The Cambridge Centre for Risk Studies in collaboration with the United Nations programme on Journalism and Public Information (UNICRI) present a workshop on the Risks and Benefits of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. From sensing, finance, medicine, transportation and security, a technological revolution is taking place. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a feature of science fiction for almost a century, but it is only in more recent years that the prospect of autonomous robotics and artificially intelligent systems has really become viable. While this will potentially provide great opportunities, these developments are likely to have significant impacts upon the very functioning of society, posing practical, ethical, legal and security challenges – much of which is as of yet not fully appreciated or understood. The media and other sources of public information are central in ensuring that citizens and institutions have a realistic and balanced understanding of such technologies.

The year 2016 was supposed to be when the tech bubble finally burst. Instead the world blew up. Amid Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the increasingly catastrophic consequences of climate change, the dominance of a handful of technology companies over society became increasingly obvious – from Facebook's troubling impact on democracy to Elon Musk's plan to colonize a new planet before we destroy this one. Still, if there's one thing we can learn from this year in technology, it's that no matter how bad things get, someone in Silicon Valley will make money off it. The social network continued its relentless campaign to swallow the internet whole, racking up almost $6bn in profit in the first three quarters of the year and soaring to 1.79 billion monthly active users.

Beijing has returned a U.S. underwater drone seized last week in the South China Sea by a Chinese Navy vessel after "friendly" talks between the two countries, China's Defense Ministry said in a short statement posted to its website Tuesday. "After friendly consultations between the Chinese and U.S. sides, the handover work for the U.S. underwater drone was smoothly completed in relevant waters in the South China Sea at midday on Dec. 20," the statement said. The Pentagon confirmed the handover, but criticized the Chinese Navy over the move. "The incident was inconsistent with both international law and standards of professionalism for conduct between navies at sea," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement. "The U.S. has addressed those facts with the Chinese through appropriate military channels, and have called on Chinese authorities to comply with their obligations under international law."

Since cyberattacks on hospital EHR systems have become a topic of nightly newscasts, no longer is anyone shocked by their scope and veracity. What is shocking is the financial damage the attacks are predicted to cause. During this past June, more than 11 million patient EHRs were breached, making it the year's worst incident according to a study by DataBreaches.net For comparison, May had less than 700,000 records breached, and records breached in March topped out at slightly more than 2.5 million. While traditional security filters like firewalls and reputation lists are good practice, they are no longer enough.

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon says China has returned the unmanned underwater drone the Chinese Navy seized last week. In a statement issued late Monday, Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook says the Chinese Navy vessel that had seized the drone returned it near the location where it had been taken. The incident occurred in the South China Sea near the Philippines. Cook says the U.S. will continue to investigate the incident. Earlier Monday he had said U.S. and Chinese officials, including military leaders, were working out logistical details for the return.

The Reinventing Energy Summit, hosted by New Scientist and Re.Work, occurred on November 25th in London, UK. Good Faith Energy president and founder, Mohammed Abdalla, was in attendance at the conference to gain insights on the future of renewable energy and new technologies. The event's goal was to together energy thought-leaders, policy experts, innovative startups, utility companies, and world-class academics, to explore the advancement of technologies impacting renewable energy. A record £15.2bn was invested in UK clean energy in 2015. Favorable incentives and subsidies have led to this enormous growth.

Facebook Inc is working on automatically flagging offensive material in live video streams, building on a growing effort to use artificial intelligence to monitor content, said Joaquin Candela, the company's director of applied machine learning. The social media company has been embroiled in a number of content moderation controversies this year, from facing international outcry after removing an iconic Vietnam War photo due to nudity, to allowing the spread of fake news on its site. Facebook has historically relied mostly on users to report offensive posts, which are then checked by Facebook employees against company "community standards." Decisions on especially thorny content issues that might require policy changes are made by top executives at the company. Candela told reporters that Facebook increasingly was using artificial intelligence to find offensive material.

Since the earliest days of the Internet, most government agencies have eagerly explored how to use technology to better deliver services to citizens, businesses and other public-sector organizations. Early on, observers recognized that these efforts often varied widely in their implementation, and so researchers developed various frameworks to describe the different stages of growth and development of e-government. While each model is different, they all identify the same general progression from the informational, for example websites that make government facts available online, to the interactive, such as two-way communication between government officials and users, to the transactional, like applications that allow users to access government services completely online. However, we will soon see a new stage of e-government: the perceptive. The defining feature of the perceptive stage will be that the work involved in interacting with government will be significantly reduced and automated for all parties involved.

Montreal is one of the pioneers in Deep Learning thanks to the work of computer and cognitive scientists like Yoshua Bengio from Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, which is hosted at Université de Montréal. They're spearheading research on neural networks, amongst other things, which is highly effective in recognizing complex patterns like vision and speech. Founded by Jean-François Gagné and Yoshua Bengio, Element AI is an amazing A.I. incubation initiative that brings research and business together to create the most cutting edge services to disrupt industries. They are shortening the time it takes for new technologies and research to be integrated with great products and companies. This lab is pioneering in some amazing research on deep learning and the next generation of A.I. technology. Ivado is the multidisciplinary hub for a massive network of scientists researching statistics, business intelligence, deep learning, applied mathematics, data-mining and cybersecurity.

Is Cybersecurity the Next Frontier for AI? Nextgov: President-elect Donald Trump's plans for federal cybersecurity aren't clear, but some contractors are gearing up for a spike in business over the next few years. One company that builds an artificial intelligence-based forecasting product called Eureqa for federal customers, including the Air Force, is segueing into the cybersecurity market. Nextgov spoke with Michael Schmidt, founder of Nutonian, which is currently piloting Eureqa at a few federal agencies, and David Rubal, chief technology officer of analytics at re-seller DLT Solutions, about trends in federal demand for artificial intelligence. Analyst: Trump administration could enrich contractors, not customer experience Obama Confronts Complexity of Using a Mighty Cyberarsenal Against Russia Analyst: Trump administration could enrich contractors, not customer experience Senators call for probe of cyber attacks by Russia Here's some questions Congress should ask about the election-related hacks Last chance to give feedback on health IT offerings for GSA/DHA eTool Earnest: Intelligence Conclusions on Election Hacking Not Political Report: What Trump Needs to Do About Connected Devices Rick Perry, climate change skeptic, soon to oversee U.S. supercomputing The FCC could soon be paralyzed in a partisan stalemate Chief Innovation Officers: An Unclear Role in the Federal Government Government orgs plagued by botnet compromises, says security report Senate Republican leader backs investigation into Russian hacking US, China hold third dialogue on jointly battling cybercrime Here's some questions Congress should ask about the election-related hacks Rick Perry, climate change skeptic, soon to oversee U.S. supercomputing