It's late November 2016, and I'm squeezed into the far corner of a long row of gray cubicles in the call screening center for the Allegheny County Office of Children, Youth and Families (CYF) child neglect and abuse hotline. We're both studying the Key Information and Demographics System (KIDS), a blue screen filled with case notes, demographic data, and program statistics. We are focused on the records of two families: both are poor, white, and living in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both were referred to CYF by a mandated reporter, a professional who is legally required to report any suspicion that a child may be at risk of harm from their caregiver. Pat and I are competing to see if we can guess how a new predictive risk model the county is using to forecast child abuse and neglect, called the Allegheny Family Screening Tool (AFST), will score them. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately one in four children will experience some form of abuse or neglect in their lifetimes. The agency's Adverse Childhood Experience Study concluded that the experience of abuse or neglect has "tremendous, lifelong impact on our health and the quality of our lives," including increased occurrences of drug and alcohol abuse, suicide attempts, and depression. In the noisy glassed-in room, Pat hands me a double-sided piece of paper called the "Risk/Severity Continuum."

Controversial AI software that researchers claimed could determine if someone is gay by looking at the shape of their face has been debunked. Experts say that the computer program, developed by Stanford University, is not able to determine your sexuality by scanning photos. Instead, they claim it relies on patterns in how homosexual and heterosexual people take selfies to make its determinations. That includes superficial details like the amount of makeup and facial hair on show, as well as different preferences for the type of angles used to take the shots. Critics slammed the software when it first emerged in September 2017, saying it could be used to'out' men and women currently in the closet.

There will be many people who will say it does exist and has working technologies, hardware and software. It is an interesting error in thinking to focus on closed system devices/products as to what Ubiquity (IoT3) is. Devices are used to get across the point of various types of connections and networks being accessed. But more importantly in a full implementation of the concept of Ubiquity (often described as the IoT) devices may not even be owned anymore. The ownership of devices ceases to be important if you can own your digital identity, can verify it and establish your own ecosystem of assets in Blockchain.

Artificial intelligence programs built by Alibaba (BABA) and Microsoft (MSFT) have beaten humans on a Stanford University reading comprehension test. "This is the first time that a machine has outperformed humans on such a test," Alibaba said in a statement Monday. The test was devised by artificial intelligence experts at Stanford to measure computers' growing reading abilities. Alibaba's software was the first to beat the human score. Luo Si, the chief scientist of natural language processing at the Chinese company's AI research group, called the milestone "a great honor," but also acknowledged that it is likely lead to a significant number of workers losing their jobs to machines.

John Young (left) and Gus Grissom flew on the first crewed Gemini flight, Gemini 3, on March 23, 1965. Here, they're shown in the spacecraft simulator at the McDonnell plant in St. Louis. One additional "passenger" on the real flight was a corned-beef sandwich that Young smuggled aboard in his pocket. While John Young, who died on Jan. 5 at age 87, is famous for his Apollo 16 moonwalks and his role as commander of the first space shuttle mission, the NASA astronaut is also remembered for a small scandal he triggered with a sneaky act: smuggling a corned-beef sandwich into space. Young slipped the sandwich into his pocket just before launching on Gemini 3 on March 23, 1965.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already fundamentally changing information technology and stands poised to permeate and transform technology both online and off ranging from manufacturing and transportation to medicine and military applications. The US, Russia and China have all noted that dominance in this field of technology will be an essential ingredient to holding global primacy in the near future. What resembles a sort of arms race has emerged between prominent nations around the globe. Perhaps in an effort to provide the US with an edge, or perhaps in an effort to mitigate the impact of such an arms race, Google has opened an AI center in China. CNN in its article, "Google is opening an artificial intelligence center in China," would announce: Despite many of its services being blocked in China, Google has chosen Beijing as the location for its first artificial intelligence research center in Asia.

By Naoki Ogawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff WrtiterChina is rapidly coming to the fore as a major player in the field of artificial intelligence (see below). Utilizing three strengths -- abundant research and development budgets, competent people in the field and massive accessible data, or big data -- the opportunity is nearing for the country to overtake the United States. Will China become the dominant power of the AI era? On Nov. 15, 2017, the Chinese government fully kicked off a gigantic project aimed at the development of the AI industry. According to Chinese media, a new organization created to lead the initiative is joined by multiple government institutions, including the Science and Technology Ministry as well as IT giants such as search engine company Baidu Inc., e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and social networking giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., in an "all-China" effort involving both the public and private sectors.

In a quest for use cases for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the public sector or public services, I reviewed some of the recent discussions and research papers. The Dean and CEO of the Northeastern University, P.K. Agarwal built his career fostering the industry interactions particularly in the Public Services space. In his view public sector services are going through a growing up process which he terms as eServices PK's Ladder 2.0. PK explains that the public-sector services today have actually grown faster than the initial hypothesis and in some regions the services are in the "Integrate" phase already. He has demonstrated his "CAL-BOT" a mobile application that integrates with voice, payment gateways and allows the phone user to transact with various public utilities including DMV, courts etc.

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Chris Charron of Titusville is a drone hobbyist who takes aerial photos of the local landscape. MELBOURNE, Fla. -- It was but two days after Christmas when the Fenno family lost their new gift: a drone. The Melbourne residents were visiting family in Georgia when they took the drone for its first spin. It was dark, said Kaitlee Fenno, but the drone had lights so the family assumed it was in the clear.

The Army general likely to be tapped to head U.S. CYBERCOM and the NSA has some big plans for deploying cyber forces and using artificial intelligence in information attacks. Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, who currently leads U.S. Army CYBERCOM, is expected to nominated in the next few months to replace Adm. Michael Rogers, as first reported by The Cipher Brief (and confirmed by the Washington Post and a Pentagon source of our own). But caution is in order: the rumor mill says several other contenders are in the running, including Army Lt. Gen. William Mayville. Neither CYBERCOM nor the Pentagon would comment about the potential nomination. UPDATE: As @TheCipherBrief reported, Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone is expected to be Trump's nominee.