A few weeks ago the new U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took some public flak for suggesting, in response to an interviewer's question, that he was "not worried at all" that artificial intelligence would threaten the jobs of human workers, because in his view it is "50 or 100 years away." It's not clear why Mnuchin would say that, but with respect, I have to correct him. The original question to Mnuchin was rooted in popular worries that AI will eliminate jobs in the near future. However there's growing evidence that as companies embrace AI to stay competitive, which they will, in the end these changes will create more jobs than they destroy. Earlier this year, ServiceNow commissioned a survey of senior executives at 1,874 companies of varying sizes across numerous industries in seven global markets.

One persistent criticism of Silicon Valley is that it no longer works on big, world-changing ideas. Every few months, a dumb start-up will make the news -- most recently the one selling a $700 juicer -- and folks outside the tech industry will begin singing I-told-you-sos. But don't be fooled by expensive juice. The idea that Silicon Valley no longer funds big things isn't just wrong, but also obtuse and fairly dangerous. Look at the cars, the rockets, the internet-beaming balloons and gliders, the voice assistants, drones, augmented and virtual reality devices, and every permutation of artificial intelligence you've ever encountered in sci-fi.

Is it possible that someday we will elect an AI president? Given some of the recent occupants of the White House, many might consider it an upgrade. After all, humans are prone to making decisions based on ego, anger, and the need for self-aggrandizement, not the common good. An artificially intelligent president could be trained to maximize happiness for the most people without infringing on civil liberties. It might even learn that it's a good idea to tweet less--or not at all.

The car's underlying AI technology, known as deep learning, has proved very powerful at solving problems in recent years, and it has been widely deployed for tasks like image captioning, voice recognition, and language translation. The resulting program, which the researchers named Deep Patient, was trained using data from about 700,000 individuals, and when tested on new records, it proved incredibly good at predicting disease. But it was not until the start of this decade, after several clever tweaks and refinements, that very large--or "deep"--neural networks demonstrated dramatic improvements in automated perception. Deep learning has transformed computer vision and dramatically improved machine translation.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan on Thursday lodged a protest with China after four Chinese coastguard vessels entered what Tokyo considers its territorial waters near disputed East China Sea islets and a drone-like object flew near one ship, the Japanese government said.

Without noticing it, artificial intelligence (AI) already fits in many forms into our daily lives and supports our decision-making. At times, it's discussed a bit like blockchain, which we're being promised will solve things like world hunger and human trafficking. However, artificial intelligence is already prevalent practically everywhere in technology, from cars to Google searches and as this technology is specifically designed for singular tasks, we humans cannot compete with that level of insistent focus. This relates specifically to what is called Artificial Narrow Intelligence or ANI designed to perform one sole task meticulously. The two next levels of AI development, specifically Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) are still out of our reach, for now.

Is it possible that someday we will elect an AI president? Given some of the recent occupants of the White House, many might consider it an upgrade. After all, humans are prone to making decisions based on ego, anger, and the need for self-aggrandizement, not the common good. An artificially intelligent president could be trained to maximize happiness for the most people without infringing on civil liberties. It might even learn that it's a good idea to tweet less--or not at all.

In my previous blog on artificial intelligence (AI), I dealt with the general characteristics of AI and machine learning. Thanks to complex virtual learning techniques, machines are now able to perform a wide range of physical and cognitive tasks. And the efficiency and accuracy of their work is expected to increase as AI systems advance through machine learning, big data and increased computational power. The benefits are clear, but there are also concerns for the future of human work and employment. If indeed machines continue to improve their performance beyond human levels, a natural question to ask is whether machines will put humans' jobs at risk and reduce employment.

The UK's National Data Guardian (NDG) has criticised the National Health Service (NHS) for its partnership with Google's artificial intelligence company DeepMind. According to a letter published by Sky News yesterday, Google DeepMind has received personal health data from 1.6 million NHS patients on a legally inappropriate basis. An investigation is currently being carried out by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), with the ICO telling Sky News that it is "close to conclusion." The letter from Dame Fiona Caldicott of the NDG was sent to NHS Royal Free Trust medical director Stephen Powis on February 20th. DeepMind was given access to NHS records in 2015 to test a smartphone app called Streams on the legal basis that it was offering "direct care."