Cloud services are a good start for digitizing the business of the CIA, but artificial intelligence and machine learning could revolutionize the agency's ability to gather intelligence, its director of digital innovation said Thursday. AI and machine learning "can fundamentally change the way we do business," Andrew Hallman, head of the CIA Digital Innovation Directorate, said at Dell Technologies' Digital Transformation Summit, produced by FedScoop. Advances in AI and machine learning -- on top of the power of the cloud, which the CIA has ferociously embraced in recent years -- serve as a major boon to analysts "to make sense of our sensory environment and the signals they're getting from that threat environment" and "to develop models for how the world behaves, to be able to provide more anticipation of unfolding events and changing conditions so that we can better equip our policymakers with the ability to effect outcomes and change the course of events," Hallman said. But it starts with talented personnel who already have a higher propensity for intelligence gathering and analysis, Hallman said. In his mind, AI and machine learning won't replace the human element of intelligence -- as might be the case with personnel in other sectors -- but instead it will boost agency employees' performance by eliminating some of the more minute but labor-intensive aspects of their mission.

The UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been launched by vice president, prime minister and ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, as the government looks to technology boost workplace efficiency. It is hoped the new strategy – the first of its kind in the region – will speed up the government's performance and "create a conducive creative environment" encouraging higher productivity. The government said it would invest in AI and its applications across multiple domains, with the strategy forming part of the UAE Centennial 2070 objectives. His Highness Sheikh Mohammed said that AI was "the new wave after the Smart Government upon which all our services, sectors and future infrastructure will rely on". He added that AI applications would generate revenues and provide fresh opportunities for the national economy. The prime minister visited GITEX Technology Week earlier this month, at which a new online platform was launched by Smart Dubai, called Fajwa.

Meet Sophia, a robot who made her first public appearance in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh on Monday. Sophia was such a hit she was immediately given Saudi citizenship in front of hundreds of delegates at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh on 25 October. But as pictures and videos of Sophia began circulating on social media many started to ask why a robot already seemed to have secured more rights than women in the country. "It is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with citizenship." Please welcome the newest Saudi: Sophia.

Bills being considered by Congress deserve our attention--but not our full attention. To wit: When it comes to safety-related regulation of automated driving, existing law is at least as important as the bills currently in Congress (HB 3388 and SB 1885). Understanding why involves examining all the ways that the developer of an automated driving system might deploy its system in accordance with federal law as well as all the ways that governments might regulate that system. And this examination reveals some critical surprises. As automated driving systems get closer to public deployment, their developers are closely evaluating how the full set of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) will apply to these systems and to the vehicles on which they are installed. Rather than specifying a comprehensive regulatory framework, these standards impose requirements on only some automotive features and functions.

Many people are very skeptical of the governments adoption of AI to take over management of its citizen services, but which gender is more comfortable with this decision? The answer to that question, by way of surveys, is men. More men than women feel more comfortable with this technology shift. According to a report that was published by Accenture, men and women were surveyed on how they felt with AI taking over citizen services in 6 different categories. In all six, men trusted AI more than women did.

Former vice-president Joe Biden reads the news on Biden's Briefings, a podcast and connected speaker "skill" (Photo: Chris Ferenzi) LOS ANGELES -- The Creative Artists Agency, one of the most powerful talent agencies in Hollywood, just launched a new "start-up studio" to develop apps for its celebrity clients, initially focused on audio for the connected-speaker market. The agency's Creative Labs has two companies in its portfolio already: Ground Control, which offers daily news updates from former vice president Joe Biden on Amazon's Alexa-activated speakers and Google Home and a trivia game from baseball great Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants. And it has Belletrist, an arts community aimed at millennial women that was co-founded by actress Emma Roberts. Labs is working with comedian Mike Epps on a new audio game that will be introduced by the end of the year. CAA, which represents such superstars as Tom Hanks and George Clooney, is also a longtime co-founder of tech firms, including the comedy site Funny or Die, and Moonshark, which created apps for celebrities like Hanks and Jennifer Lopez.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaffirmed his nerd-in-chief reputation and outlined his government's vision to capitalize on Canada's early lead in artificial intelligence, or AI, during an appearance today at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Trudeau, a self-professed "geek," was a special guest at an annual business of AI conference hosted by Rotman's Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), a seed stage accelerator that specializes in building AI-powered startups. Quizzed on his AI knowledge, Trudeau compared the technology to playing chess against a computer that not only made moves based on cold hard calculations, but "leaps of instinct" that mimic how the human brain works. "I think we all understand, certainly in this room, the way the world is going," Trudeau said during a 20-minute conversation with Shivon Zilis of Tesla, Bloomberg Beta and Open AI. "So let's be part of it and help shape it, and let's make sure we're benefiting from the innovations – in both the designing of them and the applications and the jobs." In recent years, Canada – and Toronto in particular – has emerged as a hotbed of AI activity thanks in part to fundamental research performed by people like U of T's University Professor Emeritus Geoffrey Hinton, who is known as the "godfather of deep learning" and works for Google, and U of T Associate Professor Raquel Urtasun, who is heading up Uber's self-driving car lab in Toronto.

Put Skynet from The Terminator movies to the back of your mind for a minute, and stay with me on this one. Certain political leaders are reminding us of their fragile humanity with increasing frequency these days. Prone to wild acts of emotion and unable to resist the urge to push their personal agenda at the expense of the greater good, it's enough to make the concept of an AI-controlled government sound utopian by comparison. I'm not quite naïve enough to think we're already at a point where our human leaders could be replaced by an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-doing machine, but artificial intelligence and machine learning are becoming ever more tantalizing in their potential to simplify, accelerate, and improve many aspects of society and our lives. Governments are beginning to realize this.

Russia has been hit by a wave of reports of a giant UFO in the sky last night with spectacular pictures of an enormous glowing ball illuminating northern Siberia. Social media erupted with claims of'aliens arriving' and locals in far flung parts of the country told of'shivers down their spines'. While the source of the light remains unclear, some have suggested that it was the the trace of a rocket launched by the Russian military that caused this extraordinary phenomenon in the night sky. While the source of the light remains unknown, local experts suggest there were two possible reasons for the eerie spectacle in the Siberian night sky. The first was that a vivid display of the Northern Lights - or Aurora Borealis - was underway.

I want to tell you straight off what this story is about: Sometime in the next 40 years, robots are going to take your job. I don't care what your job is. If you dig ditches, a robot will dig them better. If you're a magazine writer, a robot will write your articles better. If you're a doctor, IBM's Watson will no longer "assist" you in finding the right diagnosis from its database of millions of case studies and journal articles. It will just be a better doctor than you. Robots will run companies better than you do. Robots will paint and write and sculpt better than you. Think you have social skills that no robot can match? Within 20 years, maybe half of you will be out of jobs. A couple of decades after that, most of the rest of you will be out of jobs. In one sense, this all sounds great. Let the robots have the damn jobs! We'll be free to read or write poetry or play video games or whatever we want to do.