in his dystopian novel "Ceremony." Released by Taiwan's Locus Publishing in December, "Ceremony" describes a China in 2021 that isn't far off from how the nation is today. The leader wants to stay in office beyond mandated term limits and uses an anticorruption campaign to vanquish rivals.