Artificial intelligence is quickly advancing. In 1964 the first major AI, ELIZA, was built, and it could only hold a conversation from a script. Now, AIs like Apple's Siri, Windows' Cortana and Amazon's Alexa can interpret human dialogue to an amazing degree, and fulfill commands. It is benign now, but AI is something with which society needs to be cautious. AI has the possibility of creating a human society so advanced we cannot even imagine it, but it also has the capability of upheaving our societal system and upheaving us with it.

Watch SpaceX launch its Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center with a Korean communications satellite and land the first stage on the Of Course I Still Love You drone ship. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the U.S. government's secret Zuma mission stands vertical on Kennedy Space Center's launch pad 39A. The rocket launch was delayed Thursday, Nov. 16, 2017. CAPE CANAVERAL -- Could a secret U.S. government spacecraft be bound for a rendezvous with a spy satellite or even the International Space Station? Little is known about the mission called Zuma, targeting a launch as early as 8 p.m. Friday, the opening of a two-hour window, from Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The Government of Karnataka has launched a Centre of Excellence for data science and Artificial Intelligence (CoE-DS&AI) in collaboration with NASSCOM. To be established with around Rs 40 crore, the CoE will be its first-of-its-kind port based on a public-private partnership model, and will accelerate the ecosystem in Karnataka by providing the impetus for the development of data science and artificial intelligence across the country. NASSCOM will work towards accelerating innovation, enabling industry-oriented research, promoting adoption of data-driven decision making by enterprises and enabling appropriate skills & talent development. The Centre of Excellence will provide high-end technology capabilities, data, expertise, thought leadership, and curated programs to augment capabilities across academia, enterprises, government, and innovators or advanced start-ups. Priyank Kharge, Minister for IT, BT & Tourism, Government of Karnataka, said, "Karnataka has led the IT revolution in India and has always been at the forefront in areas of science and information technology. Our Government has played the key role for Karnataka to be known as the start-up capital in the country through NASSCOM by establishing India's first start-up warehouse. This Centre of Excellence for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence will be a catalyst for the growth of data science and artificial intelligence, and provide a head-start to, not just the state, but India as a destination to develop global products and solutions."

Stanford researchers have developed an algorithm that offers diagnoses based off chest X-ray images. A paper about the algorithm, called CheXNet, was published Nov. 14 on the open-access, scientific preprint website arXiv. "Interpreting X-ray images to diagnose pathologies like pneumonia is very challenging, and we know that there's a lot of variability in the diagnoses radiologists arrive at," said Pranav Rajpurkar, a graduate student in the Machine Learning Group at Stanford and co-lead author of the paper. "We became interested in developing machine learning algorithms that could learn from hundreds of thousands of chest X-ray diagnoses and make accurate diagnoses." The work uses a public data set initially released by the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center on Sept. 26. That data set contains 112,120 frontal-view chest X-ray images labeled with up to 14 possible pathologies.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly looking into ways to use machine learning technology and social media monitoring to identify people for visa denial–and to select people for deportation from the United States. After IBM attended the informational meeting, rights groups are concerned that the company might be considering getting involved with the program. While Reuters obtained an email from Christopher Padilla, IBM's vice president of government affairs, saying that IBM "would not work on any project that runs counter to our company's values, including our long-standing opposition to discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion," he also noted that it was "premature to speculate" whether IBM would pursue this business. To hopefully sway IBM from getting in bed with ICE, a coalition of rights groups, including 18 Million Rising and Center for Media Justice launched an online petition on Thursday urging IBM Corp to renounce the proposal entirely. If you sign it, you won't be alone.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly looking into ways to use machine learning technology and social media monitoring to identify people for visa denial–and to select people for deportation from the United States. After IBM attended the informational meeting, rights groups are concerned that the company might be considering getting involved with the program. While Reuters obtained an email from Christopher Padilla, IBM's vice president of government affairs, saying that IBM "would not work on any project that runs counter to our company's values, including our long-standing opposition to discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, or religion," he also noted that it was "premature to speculate" whether IBM would pursue this business. To hopefully sway IBM from getting in bed with ICE, a coalition of rights groups, including 18 Million Rising and Center for Media Justice launched an online petition on Thursday urging IBM Corp to renounce the proposal entirely. If you sign it, you won't be alone.

Standing 6 foot 9 and weighing in at 167 pounds, Atlas is a robot that you really don't want to argue with. Just months ago, Boston Dynamic's humanoid bot became an object of ridicule after a series of accidents at a government'robo olympics' saw if falling constantly, and needing a crane to get back on its feet. Now, 'the World's Most Dynamic Humanoid' is back - and you really don't want to mess with it. Boston Dynamics, the secretive firm behind the bot, posted this video to youTube with no explanation, and simply called it'What's new, Atlas?' Its makers have given the bot an overhaul, and it is now so stable it can even perform a perfect backflip. 'Atlas is the latest in a line of advanced humanoid robots we are developing, Boston Robotics said.

An unidentified aircraft was seen flying among other airliners in skies above Oregon - causing confusion among air traffic control and the Air Force, which sent F-15s to investigate. The aircraft flew over Oregon on October 25, with no flight plan, no active identification transponder or transmitting collision avoidance signals. While information about plane's pilot or intended destination remain unclear, some have suggested that the aircraft was trafficking drugs. Additionally, it is believed that the mysterious flight could be a potential breach of national security. An unidentified aircraft flew over Oregon on October 25, with no flight plan, no active identification transponder or transmitting collision avoidance signals.

ANN ARBOR--Researchers, hospitals, companies, consumers and government agencies are drowning in data that they can't fully capitalize on. Now, a team from the University of Michigan has received $1.6 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to help develop a toolkit so that even nondata scientists can use that data to possibly answer questions and ultimately speed up the process of discovery. The Michigan project seeks to develop algorithms that draw on techniques like machine learning for applications such as understanding video. It is one of 24 projects selected from around the country. DARPA intends to combine techniques from the projects into a central repository.

A team of scientists hailing from the Sandia National Laboratories and Boston University developed an experimental algorithm that could automatically diagnose problems in supercomputers. There is an array of internal and external issues that could arise with these powerful machines. For instance, factors like physical parts breaking can occur or previous programs performing "zombie processes" that prevent the computer from functioning properly. Furthermore, the repair process for these devices can take an extended period of time, which raises another issue since these computers perform critical tasks like forecasting the weather and ensuring the U.S. nuclear arsenal is safe and reliable without needing to do underground testing. To develop the algorithm, the team took a multi-step approach. First, the engineers created a suite of issues they became familiar with over the time they spent working on various supercomputers, which was then followed by them writing specific codes to re-create these anomalies.