Maybe Apple has the right idea when it comes to the future of identification, with Face ID built into the new iPhone X. The Department of Homeland Security wants to scan the faces of people entering or leaving the country, without needing to have anyone get out of their cars. The DHS's Silicon Valley office is hosting an "industry day" on November 14th to find ways to do just that, even if folks are wearing sunglasses and hats or the driver is looking away from the cameras. "To avoid having travelers in vehicles stop at border crossings, which could create significant traffic delays, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is working to implement a face biometric entry-exit system in a way that poses the least impact on travel and trade," said the call for presentations. "This call is looking for innovative solutions to capture facial recognition quality photos from travelers in order to facilitate identity checks without requiring occupants to leave the vehicle."

See how self-driving cars prepare for the real world inside a private testing facility owned by Google's autonomous car company, Waymo. A Chrysler Pacifica hybrid outfitted with Waymo's suite of sensors and radar is displayed at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Google is partnering with AutoNation, the country's largest auto dealership chain, in its push to build a self-driving car. AutoNation said Thursday, Nov. 2, that its dealerships will provide maintenance and repairs for Waymo's self-driving fleet of Chrysler Pacifica vehicles. FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Google is partnering with AutoNation, the country's largest auto dealership chain, in its push to produce self-driving cars for wide use.

During his talk at a tech summit organized by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) on Wednesday, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told his audience that it won't be long before China overtakes the United States in the development of advanced artificial intelligence (AI), according to a report by The Verge. Schmidt, who's now the executive chairman of Google's parent company Alphabet, said that while the U.S. would maintain its leading place in the next five years, China will be able to catch up "extremely quickly." "Trust me, these Chinese people are good," Schmidt pointed out. China has previously laid out plans to become the world leader in AI by 2030, as outlined in a government policy released in July of this year. "They are going to use this technology for both commercial and military objectives, with all sorts of implications," The Verge reports.

Banks and hedge funds that rely on artificial intelligence threaten to inject risks into the financial system that could exacerbate a future crisis, according to global regulators. The financial industry's rush to adopt AI raises the potential that firms will become overly dependent on technologies that herd them toward the same view of risks and could "amplify financial shocks," according to a study published on Wednesday by the Financial Stability Board, a panel of regulators that includes the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank. "AI and machine learning applications show substantial promise if their specific risks are properly managed," the FSB said in a report that called for additional monitoring and testing of robotic technologies designed to lessen human involvement. "Taken as a group, universal banks' vulnerability to systemic shocks may grow if they increasingly depend on similar algorithms or data streams." The FSB, headed by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, said that many of the technologies are being designed and tested in a period of low volatility in financial markets, and, as a result, "may not suggest optimal actions in a significant economic downturn or in a financial crisis."

Banks and hedge funds that rely on artificial intelligence threaten to inject risks into the financial system that could exacerbate a future crisis, according to global regulators. The financial industry's rush to adopt AI raises the potential that firms will become overly dependent on technologies that herd them toward the same view of risks and could "amplify financial shocks," according to a study published on Wednesday by the Financial Stability Board, a panel of regulators that includes the U.S. Federal Reserve and European Central Bank. "AI and machine learning applications show substantial promise if their specific risks are properly managed," the FSB said in a report that called for additional monitoring and testing of robotic technologies designed to lessen human involvement. "Taken as a group, universal banks' vulnerability to systemic shocks may grow if they increasingly depend on similar algorithms or data streams." The FSB, headed by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, said that many of the technologies are being designed and tested in a period of low volatility in financial markets, and, as a result, "may not suggest optimal actions in a significant economic downturn or in a financial crisis."

Experts are divided about whether enterprises need a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer (CAIO) and how the role relates to data scientists and CIOs. The argument against the role is that you don't want a C-level position focused on a technology. In this view AI is a tool and it makes no more sense to hire someone at that level just to implement AI than for other tools. Over the next few weeks I hope to demonstrate how far reaching AI is. I also will argue that the winners and losers in most industries will be determined by AI more than any technology since the PC revolution. The term "artificial intelligence" has morphed away from referring to artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Sooner or later, the US will face mounting job losses due to advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Automation has emerged as a bigger threat to American jobs than globalization or immigration combined. A 2015 report from Ball State University attributed 87 percent of recent manufacturing job losses to automation. Soon enough, the number of truck and taxi drivers, postal workers, and warehouse clerks will shrink. What will the 60 percent of the population that lacks a college degree do?

Machine learning, as many readers will know, is a branch of artificial intelligence. It's essentially a method of programming which gives computers the ability to learn something on their own. So, then, after it's learned to fish, if you ask the computer a question, or ask it for a fish, its answer, or the fish, doesn't have to be in its memory banks – it can go and catch a new fish, or just make one up based on the information about fish it has already acquired. This is like the example of Google's DeepMind algorithm creating entirely new images of cats, people and other images based on the millions of images of cats, people and whatnot it had already seen. The new images the algorithm was creating were not exact replicas of any it had seen, and quite frankly they were terrible, but you get the idea.

Just last month on June 22 and 23, the United Nations Public Service Forum 2017 took place in The Hague to celebrate public service delivery and to discuss how innovation is shaping the government of the future as well as how to accelerate such innovation. With the ever-increasing amount of data collected through a wide variety of sources and sensors, the potential for computers to learn from this data and take over certain tasks is increasing. Although the potential of technological innovations is often overrated in the short term, it seems that AI is treated as the "shiny new typewriter" of which we should be wary. AI is perceived to have the potential to accomplish much of the valuable work currently done by humans, specifically routine work where humans make an assessment within one second. One should avoid giving the computer too much autonomy in case it runs loose and acts outside the interest of the humans it serves, or creates its own bias in the form of discrimination.

Australians needs to have a diplomatic discussion about the potential impact of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and the boundaries that need to be established to ensure AI is developed and used for good, according to federal parliamentarians Bridget McKenzie and Ed Husic. Speaking at the Australian Computer Society's (ACS) Reimagination Thought Leaders Summit, Senator McKenzie, chair of Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Legislation Committee, said if bright minds like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk are warning of "evil AI" destroying humankind if not properly monitored and regulated, then this is something that as a nation needs to be publicly discussed. "I think'man against machine' has been a powerful narrative with our species for a very, very long time," McKenzie said during a panel discussion. "We always end up winning because somehow we always write the script so that we're smarter in the end than the machine." "But I think when the creators of this technology ... have concerns, I think we mere mortals really should pay attention because they're the guys that have actually developed this technology, they understand its potential. "Sometimes I think we can get very excited about the potential development of the next step in your scientific endeavour, and forget that it is part of a wider ... society and a civilisation." McKenzie referenced the view of Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom, that we could end up creating and designing our own demise. "I think we do need to be very, very cognisant of that fact because there's not a lot of research.