The Department of Veterans Affairs' Financial Services Center is interested in adding robotic process automation to its business process management suite. RPA allows users to configure a software robot to complete rules-based, non-subjective tasks associated with processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and integrating with other systems. By removing dull, repetitive tasks from human operators' responsibilities, it helps organizations increase the accuracy and speed of business processes. According to a request for information, the VA is looking for RPA software that automates tasks and workflows and integrates with its Pega 7 BPM applications. It wants software that runs on the desktop. "allowing human and robot interactions to run within the same environment."

At a demonstration of Amazon Web Services' new artificial intelligence image recognition tool last week, the deep learning analysis calculated with near certainty that a photo of speaker Glenn Gore depicted a potted plant. "It is very clever, it can do some amazing things but it needs a lot of hand holding still. AI is almost like a toddler. They can do some pretty cool things, sometimes they can cause a fair bit of trouble," said AWS' chief architect in his day two keynote at the company's summit in Sydney. Where the toddler analogy falls short, however, is that a parent can make a reasonable guess as to, say, what led to their child drawing all over the walls, and ask them why.

Advances in artificial intelligence mean applications increasingly can take on image recognition capabilities that allow them to identify objects, detect the age of human faces and screen out adult content. The Department of Homeland Security has worked for several years to implement a biometric monitoring system to verify travelers in U.S. airports, and they recently found success with a Customs and Border Protection pilot. The system uses facial recognition software to compare photos of passengers against a database, allowing DHS officials to identify travelers who have overstayed visas or are wanted in criminal investigations. These developments underscore the need for the government to remain abreast of ways to manage complex technology and maintain standards of living. Image recognition software has real-world implications for local governments and can help officials efficiently integrate and manage assets.

The buzz of a motor overhead at nearly 11:30 p.m. was the tip-off. A remote control-operated drone flew over the border fence from Mexico, heading for San Ysidro while a Border Patrol agent listened and watched. He radioed ahead to other agents to be on the lookout for the small aircraft. Ten minutes later, federal authorities had what they say is their first confirmed San Diego case of drug smuggling by drone. Late on the night of Aug. 8, agents arrested a man carrying a bag full of heroin -- more than 13 pounds valued at an estimated $46,000.

What machine learning and AI, in general, excel at (unlike human beings) is analysing millions of data points in real time to identify trends and, based on that, offering up "if this, then that" type conclusions. The inherent problem with that is it carries with it a self-reinforcing bias, because it assumes that what happened in the past will be repeated. Let's take the example of crime data. Black and minority neighborhoods with lower incomes are far more likely to be blighted with crime and anti-social behaviour than prosperous white ones. If you then use algorithms to shape laws, what will inevitably happen is that such neighbourhoods will be singled out for intensive police patrols, thereby increasing the odds of stand-offs and arrests.

Andrew Ng, one of the founders of Coursera, has set out to raise a $150 million fund – dubbed AI Fund – in order to invest in artificial intelligence startups. The news comes just a few months after he announced his own startup, deeplearning.ai. The fund's existence was revealed because of a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The document filed with the SEC was filed under Andrew Ng's name on 14 August. At the end of June, we reported that Ng had left the Chinese company, Baidu, where he was in charge of the AI team to form his new startup, deeplearning.ai.

SAN DIEGO – A 25-year-old U.S. citizen has been charged with using a drone to smuggle more than 13 pounds of methamphetamine from Mexico, an unusually large seizure for what is still a novel technique for bringing illegal drugs into the United States, authorities said Friday. Jorge Edwin Rivera told authorities that he used drones to smuggle drugs five or six times since March, typically delivering them to an accomplice at a nearby gas station in San Diego, according to a statement of probable cause. He said he was to be paid $1,000 for the attempt that ended in his arrest. Border Patrol agents in San Diego allegedly saw the drone in flight on Aug. 8 and tracked it to Rivera about 2,000 yards from the Mexico border. Authorities say agents found Rivera with the methamphetamine in a lunch box and a 2-foot drone hidden in a nearby bush.

We stand at the threshold of an era of pervasive artificial intelligence (AI) in financial services. While it's tempting to say, "Again?" -- this time really is different. Because AI/machine intelligence will be rapidly deployed across financial institutions. And though this evolution is inevitable, we need to be mindful about the ethics of the undertaking. As an industry, we must work together to ensure careful and thoughtful AI integration.

From his perch as editor in chief, he watched as the nascent internet took off, fulfilling his prediction that the world was about to be swept by a digital "Bengali typhoon." Among other things, that epochal storm spawned a dotcom wave that was cresting in 1998. Now, two decades later, Rossetto has written a novel that captures the optimism, greed, fervor, and madness of that era. Set in a fictional San Francisco, Change Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet, follows the intertwined adventures of a startup CEO, a WIRED reporter, a code-writing true believer, and many more instantly iconic characters ripped from the mists of the first dotcom boom. What follows is a chapter from Rossetto's novel, which takes place during a wild party thrown by the fictional WIRED magazine. Carl Hess stands in the line flowing into a looming warehouse off Third Street in the Mission Bay wasteland that was once the old Union Pacific yards.

AI will rise up and kill us all. Didn't Facebook have to shut down their latest monstrous experiment because it went rogue and developed its own secret language? For all we know, Skynet's factories are cranking out an army of Terminators already! The only problem is, it's all nonsense. It's an "existential threat worse than North Korea," he warns. Last I checked they have nukes and a little madman in power and super-AI is still confined to the pages of cyberpunk novels, so I'm not buying it. Look, the guy is a lot smarter than me and I think his batteries, cars and solar roof tiles will change the world but he's spent a little too much time watching 2001: A Space Odyssey.