The difference between the robots of today and all previous forms of automation is that they are so flexible (Editorial, 25 November). Intelligent robots will be utilised in any new enterprise rather than people now because the financial returns are likely to be so much greater, given that there will be no recruitment difficulties, wage demands, overtime claims, strikes, sickness absence, pensions, transport or housing problems to take care of. Factories can be situated anywhere, and HS2 could be redundant before it becomes operational. In the past, workers displaced by automation could rely on new industries springing up to take them on, but in future these will create far more jobs for robots than people across the board. Our whole economic system, which concentrates on profitability and economics rather than the welfare of the population, can only encourage this trend.

Science fiction has a funny habit of becoming science fact after enough time has passed. The wide-eyed wonder of children sitting cross-legged in front of the TV eventually becomes inspiration for incredible feats of engineering, or the means of our own destruction. The latest example of this phenomenon is a new, powered up exoskeleton the U.S. Army is testing, per Scout. There are tons of examples of this sort of thing in science fiction. It usually involves military personnel enhancing their combat capabilities with some manner of armor or exoskeleton.

Scientists have developed the world's first artificial intelligence politician, that can answer a person's queries regarding local issues such as policies around housing, education and immigration. The virtual politician, called SAM, was created by Nick Gerritsen, a 49-year-old entrepreneur in New Zealand. "There is a lot of bias in the'analogue' practice of politics right now," said Gerritsen. "There seems to be so much existing bias that countries around the world seem unable to address fundamental and multiple complex issues like climate change and equality," he said. The AI politician is constantly learning to respond to people through Facebook Messenger as well as a survey on its homepage.

The UK doesn't just want to institute rules governing how you fly your drone -- it wants to give police more power to take drones out of commission. A newly unveiled Drone Bill would give law enforcement the authority to order pilots to not only order operators to ground drones, but to seize drone parts if needed to prove that the machine was used to break the law. If someone's caught flying a drone over a prison, officers could both force the robotic flier down and confiscate it to illustrate what happened. The proposed law would also codify the rules brought up during the summer. You would have to register any drone weighing over 250g (0.55lbs) and take a safety awareness test.

I recently had a conversation with a colleague that works with me in the MIT AgeLab. He specializes in AI and machine learning. As we walked and discussed his current work on autonomous vehicles, I asked him "where would you like to take your research?" Without missing a beat he responded – "I would like to build a robot that you would want to have a conversation with." Robots may be rapidly losing their novelty.

When the US Air Force deployed Gorgon Stare, a drone video system that consists of 368 cameras covering nearly 40 square miles at a time, in 2011, an official declared, "we can see everything." The technology, named after snake-haired mythological creatures whose gazes turn people to stone, can surveil an area for hours at a time, take composite images of 1.8 billion pixels each, and create several terabytes of data every minute. Ted Johnson (@TedDGCI) is a retired commander in the US Navy where he focused on cyber policy and operations. He is the defense and national security research manager at Deloitte's Center for Government Insights. Charles F. Wald, a retired US Air Force general and former deputy commander of US European Command, is co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Security Program.

The concerns over government facial recognition systems don't just revolve around the possibility of Orwellian control -- it's that they may share that data with others you don't completely trust. Australia is learning this first-hand. The Guardian has obtained documents showing that the country's Attorney General office is talking to telecoms and banks about testing private use of the Facial Verification Service in 2018. Companies would need to get your permission and would have to show that they're honoring Australia's Privacy Act, but they could otherwise use it to fight fraud or otherwise verify the identities of their customers. The approach would be similar to the existing Document Verification Service, where companies pay a fee every time they want to verify info from documents like your driver's license or passport.

Cyber security companies are turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to ward off growing number of attacks on networks, Finland- based internet security firm F-Secure said. As the world is fast moving towards Internet of Things and connected devices, deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) has become inevitable for cyber security firms to analyse huge amount of data to save networks from infiltration attempts, F-Secure's Security Advisor Sean Sullivan said. Networks are persistently exposed to threats like malware, phishing, password breaches and denial of service attacks. On a daily basis, F-Secure Labs on an average receives sample data of 500,000 files from its customers that include 10,000 malware variants and 60,000 malicious URLs for analysis and protection, Sullivan said. For humans, it is a big task to go through such huge amount of data and machine learning tools and AI are lending a helping hand at this stage, he said.

Negative views of AI development predominate In a speech to the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment Group Modeas said:"If you do any research on artificial intelligence these days, the results are astonishingly pessimistic. Nine articles out of ten on AI are negative. Alarmist and panicked, sometimes even hysterical. Commissioner Modeas is betting that AI research will be a positive force even though he admits that public fear of the technology appears to be deep. He thinks the public fears what is the most exciting new technology for our generation. To deny the amazing benefits it can bring is not the answer he claims. Possible negative effects of AI development Warnings about AI development have come from notables such as Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Elon Musk who argue that it could evolve to a point where it is beyond human control. Many critics also worry that robots with AI will take over jobs creating unemployment. Elon Musk's worries Musk who himself has been a prime contributor to technology both in electric vehicles and space rockets worries that competition for AI technology could lead to war as governments compete for superiority in weaponry using AI. However, it has surely always been the case that countries compete for technology especially technology that can be triumphant in warfare. This would be so whether AI developed or not. However, the development of AI will make this competition more dangerous.. Technology in the form of chemical weapons and nuclear bombs already show that it is imperative that we do everything we can to ensure that new AI technology is controlled. Musk's warning are very much based on reality. Will AI technology result in lost jobs? Another of Musk's worries was the loss of jobs. Economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo of the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at the historical effects of robots on employment in the US between 1990 and 2007 controlling for the influence of other factors. Their study showed that each new robot led to the loss of between 3 and 5.6 jobs in the local area. For each new robot added for 1,000 workers wages would also decline between 0.25 and 0.5 percent. The two researchers write: "Predictably, the major categories experiencing substantial declines are routine manual occupations, blue-collar workers, operators and assembly workers, and machinists and transport workers." Steven Mnuchin, the US treasury secretary said that he was not worried about the effects of AI and automation on employment. Mnuchin said: "Quite frankly, I'm optimistic.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup SenseTime Group said on Wednesday it has sealed an investment from chipmaker Qualcomm Inc as part of a funding round that will close later this year. SenseTime and Qualcomm had announced a strategic tie last month to collaborate on AI, which will see SenseTime's proprietary algorithms deployed in smart devices. Qualcomm, in a statement, confirmed the investment in SenseTime. The two firms did not disclose the size of the investment. Reuters reported earlier in November that SenseTime plans to raise about $500 million in a new funding round, in what would be the biggest ever such fundraising by an AI startup.