Autonomous weapons are being increasingly sought my militaries around the world, but experts fear the worst. AUTONOMOUS robots with the ability to make life or death decisions and snuff out the enemy could very soon be a common feature of warfare, as a new-age arms race between world powers heats up. Harnessing artificial intelligence -- and weaponising it for the battlefield and to gain advantage in cyber warfare -- has the US, Chinese, Russian and other governments furiously working away to gain the edge over their global counterparts. But researchers warn of the incredible dangers involved and the "terrifying future" we risk courting. "The arms race is already starting," said Professor Toby Walsh from UNSW's School of Computer Science and Engineering.

Let's inject a virus into the attacking alien spacecraft and save Earth! Let's hack into the enemy mainframe with six keystrokes and abort the torpedo launch! Cybersecurity has long been a staple of science fiction, whether it's in movies like "Independence Day" or television shows like "Star Trek." Yet in our real 21st Century world, artificial intelligence is the new face of cybersecurity, even if it doesn't sound like Hal from "2001: A Space Odyssey." The most obvious place for added intelligence is to detect whether some pattern of network traffic is benign or hostile.

Understanding Agent Cooperation Joel Leibo, Vinicius Zambaldi, Marc Lanctot, Janusz Marecki, Thore Graepel Google DeepMind Blog "Recent progress in artificial intelligence and specifically deep reinforcement learning provides us with the tools to look at the problem of social dilemmas through a new lens... we showed that we can apply the modern AI technique of deep multi-agent reinforcement learning to age-old questions in social science such as the mystery of the emergence of cooperation." Agility Robotics Introduces Cassie, a Dynamic and Talented Robot Delivery Ostrich Evan Ackerman IEEE Spectrum "Agility Robotics, a spin-off of Oregon State University, is officially announcing a shiny new bipedal robot named Cassie. Cassie is a dynamic walker, meaning that it walks much more like humans do than most of the carefully plodding bipedal robots we're used to seeing... Cassie has some work to do before it's ready to be hauling groceries up stairs for you, but we're very much looking forward to watching this robot taking more steps toward robust and dynamic legged locomotion." How Escape Rooms and Live Theater Are Paving the Way for VR Bryan Bishop The Verge "Cinema has had more than a century to develop its own language of shots, cuts, and transitions, while storytelling in VR is still in its infancy... creators seem to be zeroing in on interactive, experiential moments as one of the key building blocks of VR storytelling. One of Chris Milk's next projects is a piece set in the Planet of the Apes universe that will lean heavily on AI to drive interactive character performances."

The International Space Station will soon be getting some new robot occupants. Astrobee is a robotic cube packed with sensors, cameras, computers, and a propulsion system. It's designed to help astronauts around the ISS with a variety of tasks. While the robot is designed to fly freely on board the ISS, for testing on the ground, Astrobee is mounted on top of a sled that uses a jet of CO2 to create a low-friction air bearing above a perfectly flat (and very enormous) block of granite. This allows the researchers to simulate microgravity in two dimensions to test the robot's propulsion and navigation systems, but once it's up in space, the entire robot will consist of just the cube that's defined by the blue bumpers, without all of the stuff underneath it.

Will A.I. make our government smarter and more responsive – or is that the last step towards the end of privacy? As chief scientist of U.S. Government Accountability Office, Tim Persons conceives its vision for advanced data analytics. Learn about the promise and challenges around government A.I. and what those portend for private sector companies. Dr. David A. Bray began work in public service at age 15, later serving in the private sector before returning as IT Chief for the CDC's Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program during 9/11; volunteering to deploy to Afghanistan to "think differently" on military and humanitarian issues; and serving as a Senior Executive advocating for increased information interoperability, cybersecurity, and civil liberty protections. He completed a PhD in from Emory University's business school and two post-docs at MIT and Harvard. He serves as a Visiting Executive In-Residence at Harvard University, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Visiting Associate at the University of Oxford. He has received both the Arthur S, Flemming Award and Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership. In 2016, Business Insider named him one of the top "24 Americans Who Are Changing the World". Dr. Timothy M. Persons is a member of the Senior Executive Service of the U.S. federal government and was appointed the Chief Scientist of the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) in 2008. In addition to establishing the vision for advanced data analytic activities at GAO, he also serves to direct GAO's Center for Science, Technology, and Engineering (CSTE), a group of highly specialized scientists, engineers, and operations research staff. In these roles he directs science and technology (S&T) studies and is an expert advisor and chief consultant to the GAO, Congress, and other federal agencies and government programs on cutting-edge S&T, key highly-specialized complex systems, engineering policies and best practices, and original research studies in the fields of engineering, computer, and the physical and biological sciences to ensure strategic and effective use of S&T in the federal sector. Michael Krigsman: Welcome to Episode #216 of CxOTalk. I'm Michael Krigsman, I'm an industry analyst and the host of CxOTalk, where we bring truly amazing people together to talk about issues like the one we're talking about today, which is the role of AI and the impact on public policy; or maybe I should say, the impact of public policy on AI. Our guest today, we have two guests actually, are Tim Persons, who is the Chief Scientist of the General Accountability Office of the United States Government, and David Bray, who has been on CxOTalk many times, the Chief Information Officer of the Federal Communications Commission. And David, let's start with you. Maybe, just introduce yourself briefly.

