Elon Musk's latest prediction about artificial intelligence isn't going to soothe your nerves. The entrepreneur, who's been known to speak in hyperbole from time to time (remember that his reasoning for getting to Mars is to save humanity), dreamed up another worst-case outcome for A.I.: causing World War III. Putin recently said that A.I. "is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind ... Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world." Musk tweeted cryptically, "It begins." Musk went on to say the war could be started by the A.I. itself, possibly by an A.I. system launching an automated preemptive strike against one of its challengers.

Top UK law firms are ahead of their US counterparts in the use of artificial intelligence (AI), an index of legal service delivery innovation has suggested. The Legal Services Innovation Index, based on internet searches of law firm websites for indications of innovation, was devised by the College of Law at Michigan State University in the US. Academics searched the websites of firms from the Am Law 200, Global 100, and the Canadian top 30, in August 2017. They looked for mentions of innovations in 10 categories, including data analytics, AI (including'machine learning'), blockchain (including'smart contracts'), and alternative fee arrangements. In the results, by jurisdiction UK law firm websites returned 2,068 page'hits' in total for the 10 search terms, compared to 672 for the US firms and 666 for Chinese firms.

Voters have a right to keep their political beliefs private. But according to some researchers, it won't be long before a computer program can accurately guess whether people are liberal or conservative in an instant. All that will be needed are photos of their faces. Michal Kosinski – the Stanford University professor who went viral last week for research suggesting that artificial intelligence (AI) can detect whether people are gay or straight based on photos – said sexual orientation was just one of many characteristics that algorithms would be able to predict through facial recognition. Using photos, AI will be able to identify people's political views, whether they have high IQs, whether they are predisposed to criminal behavior, whether they have specific personality traits and many other private, personal details that could carry huge social consequences, he said.

Premier Lin Chuan, who once served as chairman of Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS), and his Cabinet members will resign en masse on September 7, casting uncertainty over the future policies concerning Taiwan's development of AI (artificial intelligence), IoT (Internet of Things), innovation startups and other technologies. Lin has disclosed he tendered his resignation at the end of a national security meeting on September 3 on grounds that he had finished his phased missions. President Tsai Ing-wen has appointed Tainan Mayor William Lai as his succesor, who will take office on September 8. Having served as VIS chairman during 2006-2009, Lin has shown deep understanding of and given high priority to the development of Taiwan's semiconductor and electronics industries. The outgoing premier has identified AI as a key to improving national competitiveness in the next three decades, and has given great support for the Ministry of Science and Technology's (MOST) proposal to build an AI innovation ecosystem in Taiwan. He has instructed the ministry to set up an AI innovation R&D center, and establish robot manufacturing bases in Central Taiwan Science Park and Southern Taiwan Science Park, as well as other related infrastructures.

A significant literature studies ways of employing prior knowledge to improve power and precision of multiple testing procedures. Some common forms of prior knowledge may include (a) a priori beliefs about which hypotheses are null, modeled by non-uniform prior weights; (b) differing importances of hypotheses, modeled by differing penalties for false discoveries; (c) multiple arbitrary partitions of the hypotheses into known (possibly overlapping) groups, indicating (dis)similarity of hypotheses; and (d) knowledge of independence, positive or arbitrary dependence between hypotheses or groups, allowing for more aggressive or conservative procedures. We present a unified algorithmic framework called p-filter for global null testing and false discovery rate (FDR) control that allows the scientist to incorporate all four types of prior knowledge (a)-(d) simultaneously, recovering a wide variety of common algorithms as special cases.

This is the controversial AI computer program that researchers claim can determine if someone is gay or not just by looking at a photograph of their face. According to the Stanford University researchers who developed it, the artificial intelligence system can infer someone's sexuality with up to 91 percent accuracy by scanning a photograph of a man or woman. But critics have slammed the software, saying it could be used to'out' men and women currently in the closet. Software was used to make composite faces. On left are faces'least likely' to be homosexual, and center are faces'most likely' to be homosexual.

The chief executive of Deutsche Bank has issued a stark warning about the impact of technology, saying a "big number" of his staff will lose their jobs as robots take over. In remarks reported by German publication Handelsblatt at a conference in Frankfurt, Cryan added: "The sad truth for the banking industry is, we won't need as many people as today." Cryan told the conference that Germany and Frankfurt had to decide how much they wanted to benefit from Brexit. While new finance jobs will be created in Dublin, Amsterdam and Paris – all vying for business leaving London – none of these have the infrastructure to take on the business.

The chief executive of Deutsche Bank has issued a stark warning about the impact of technology, saying a "big number" of his staff will lose their jobs as robots take over. John Cryan told an audience in Frankfurt: "In our bank we have people doing work like robots. Tomorrow we will have robots behaving like people. It doesn't matter if we as a bank will participate in these changes or not, it is going to happen." He also referred to accountants inside the bank who "spend a lot of time basically being an abacus", who would also be replaced by machines.

Last year, two data scientists from security firm ZeroFOX conducted an experiment to see who was better at getting Twitter users to click on malicious links, humans or an artificial intelligence. The researchers taught an AI to study the behavior of social network users, and then design and implement its own phishing bait. In tests, the artificial hacker was substantially better than its human competitors, composing and distributing more phishing tweets than humans, and with a substantially better conversion rate. The AI, named SNAP_R, sent simulated spear-phishing tweets to over 800 users at a rate of 6.75 tweets per minute, luring 275 victims. By contrast, Forbes staff writer Thomas Fox-Brewster, who participated in the experiment, was only able to pump out 1.075 tweets a minute, making just 129 attempts and luring in just 49 users.

Your public school education exists, in large part, thanks to the Second Industrial Revolution. When the revolution took hold of America in the 1870s, 30 years after the end of the first, half of the US population still spent their days toiling in fields. Education was typically voluntary, assuming the family was wealthy enough to afford tutors or school fees, and usually reserved for boys. With the development of commercial fertilizer and the internal combustion engine, productivity exploded while the number of farmers dropped to less than two percent of the population. It lessened the demand for child labor which in turn led to increased support for compulsory education for both sexes.