Tool can detect 94% of Isis propaganda with a 99.99% success rate in tests An artificial intelligence program that can detect Islamic State propaganda online with a 94% success rate has been developed, the Home Office has announced. The technology could stop the majority of Isis videos from reaching the internet by analysing the audio and images of a video file during the uploading process, and rejecting extremist content. The tool, which has been developed in partnership by the Home Office and ASI Data Science, will be made available to all internet platforms, although many major tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter already use similar technology on their own websites. The tool is aimed at tackling extremist content on smaller platforms like Vimeo, Telegraph and pCloud, which have seen a large rise in Isis propaganda. The terror group has used 400 different websites to upload their content last year, research has found.

Aliens could trigger apocalypse on Earth without even visiting our planet. That's according to a new study by scientists in Hawaii that claims ET could send humanity a message hiding malicious AI. We should consider deleting messages from aliens without reading them to avoid havoc on Earth, the researchers claim. Not only do these messages have the potential to contain AI that can shut down power systems, opening them can also alert aliens to our whereabouts. Aliens could trigger apocalypse on Earth without even visiting our planet.

The Pentagon is building drones mounted with lasers that can destroy enemy missiles before they have left the launch pad. The US Missile Defence Agency has requested $66 million (£48 million) in funding to continue the top-secret programme, with a plan to begin tests by 2020. Officials hope that innovative missile-intercepting technologies will help the US military to defend sites like Guam, Japan, and Hawaii from North Korean attacks. The Pentagon is building drones equipped with lasers that can destroy enemy missiles. With drones and other unmanned vehicles set to dominate battlefields of the future (artist's impression), the Pentagon has invested billions in the technology over the past decade Named Low Power Laser Demonstrator (LPLD), the project aims to build lasers that can be mounted on to a drone and used to take out missiles before they are a threat.

Dubai: Artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to another industrial revolution to benefit humankind, delegates attending the sixth World Government Summit were told on Monday. During a series of special sessions, AI experts shared the latest scientific discoveries on an issue that is on everyone's mind and smartphones. According to Kevin Kelley, founding executive director, Wired magazine, "The advancements in artificial intelligence will lead to yet another industrial revolution, which will create more jobs in the future," His comments came during a morning session that discussed the inevitability of AI and how governments can influence its development, including the technologies coming in the next 20 years and their impact on people. Kelley said that as machines are being made, they are going to be engineered in a way that makes their cognition exceed human cognition in certain dimensions. "These machines will be specialised and have variety of intelligence that exceeds ours. We are making many different types of AI minds, which will have many different types of thinking and almost none are like humans. The fact that they don't think like us is the main benefit," he said.

Jeff Heepke knows where to plant corn on his 4,500-acre farm in Illinois because of artificial intelligence (AI). He uses a smartphone app called Climate Basic, which divides Heepke's farmland (and, in fact, the entire continental U.S.) into plots that are 10 meters square. The app draws on local temperature and erosion records, expected precipitation, soil quality, and other agricultural data to determine how to maximize yields for each plot. If a rainy cold front is expected to pass by, Heepke knows which areas to avoid watering or irrigating that afternoon. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture noted, this use of artificial intelligence across the industry has produced the largest crops in the country's history. Climate Corporation, the Silicon Valley–based developer of Climate Basic, also offers a more advanced AI app that operates autonomously. If a storm hits a region, or a drought occurs, it adjusts local yield numbers downward. Farmers who have bought insurance to supplement their government coverage get a check; no questions asked, no paper filing necessary.

Despite the longest growth run in nearly three decades, Japan's economic outlook remains far from robust as uncertainty abounds over wage growth and business investment. Under Abenomics, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's program of radical monetary easing, fiscal spending and vows of structural reforms, the economy grew at an annualized rate of 0.5 percent in the October-December period, marking the eighth straight quarter of expansion. It slowed from a revised 2.2 percent increase in the previous quarter and was below the potential growth rate of around 1.0 percent. Many economists expect the economy to keep growing at a moderate pace this year, but the biggest wild card could be volatility in financial markets after the recent global stock market rout. The key question now is whether domestic demand -- private consumption and corporate spending -- can pick up further and help the world's third-largest economy sustain its recent growth momentum, economists said.

Yahoo Japan says it's going to launch a business that uses its big data and artificial intelligence technologies to support other companies and local governments. Officials at Yahoo Japan say 5 other entities, including Kobe City and Nissan Motor, have joined the venture. A trial is already underway. Yahoo is using AI to analyze a mixture of its own big data and information from the 5 groups. Kobe is aiming to make its ambulance service more efficient.

BEIJING – China has started building the world's largest test site for unmanned ships -- a technology with both civilian and military applications -- off a port in the disputed South China Sea, state media has reported. The test area is being constructed off the southern port city of Zhuhai bordering Macau, China's official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday. China asserts sovereignty over almost all the South China Sea despite competing partial claims from the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, and has reclaimed several islands which it controls to bolster its claims. Unmanned or "autonomous" ship technology, still in its infancy, would allow both civilian and military craft to be remotely controlled. It could revolutionize the shipping industry by creating more cargo space on unmanned ships, which would also save huge sums in labor costs.

Teleworking, a key part of the government's work-style reform initiative, is slowly evolving as a result of efforts to make up for difficulties in communication among colleagues. One such effort that is drawing attention is the use of avatar robots to smooth out communication between those clocking in from home and those at the office. A number of companies are trying to adopt various reforms under the initiative, and there is even one firm where all staff members work remotely. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corp., a subsidiary of telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., began using robots called OriHime in April 2016 as part of its efforts to promote teleworking, a policy aimed at allowing employees to continue working while raising children or caring for aging parents. Using OriHime, remote workers can view their office and communicate with their colleagues.

Data science has made its way into practically all facets of society – from retail and marketing, to travel and hospitality, to finance and insurance, to sports and entertainment, to defense, homeland security, cyber, and beyond. It is clear that data science has successfully sold its claim of "actionable insights from data," and truth be told, it often delivers on that claim, adding value that would otherwise go untapped. As a result, data science is often looked to as a panacea, a Swiss army knife, a silver bullet, a must-have, [insert your own cliché here]. This has implications for both data scientists and the organizations they work with. On one hand, data scientists are now beginning to face a new set of challenging problems, problems that even the most advanced machine learning algorithms have yet to solve: managing expectations. And on the other hand, many businesses and organizations are grappling with shifting learning curves, the latest shiny object, and the pressure to keep pace. As the data science bandwagon fills up, there are many individuals that do not fully, or even marginally, understand what data science is, what it can do, and when it is relevant. In what follows, I present what I have encountered to be five of the most common misconceptions about data science – misconceptions that will proliferate and morph as the data science wave rolls on.