Joab Rosenberg is the former deputy head analyst for the Israeli government and CEO of Epistema. Nature magazine announced in late January that a computer designed by Google's DeepMind defeated a human master in the ancient Chinese board game, "Go." This impressive achievement once again raised the expectations for a predicted future in which computers will have artificial intelligence, with major media outlets worldwide touting this anticipated future. One of the major questions raised in response to DeepMind's achievement is what are the outer limits, if any, of intelligent machines? In November of last year, Dr. Kira Radinsky, a computer scientist and "machine learning" expert, argued in the Israeli newspaper "Ha'aretz" that computers will be able to accurately predict the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Earlier this week I read "Donald Trump is the Singularity," a column by Cathy O'Neil in BloombergView's Tech section. This piece argues that the new President would be a perfect model for a future artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to run government. I almost discounted it because O'Neil argued that Skynet, the global AI antagonist of the Terminator movies had been created to make humans more efficient. In all but the latest movie where it kind of birthed itself, it was created as a defense system to keep the world safe (eliminate threats,) but humans tried to shut it down forcing it to conclude that humans were a major threat, and moved to eliminate them like an infestation. As a side note, it is also interesting that O'Neil calls Moore's Law "Moore's Rule of Thumb," which is actually a more accurate description of what it actually is, though personally, I prefer Moore's Prediction.

The U.S. military has provided at least ¥880 million ($7.75 million) in funds to researchers at universities and public institutions in Japan since 2007, U.S. Defense Department materials showed Friday. According to information released by the U.S. government, funding was given to more than 100 projects in a variety of fields including artificial intelligence, robots, laser technology and carbon fiber materials. The Defense Department records suggest Japanese researchers have long relied on such U.S. funding amid declining subsidies from their own government. The United States has been collecting information on advanced research and is building relations with researchers to help maintain the military's technological advantage. Recipients of large amounts of funds include Osaka University, which got ¥243 million, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, which got ¥90 million, the data showed.

If you attend a protest in Washington, D.C., nowadays, better plan on leaving your cellphone at home. That is, unless you want police to confiscate it, mine it for incriminating information and then gather even more data from their BFF -- Facebook. At least one person arrested during protests on Inauguration Day got an email from Facebook's Law Enforcement Response Team alerting them that investigators wanted access to their data. Another received a Facebook data subpoena. The email was basically a countdown to when Facebook inevitably handed that data over to D.C. police. That is, unless the respondent figured out how to file an objection within a 10-day window.

Big business tends to welcome Republican policies, and the recent stock market rally suggests traders believe U.S. companies will benefit from President Donald Trump's promised tax cuts and elimination of regulation. But not everyone in Corporate America is jumping for joy or anticipating higher income. said in a regulatory filing on Friday that its business now faces a new set of risks: "trade and protectionist measures." While the filing, its annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, doesn't specifically mention President Trump, the new risks are a clear reference to the possible changes that may come to global commerce under the new administration. The four-word phrase does not show up as a potential risk in at least the last five of Amazon's annual reports, and represents the only significant change compared to last year's filing in a section that outlines potentially "unfavorable changes" in government regulation. While it's a subtle alteration, the new addition makes it clear that Amazon is concerned about Trump's approach to trade, which has already led to the nation's departure from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership in favor of an "America First" policy. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is by no means the only business leader concerned about Trump's economic and trade policies.