Provided by The Next Web China this week announced an AI-powered unmanned police station will open in one of its capitol cities, proving once again that no other country quite embraces artificial intelligence like it does. The station appears to be designed with driver and vehicle related matters in mind, making it more like a Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) than a cop shop. It will provide driver's examinations via simulator, registration services, and feature advanced face-scanning technology developed by Tencent, according to a report from Chinese financial paper Caijing Neican. Setting aside the myriad of law enforcement related implications, there's still plenty to unpack concerning the idea of unmanned government buildings. This station will be open to the public 24/7, and since citizens will presumably be dealing with dedicated hardware there should be far less points of failure than web-based solutions tend to have.

Police in the US state of Delaware are poised to deploy "smart" cameras in cruisers to help authorities detect a vehicle carrying a fugitive, missing child or straying senior. The video feeds will be analyzed using artificial intelligence to identify vehicles by license plate or other features and "give an extra set of eyes" to officers on patrol, says David Hinojosa of Coban Technologies, the company providing the equipment. "We are helping officers keep their focus on their jobs," said Hinojosa, who touts the new technology as a "dashcam on steroids." The program is part of a growing trend to use vision-based AI to thwart crime and improve public safety, a trend which has stirred concerns among privacy and civil liberties activists who fear the technology could lead to secret "profiling" and misuse of data. US-based startup Deep Science is using the same technology to help retail stores detect in real time if an armed robbery is in progress, by identifying guns or masked assailants.

In 1983, a curious teenager named David Lightman found a backdoor in a military computer system and very nearly caused the United States to start a nuclear war. If this sounds familiar, it isn't because it happened in real life. This was the plot of a movie called War Games, and it very realistically portrayed some common hacking techniques of the day like war dialing and phone phreaking. What was most surprising about this movie was that, unlike some science fiction movies, the problems it described were real and needed immediate solutions. But it would take five years for the first theoretical paper to be published on a term that would be eventually become well-known outside of the cybersecurity community: the firewall.

By definition, museums store and display objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural significance. Want to see dinosaur skeletons, medical oddities, Civil War weapons, or Renoir masterpieces? But without relatability and modern storytelling, even the most captivating exhibits can be, well, a bit stuffy and boring. Especially for young people who are used to rich, complex multimedia experiences. If museums want to remain engaging and relevant in changing times, it makes sense that they would adopt new technology trends to elevate their purpose. According to the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), artificial intelligence is one of the biggest trends in the field to watch.

Healthcare and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are each very much in the news right now. The United States Senate has released draft legislation for the repeal the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"), leaving some Americans with trepidation about their coverage. Meanwhile, the phrases "machine learning" (ML) and "artificial intelligence" can inspire concerns of their own. What if there were a way to combine healthcare coverage with machine learning to try and make delivery of services not just more efficient (which many worry can be code for "less generous") but more proactive as well? Could this cut costs and enhance care?

JERUSALEM – The Israeli military says it has shot down an unmanned aircraft that attempted to infiltrate Israeli airspace from neighboring Syria. In a statement, the military said it intercepted the drone Saturday above the Golan Heights using a Patriot missile. It was not immediately clear if the drone had reached the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan when it was shot down. It also was not known who was operating the drone. In September, Israel also shot down an Iranian-made drone sent by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the same area. Both Iranian and Hezbollah forces have been backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war.

Fingerspitzengefühl: A German word used to describe the ability to maintain attention to detail in an ever-changing operational and tactical environment by maintaining real-time situational awareness. The term is synonymous with the English expression of "keeping one's finger on the pulse". The problem with fingerspitzengefühl traditionally, in addition to pronouncing it, has been it is hard for an individual to scale up. In a world of sensors, AI and mobile devices, having real-time situational awareness is far easier than ever before. In fact, today the challenge is not how to do it, but what to do with the massive volume of data that can be provided.

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. We're already seeing small crumbs of evidence that they understand how AI can make public services more efficient and citizen-friendly. But these are very early days in discussing and figuring out how such technology could help us enforce laws, organize labor and welfare, and so on, in ways most people would be comfortable with. What's more likely – dare I say, inevitable – is that governments will find ways to take advantage of AI in smaller increments, and this will eventually compound to form a political system in which machines are doing most of the'thinking' work.

In September, Israel also shot down an Iranian-made drone sent by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the same area. Both Iranian and Hezbollah forces have been backing Syrian President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war.

The United States military said Saturday it has carried out a new drone strike against the Shabab extremist group in Somalia, killing "several" militants. A statement by the U.S. Africa Command said the strike was carried out Friday night in Lower Shabelle region, about 20 miles north of the capital, Mogadishu. It came a day after another strike in the Bay Region, about 100 miles west of Mogadishu. Friday's airstrike was the 23rd the U.S. military has carried out this year against the Al Qaeda-linked Shabab and the far smaller Islamic State group in Somalia. The Trump administration earlier this year approved expanded military operations against extremists in the Horn of Africa nation. The latest U.S. drone strike was carried out in coordination with Somalia's government, the U.S. statement said.