Donald Trump won't be attending this year's South by Southwest conference, which started Friday in Austin, Texas. But the president will be very much in evidence -- if only in spirit -- at the annual gathering of technologists, musicians and wannabe entrepreneurs. After the election, event organizers scrambled to add panels reflecting a new political era many had believed impossible. The technology industry, much of which opposes the administration's stances on immigration and social issues, has been allotted two full days of Trump-related sessions. The vibe of this year's conference is markedly different from 2016.

As Carrington Institute's most promising new Agent, Joanna Dark must uncover the truth behind the dataDyne Corporation's recent technological breakthroughs - breakthroughs which could have serious consequences for mankind."

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

March 9, 2017 --Physicist Stephen Hawking may be a proponent of artificial intelligence, but he has also been outspoken about the potential challenges it creates. In a recent interview, he sounded a similar tone, and offered a solution that conservatives may find hard to accept. Speaking to The Times of London to commemorate being awarded the Honorary Freedom of the City of London, a title that was conferred on him on Monday, Professor Hawking expressed optimism for the future. He added, however, that he is concerned about artificial intelligence (AI), as well as other global threats. "We need to be quicker to identify such threats and act before they get out of control," Hawking said.

This has been a dark week in the world of technology, with WikiLeaks' mammoth'Vault 7' document release making for some deeply unpleasant reading. The 8,761 files published by the whistle-blowing organisation allegedly came straight from the CIA, which is believed to have been using a variety of hacking methods to secretly spy on people through their electronic devices. The agency is also said to be capable of pinning the blame for cyber attacks on other countries. WikiLeaks is set to follow this up by publishing the redacted details of all of the CIA's cyber weapons, but will give technology companies initial exclusive access to them, to prepare themselves against hackers. Fortunately, there are also a number of simple steps that ordinary people can take to protect themselves, without going off-grid.

Keen Footwear sells its iconic boots, shoes and sandals through thousands of retailers worldwide. But the Oregon manufacturer, which is working hard to honor its commitment to become "American Built," does not have the manpower to support a dedicated information security staff. With a team of six information technology professionals -- all but two focused on handling the day-to-day client issues of its 450 employees -- the IT staff would fall behind in triaging incidents the company's security software flagged. "We fit squarely in the realm that we have the problems of all the big players, but we don't have the resources of a large enterprise," said Clark Flannery, Keen's director of IT in Portland. To solve the problem, Flannery augmented his IT staff with machines.

China's government is preparing for a war of sorts with the United States to claim the vantage point to define the technological trend for the next generation. At the annual meeting of China's parliament this week, the usual Communist Party agenda of economic growth, social welfare, jobs, health care and pension made way for an unusual addition: a clarion call by some of China's most influential business and technology leaders for the government to set policies to define what they consider the Next Big Thing. They include the founder of the largest Chinese internet search engine Baidu, the owner of smartphone maker Xiaomi, and the founder of Geely Automobile, which bought Volvo. They are tabling motions and proposals for the government to take the lead in getting Chinese enterprises to collaborate on artificial intelligence (AI) research, and facilitate the industrialising of the technology. AI made its way into Premier Li Keqiang's March 5 work report, a signal that it has caught the attention of China's top decision makers.

So Philip Hammond unveiled his big hairy budget. The Chancellor had touted this as an "upbeat budget". A phrase that makes as much sense as "diet fish supper" or "talented Honey G". The snoozefest included £500million to be spent on robots and artificial intelligence. At which point Hammond's eyes flashed red and he started shouting "malfunction, malfunction" until somebody turned him off at the back.

Add one more to the growing tally of security funding deals in early 2017. RiskSense, an Albuquerque, NM cyber-risk management company, announced this week that it had raised $14 million in a Series A round of financing. "The funding raised by existing investors Paladin Capital Group, Sun Mountain Capital, EPIC Ventures, and CenturyLink and a new investor Jump Capital will enable RiskSense to expand sales and marketing, enter new markets such as cyber-security insurance, and broaden and accelerate product development," Dr. Srinivas Mukkamala, co-founder and CEO of RiskSense, told eSecurity Planet. Spun off from New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and acting as advisors to the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Intelligence Community, RiskSense uses of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly machine learning, to help governments and enterprise organizations identify and prioritize risks to their networks and data. "RiskSense is changing the way organizations detect and manage cyber risk," said Mukkamala.

Although China could initially only observe the advent of the Information-Technology Revolution in Military Affairs, the People's Liberation Army might presently have a unique opportunity to take advantage of the military applications of artificial intelligence to transform warfare. When the United States first demonstrated its superiority in network-centric warfare during the first Gulf War, the PLA was forced to confront the full extent of its relative backwardness in information technology. Consequently, the PLA embarked upon an ambitious agenda of "informatization" (???). To date, the PLA has advanced considerably in its capability to utilize information to enhance its combat capabilities, from long-range precision strike to operations in space and cyberspace. Currently, PLA thinkers anticipate the advent of an "intelligentization Revolution in Military Affairs" that will result in a transformation from informatized ways of warfare to future "intelligentized" (???) warfare. For the PLA, this emerging trend heightens the imperative of keeping pace with the U.S. military's progress in artificial intelligence, after its failure to do so in information technology.