PwC is on the cusp of launching a robo-economist that could make the company the "most accurate" economic forecaster on the market. The professional services firm has developed a form of artificial intelligence (AI) with a 92% strike rate when it comes to predicting the result of UK gross domestic product (GDP). It discovered the AI's "incredible accuracy" after testing to see if the machine could pinpoint historic GDP results without knowing the outcome. But while Jonathan Gillham, PwC's director of economics, joked that the AI had already started to supersede his job, the firm said there were no plans to replace staff with automation and the program would work alongside human economists. He said: " We have been using an AI technique to forecast the UK economy and we will be launching that (...) in July. "Each quarter, the Office for National Statistics publishes its estimate for GDP and we have been able to use an AI technology base to get that right 92% of the time for the last five years.

This creates the false impression that the algorithms already exist for malware detection too. That is not the case. We at Kaspersky Lab have spent more than 10 years developing and patenting a number of technologies. And we continue to carry out research and come up with new ideas because … well, that's where the next myth comes in. There is a conceptual difference between malware detection and facial recognition.

At least since Isaac Asimov posited the Three Law of Robotics, many have wondered whether robots would ultimately help or harm humanity. Or maybe do a little of both. Humanity still has time to shape the answer to that question, and we're pleased to announce three speakers who have distinctive, grounded perspectives on how to secure a world made better (not worse) by robots. These speakers join our agenda for TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics, our first one-day event dedicated to discussing the core topics facing the robotics industry. General admission tickets are currently available for purchase though seating is very limited.

Russia has retaliated by threatening to treat American planes as targets; in a dramatic "Top Gun"-style maneuver on Monday, one of Moscow's jets buzzed within five feet of an American spy plane. None of these encounters involved the Islamic State. The contradiction opens a larger question, national security experts say, of what kind of broader strategy the Trump administration plans once the Islamic State -- now on the defensive -- is defeated in Syria. With each episode, "we own more of the conflict in Syria without articulating a strategy," said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "We are sleepwalking into a much broader military mandate, without saying what we plan to do afterward."

The future of the United States Air Force is a human-piloted, $100 million stealth jet guiding flocks of $3 million drones that glide effortlessly into position powered by turbo fans. Thanks to the Air Force Research Lab and drone-maker Kratos, that future of combined human/robot formation is already being tested. There are many good reasons to want a human in the cockpit of a plane, including their judgement, fast-thinking skills, and the capability to respond to unexpected threats. But there are hard physical obstacles that suggest maybe not every plane needs to have a pilot. Humans need systems to stay alive, and those systems sometimes break.

I've done a lot of writing and research recently about the bright future of AI: that it'll be able to analyze human emotions, understand social nuances, conduct medical treatments and diagnoses that overshadow the best human physicians, and in general make many human workers redundant and unnecessary. I still stand behind all of these forecasts, but they are meant for the long term – twenty or thirty years into the future. And so, the question that many people want answered is about the situation at the present. Luckily, DARPA has decided to provide an answer to that question. DARPA is one of the most interesting US agencies.

Artificial intelligence is poised to change the way NASA studies space. A.I. onboard a NASA Earth science satellite detected the eruption of an Icelandic volcano in 2010, helping to produce this colorful image.

Artificial intelligence is poised to change the way NASA studies space. A.I. onboard a NASA Earth science satellite detected the eruption of an Icelandic volcano in 2010, helping to produce this colorful image.

During the second world war, Alan Turing was recruited by the Allies to crack the coded messages used by the Nazis. At first they seemed near-impossible to decipher, but using a combination of mathematics and engineering, he and his colleagues found a way, and so shaped the course of the war. During this period, Turing also devised a portable machine called Delilah that could securely encode a voice message. It was based on a special form of arithmetic and was years ahead of its time. Turing is often associated with breaking codes, but in 1943 he also spent time making them.

Earlier this year, Kaggle ran a $1 million contest to build algorithms capable of identifying signs of lung cancer in CT scans, helping to fuel a larger effort to apply neural networks to health care.