No one saw the crisis coming: a coordinated vandalistic effort to insert Squidward references into articles totally unrelated to Squidward. In 2006, Wikipedia was really starting to get going, and really couldn't afford to have any SpongeBob SquarePants-related high jinks sullying the site's growing reputation. Someone had to stop Squidward. The Wikipedia community knew it couldn't possibly mobilize human editors to face down the trolls--the onslaught was too great, the work too tedious. So instead an admin cobbled together a bot that automatically flagged errant insertions of the Cephalopod Who Shall Not Be Named.

It seemed like such a simple thing. Yet another company had suffered a data breach, leaking its customers' private information all over the interwebs. You've probably been subject to such a leak yourself. This one was a bit different because it involved robots. Okay, nothing so dramatic as clanking mechanical men, but "bots" in the sense of automated software agents that converse with actual humans.

After a year of delays, the UK government has finally shared its plans for a more prosperous digital Britain. Unveiled by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Digital Strategy report outlines steps to plug skills gaps and deliver free training to people who need it, pushing forward important UK technology sectors like AI and allowing UK companies to remain competitive as they come to terms with life after Brexit. One thing the report makes clear is that the government can't do it alone. It's enlisting the help of some of the UK's biggest employers and companies, which will offer four million free digital skills training "opportunities" to people who need them. Many are existing initiatives or have been expanded, but Google will offer five hours of free digital skills as part of its Garage initiative (unveiled late last year) and launch a summer programme in coastal towns, BT's Barefoot Computing Project will give teachers free extra computer science resources and O2 will continue to deliver online safety tips via its partnership with the NSPCC.

In Donald Trump's 2011 book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, the president-to-be made an astonishing claim: Lady Gaga likely owed her international fame to none other than...Donald Trump. "She became a big star and maybe she became a star because I put her on the Miss Universe pageant," he wrote. "It's very possible, who knows what would have happened without it, because she caused a sensation." The problem goes beyond Trump, of course. Women, especially women of color, are routinely denied credit for their ideas, creativity, genius, and success (not to mention they're paid less than men for full-time work).

Following on from the updated Industrial Strategy announced in January and plans to boost the growth and support of Britain's artificial intelligence (AI) sector, the UK government outlined a brand new digital strategy to combat growing skills gap fears across the country. A Digital Skills Partnership with government, businesses and charities will see the creation of more than four million free digital skills training opportunities in the UK and includes education commitments from the likes of Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays and Google. Speaking to Silicon, several tech industry professionals have offered their reactions to the news, providing an insight into what the industry is thinking. "The Government's Digital Strategy is an exciting and welcome prospect at a time when UK businesses are facing a significant threat from digital disruption. To gain a competitive advantage, businesses should consider how they can use new technologies like artificial intelligence, even at this relatively early stage," she said.

Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) and Japan Exchange Regulation (JPX-R) revealed that they have been reviewing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies developed by NEC Corporation and Hitachi to improve market intelligence operations. At present, surveillance systems identify orders that might have benefited from unfair trade practices, based on certain criteria. Surveillance personnel based on the trading situation of the orders then investigate the possibility of unfair practices – and determine if detailed investigations are warranted. When NEC's Rapid machine learning and Hitachi AI Technology/H were applied for preliminary investigations, the results were impressive: AI showed to be highly accurate at weeding out orders that might be tainted. Further, unlike the pre-set criteria used in existing systems, AI was able to learn on its own and improve its success rate.

Funding of £17.3m ($22m) for artificial intelligence and robotics research to be carried out by British universities is to be announced by the government. It is part of the government's digital strategy, to be published by Culture Secretary Karen Bradley on Wednesday. A report by Accenture released last year estimated that AI could contribute up to £654bn to the UK economy by 2035. But the government was criticised last year for its support of the UK tech scene. As part of the new digital strategy, computer scientist Prof Dame Wendy Hall and tech CEO Jerome Pesenti, former chief data scientist at IBM, have been asked to review the UK's artificial intelligence sector.

Get used to hearing a lot more about artificial intelligence. Even if you discount the utopian and dystopian hyperbole, the 21st century will broadly be defined not just by advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, computing and cognitive neuroscience, but how we manage them. For some, the question of whether or not the human race will live to see a 22nd century turns upon this latter consideration. While forecasting the imminence of an AI-centric future remains a matter of intense debate, we will need to come to terms with it. For now, there are many more questions than answers.

The UK government is due to publish its long awaited Digital Strategy later today, about a year later than originally slated. Existing delays having been compounded by the shock of Brexit. Drafts of the strategy framework seen by TechCrunch suggest its scope and ambition vis-a-vis digital technologies has been pared back and repositioned vs earlier formulations of the plan, dating from December 2015 and June 2016, as the government recalibrated to factor in last summer's referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union. Since the earlier drafts were penned there has also of course been a change of leadership (and direction) at the top of government. And Prime Minister Theresa May appointed a new cabinet, including digital minister, Matt Hancock, who replaced Ed Vaizey.

There has certainly been no lack of punditry and controversy in the US regarding the hacking of John Podesta's email account (along with the DNC email hack), with some claiming they were responsible for Mrs. Clinton's loss in the election. I will leave the impact of these claims to those who write and talk about politics. I don't discuss politics in a work setting, so will leave that aspect to them. What I would like to address is the security infrastructure versus security posture that made this hack possible. For the uninitiated, Mr. Podesta received a targeted phishing email directing him to reset his password.