While Republican Donald Trump was tweeting insults at Democrat Hillary Clinton on Tuesday morning, Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Bill Weld launched an old-school attack: He read from a book. Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Weld quoted the dystopian novel "1984" -- and linked it to the GOP presidential nominee. Weld, the former Massachusetts governor running alongside Gary Johnson, told the hosts he wanted to read three sentences from the book, which came out in 1949 and tells the story of a society watched by the political leader Big Brother. "So, you know, Big Brother is running the country in George Orwell's '1984,' and every day he beams two minutes of hate into the minds of everyone in the country. So here's three sentences," Weld said Tuesday.

As technologist Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab and a board member at the The New York Times and at Sony, recently predicted, "This is the year artificial intelligence becomes more than just a computer science problem." This week, the White House issued a formal position paper with 23 recommendations on artificial intelligence. Let me cut to the chase: they don't think superhuman A.I. is imminent. While you're relaxing in the good news, take in the pleasant surprise that the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which advises the President in policy and budget development, coordinated efforts to deliver this cohesive position paper. The outcome is a chunky, committee-clarified read, but for all that, it cuts to the chase on big issues in nontechnical language.

It was Halloween 1936 when seven young men convened in the San Gabriel Mountains to turn the idea of a working rocket from fantasy to reality. That effort helped usher in the Space Age and marked the founding of one of the world's leading centers for robotic exploration of the solar system, NASA's famed Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Caltech-managed exploration hub in La Cañada Flintridge. Monday was the 80th anniversary of that first exhilarating trek into the nearby foothills to light a liquid rocket engine. It was much like any other workday at JPL-- the sprawling campus leans casual, with scientists dressed in jeans and running sneakers or Halloween costumes ranging from a pirate to "Star Trek's" Captain Kirk-- but on this day many also remembered highlights from the past. The laboratory has seen major successes, including the first orbiting spacecraft in 1968, the successful launches of Voyager I and II in 1977 and the landing of the Mars rover Pathfinder in 1997.

It's at the peak of the famous technology hype cycle, but don't let that make you cynical. Artificial intelligence is already making a difference in public service delivery. And unlike other technologies – it's designed to be a quick learner, so it doesn't rely on humans to figure everything out. The tool has potential in a huge number of areas, and will change how many of us live and work. Here are five ways that public servants can already use AI to make a difference.

How to get people interested in art? How to expose permanent-collection works that sit in storage? These are questions art museums constantly ponder. Recently, Tate Britain asked another one: How can artificial intelligence help? It put the question to anyone who wanted to compete for the 2016 IK Prize, which promotes the use of digital technology in the exploration of art at Tate Britain or on the Tate website.

No, this is not science fiction. NASA's new'intruder alert' system, Scout, aims to identify asteroids heading towards Earth. A new NASA early warning "intruder alert" system should ease your fears. NASA's Scout computer program -- constantly fed by data from telescopes around the world -- watches out for potentially dangerous space rocks such as asteroids and comets, giving us early tip-off if one appears to be coming nearby. One rock was spotted just last week, which whizzed by Earth on Sunday night at a comfortable distance of 310,000 miles, according to NASA. This five-day warning may not sound all that impressive, but it's more than we used to have.

Legislators have approved a bill that would block all porn in Israel unless people ask to view it. The Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislation unanimously approved the bill, which forces internet companies in the country censor adult websites by default. Backers of the new legislation claim that it is a way of stopping young people getting online. Under the terms of the bill, anyone wanting to access pornography online would have to tell their internet service provider, either by writing to them, ringing them or getting in touch their website. An employee shows a Samsung Electronics' Gear S3 Classic during Korea Electronics Show 2016 in Seoul, South Korea Visitors experience Samsung Electronics' Gear VR during the Korea Electronics Grand Fair at an exhibition hall in Seoul, South Korea Amy Rimmer, Research Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, demonstrates the car manufacturer's Advanced Highway Assist in a Range Rover, which drives the vehicle, overtakes and can detect vehicles in the blind spot, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire Chris Burbridge, Autonomous Driving Software Engineer for Tata Motors European Technical Centre, demonstrates the car manufacturer's GLOSA V2X functionality, which is connected to the traffic lights and shares information with the driver, during the first demonstrations of the UK Autodrive Project at HORIBA MIRA Proving Ground in Nuneaton, Warwickshire In its facilities, JAXA develop satellites and analyse their observation data, train astronauts for utilization in the Japanese Experiment Module'Kibo' of the International Space Station (ISS) and develop launch vehicles The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to the music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight.

People listen to the radio as the results of the presidential elections are announced in Kireka, Uganda, in February. Many rural Ugandans don't have Internet access, and the radio is a central source of news -- and platform for citizens' opinions. People listen to the radio as the results of the presidential elections are announced in Kireka, Uganda, in February. Many rural Ugandans don't have Internet access, and the radio is a central source of news -- and platform for citizens' opinions. Its omnipresence can make it easy to forget that making this technology has been really, really hard.

GPU's Role in Artificial Intelligence Advances Featured at Conference By Wayne Rash Posted 2016-10-26 Print NEWS ANALYSIS: The confluence of big data, massively powerful computing resources and advanced algorithms is bringing new artificial intelligence capabilities to scientific research. WASHINGTON, D.C.--Massively parallel supercomputing hardware and advanced artificial intelligence algorithms are being harnessed to deliver powerful new research tools in science and medicine, according to Dr. France A. Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation. Córdova spoke Oct. 26 at the GPU Technology Conference organized by Nvidia, a company that got its start making video cards for PCs and gaming systems and now manufactures advanced graphics processors for high-performance servers and supercomputers. Córdova, who is directing long-term research in AI at the NSF, said the research there is being used already in the Cancer Moonshot project currently spearheaded by Vice President Joe Biden, whose son Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46. The Cancer Moonshot is a major effort to focus resources and funding on the fight to cure cancer on a scale similar to the original mission by NASA to land on the moon.

Fueled by the exponential growth in mobile messaging, chatbots -- interactive messaging bots that harness recent advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning -- are the hottest new technology going right now. Facebook opened up its Messenger platform to bot developers earlier this year; messaging app Telegram is offering developers up to $1 million in prizes to develop bots that are fast, useful, and work in inline mode; and over 20 million people chat with the Xiaoice bot on the Chinese micro-blogging service Weibo. Even the White House has gotten into the act with its Obama Facebook chatbot. Chatbot technology is still in its infancy, but it's quickly being embraced by businesses because of its vast potential for sales, marketing, and customer service. Chatbots stand to help organizations build deeper relationships with their customers and improve service quality, while at the same time save money by automating certain administrative tasks.