Despite their increasingly sophisticated decision-making abilities, AI systems still need human inputs. In 1983, during a period of high Cold War tensions, Soviet information systems abruptly sounded an alert that warned of five incoming nuclear missiles from the United States. A lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defense Forces, Stanislav Petrov, faced a difficult decision: Should he authorize a retaliatory attack? Fortunately, Petrov chose to question the system's recommendation. Instead of approving the retaliation, he decided that a real attack was unlikely based on several outside factors -- one of which was the small number of "missiles" reported by the system -- and moreover, even if it was real, he didn't want to be the one to complete the destruction of the planet.

Lobbyists for Google and Amazon today appeared in Washington to caution lawmakers against legislation, taxation, or regulation that could hamper the develop of AI in America. The concern over AI has been largely fueled by speculation. When Elon Musk expressed his concerns that AI would be the most likely cause of World War III, he was predicting a dark turn. Facebook and Google have been called to task over algorithms in the wake of election tampering and concerns about fake news. The algorithm – a set of instructions for a computer that tells it how to interpret data and make decisions – has taken a beating in the media lately.

Michel Fornasier, one of the presenters of the Cybathlon, uses his bionic hand prosthesis to demonstrate one of the Cybathlon disciplines. In the movie Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker is given a mechanical hand that moves and perform functions as well as his real hand. Konrad Kording, an avid Star Wars fan, has no doubt that advances in brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) will make this bit of science fiction a reality; he just doesn't know when. "We have applications for one channel and a few channels," says Kording, a neuroscientist and professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Physiology, and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. "The question is, what are the BMI applications with hundreds of thousands of channels, and no one knows that at the moment." The channels he's referring to are electrical wires or optical connectors that can be attached to the brain and can be controlled and measured.

Following the wave of U.K. terror attacks in the spring of 2017, prime minister Theresa May called on technology companies like Facebook and YouTube to create better tools for screening out controversial content--especially digital video--that directly promotes terrorism. Meanwhile, in the U.S., major advertisers including AT&T, Verizon, and WalMart have pulled ad campaigns from YouTube after discovering their content had been appearing in proximity to videos espousing terrorism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate speech. In response to these controversies, Google expanded its advertising rules to take a more aggressive stance against hate speech, and released a suite of tools allowing advertisers to block their ads from appearing on certain sites. The company also deployed new teams of human monitors to review videos for objectionable content. In a similar vein, Facebook announced that it would add 3,000 new employees to screen videos for inappropriate content.

Laurel D. Riek (lriek@ucsd.edu) is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego. She directs the Healthcare Robotics lab and builds autonomous robots that can sense, understand, and learn from real people in the real world.

Diversity was a central theme in the ACM SIGIR 2017 held in Shinjuku Ward in Tokyo, Japan. Fuji, a view of Shinjuku sky-scrapers, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (Office), as seen from Keio Plaza the conference hotel, and fireworks celebrating the 40th anniversary. The colorfulness of the fireworks and the circles within and enclosing the logo represent diversity and inclusion." SIGIR 2017 featured a session on Women in IR (Information Retrieval) organized by Laura Dietz of the University of New Hampshire on the first day, just before the welcome party. A week before the conference, I received an email from the secretary of the session, Maram Hasanain, a graduate student in computer science (CS) at Qatar University, asking if I would like to prepare a one-minute introduction of myself for the session. I was so overwhelmed by her beautifully written e-mail, and the excitement of a first-time contact with someone from Qatar, that I immediately accepted her invitation.

Lockheed Martin's interest in a San Diego start-up shows how big aerospace companies are pushing the drone revolution out to sea. Lockheed Martin Ventures last month invested an undisclosed amount in San Diego-based Ocean Aero -- a 25-employee start-up that is developing the Submaran, a solar- and wind-powered ocean drone capable of operating above and below the surface. "The ability to be environmentally powered allows us to maneuver at great persistence because it's renewable," said Eric Patten, chief executive of Ocean Aero and a former Navy officer. "And then to be able to transition that vehicle from the surface to a sub-surface vehicle that has significant capability under water, that is truly unique." Lockheed Martin Venture typically invests $1 million to $5 million in young companies.

Consider the job of an intelligence analyst--someone who has to sift through vast amounts of information and figure out the bigger narrative. The raw data this hypothetical analyst looks at could be anything from a report on the ground, to government statements, to items in the local media. The analyst's job--looking at data, synthesizing it in a report--is rich territory for artificial intelligence to help out, according to a new company called Primer. Primer has developed an AI system that's in part intended to augment the job of an intelligence analyst at a spy agency. Intelligence isn't the only field they're working in--their partners include Walmart and a sovereign wealth fund in Singapore--but it's perhaps the most intriguing.

Analysts fear criminal groups will use explosive devices attached to drones to attack the U.S. (Reuters) Mexican police reportedly pulled over four men driving a stolen pick-up truck and discovered a drone carrying an explosive device in the vehicle, leading some analysts to fear drug cartels may have figured out how to arm the devices to attack opponents -- including those inside the United States. Federal police discovered the drone attached to the IED last week during a traffic stop in Guanajunto, where several cartels are known to operate, including the Sinaloa Cartel, Small Wars Journal reported. Besides the drone, police found phones, an AK-47 and ammunition. An improvised explosive device was taped to the drone, 3Dr Solo Quadcopter, that could reportedly be detonated with a remote control. It was not clear if the four men were a part of any criminal group.

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