AI is important to the future of cybersecurity, although some experts don't believe the tech will be a silver bullet. Nonetheless, recent acquisitions show the rising significance of this technology in the fight against cyber criminals. This year through 2/28/2017, there have been three acquisitions of cybersecurity startups that offer AI. All three cybersecurity startups featured in this brief offer machine learning technology, a set of algorithms that are used to train machines to learn from data and predict trends and outcomes. AI is an umbrella term that includes companies using machine learning algorithms for natural language processing, predictive analytics, and pattern recognition, among other things.

C3 IoT updated its Internet of Things platform with more machine learning and artificial intelligence technology, integrated more with Amazon Web Services and has more than 100 million sensors and devices under management. The tech revolution is spreading to every corner of the earth with the Internet of Things, and it's enabling data analytics and automation in ways never before imagined in business. Version 7 of C3 IoT's platform will help the company expand into new verticals. As noted previously, C3 IoT initially gained traction with utilities and then moved into new verticals. Houman Behzadi, chief product officer at C3 IoT, said the company is actively working on implementations at oil and gas, health care, and financial services companies.

No one saw the crisis coming: a coordinated vandalistic effort to insert Squidward references into articles totally unrelated to Squidward. In 2006, Wikipedia was really starting to get going, and really couldn't afford to have any SpongeBob SquarePants-related high jinks sullying the site's growing reputation. Someone had to stop Squidward. The Wikipedia community knew it couldn't possibly mobilize human editors to face down the trolls--the onslaught was too great, the work too tedious. So instead an admin cobbled together a bot that automatically flagged errant insertions of the Cephalopod Who Shall Not Be Named.

It seemed like such a simple thing. Yet another company had suffered a data breach, leaking its customers' private information all over the interwebs. You've probably been subject to such a leak yourself. This one was a bit different because it involved robots. Okay, nothing so dramatic as clanking mechanical men, but "bots" in the sense of automated software agents that converse with actual humans.

Is artificial intelligence a benign and liberating influence on our lives – or should we fear an impending rise of the machines? And what rights should robots share with humans? Christopher Markou, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law, suggests an urgent need to start considering the answers. Get used to hearing a lot more about artificial intelligence. Even if you discount the utopian and dystopian hyperbole, the 21st century will broadly be defined not just by advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, computing and cognitive neuroscience, but how we manage them.

After a year of delays, the UK government has finally shared its plans for a more prosperous digital Britain. Unveiled by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the Digital Strategy report outlines steps to plug skills gaps and deliver free training to people who need it, pushing forward important UK technology sectors like AI and allowing UK companies to remain competitive as they come to terms with life after Brexit. One thing the report makes clear is that the government can't do it alone. It's enlisting the help of some of the UK's biggest employers and companies, which will offer four million free digital skills training "opportunities" to people who need them. Many are existing initiatives or have been expanded, but Google will offer five hours of free digital skills as part of its Garage initiative (unveiled late last year) and launch a summer programme in coastal towns, BT's Barefoot Computing Project will give teachers free extra computer science resources and O2 will continue to deliver online safety tips via its partnership with the NSPCC.

In Donald Trump's 2011 book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, the president-to-be made an astonishing claim: Lady Gaga likely owed her international fame to none other than...Donald Trump. "She became a big star and maybe she became a star because I put her on the Miss Universe pageant," he wrote. "It's very possible, who knows what would have happened without it, because she caused a sensation." The problem goes beyond Trump, of course. Women, especially women of color, are routinely denied credit for their ideas, creativity, genius, and success (not to mention they're paid less than men for full-time work).

Following on from the updated Industrial Strategy announced in January and plans to boost the growth and support of Britain's artificial intelligence (AI) sector, the UK government outlined a brand new digital strategy to combat growing skills gap fears across the country. A Digital Skills Partnership with government, businesses and charities will see the creation of more than four million free digital skills training opportunities in the UK and includes education commitments from the likes of Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays and Google. Speaking to Silicon, several tech industry professionals have offered their reactions to the news, providing an insight into what the industry is thinking. "The Government's Digital Strategy is an exciting and welcome prospect at a time when UK businesses are facing a significant threat from digital disruption. To gain a competitive advantage, businesses should consider how they can use new technologies like artificial intelligence, even at this relatively early stage," she said.

Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) and Japan Exchange Regulation (JPX-R) revealed that they have been reviewing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies developed by NEC Corporation and Hitachi to improve market intelligence operations. At present, surveillance systems identify orders that might have benefited from unfair trade practices, based on certain criteria. Surveillance personnel based on the trading situation of the orders then investigate the possibility of unfair practices – and determine if detailed investigations are warranted. When NEC's Rapid machine learning and Hitachi AI Technology/H were applied for preliminary investigations, the results were impressive: AI showed to be highly accurate at weeding out orders that might be tainted. Further, unlike the pre-set criteria used in existing systems, AI was able to learn on its own and improve its success rate.

Funding of £17.3m ($22m) for artificial intelligence and robotics research to be carried out by British universities is to be announced by the government. It is part of the government's digital strategy, to be published by Culture Secretary Karen Bradley on Wednesday. A report by Accenture released last year estimated that AI could contribute up to £654bn to the UK economy by 2035. But the government was criticised last year for its support of the UK tech scene. As part of the new digital strategy, computer scientist Prof Dame Wendy Hall and tech CEO Jerome Pesenti, former chief data scientist at IBM, have been asked to review the UK's artificial intelligence sector.