When we started the Dystopia Project two weeks ago, with the aim of writing a story on every dystopian novel that might apply to the Trump presidency, we figured it would be a while before we had reason to cover the heavyweight champ of the genre: Nineteen Eighty-Four. George Orwell's 1949 classic is about a state that is totalitarian in the extreme. Trump, we thought, would at least start out appearing to be more like a regular president than a Big Brother type. This week the plan was to explore how he resembles a smooth-talking manipulator in Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy. But that was before Trump and his team spent their first weekend in power insisting that, when it came to crowd size, two plus two equals five.

This story originally appeared on VentureBeat on December 27, 2016 and was written by Hira Saeed. Artificial intelligence may be the hot trend of 2016, but the term itself opens up a debate. Some praise AI, while others believe reliance on AI is fraught with danger. Others worry about the demise of humans at the hands of our AI masters. Yet whether it is the Internet of Things or health care, AI is only beginning to have an effect.

Irrespective of your ideological viewpoint, the collective Women's marches around the world this past weekend were inspiring and illustrative of the collective power of women. Simultaneously, regions of the United States were being ravaged by deadly tornadic storms. Modern computer models were critical in identifying the evolution of atmospheric conditions to support severe weather. There is a curious connection between these two trains of thought. Trust me, I am about to make the connection.

With China making rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI)-based research, it is imperative that India view AI as a critical element of its national security strategy, recommends an August 2016 report titled India and the Artificial Intelligence Revolution. Thanks to the increasingly digital economy, fuelled by improving education and globalization, the Indian consumer is unknowingly the country's biggest beneficiary of recent advances in AI, notes the report. From utilizing various applications powered by AI to using a range of online services such as Amazon Marketplace and Netflix that learn from consumers' online behaviour to make intelligent product and service recommendations, consumers are readily engaged with the proliferation of AI in India, whether they appreciate it or not. Indian academics, public researchers, labs, and entrepreneurs face a different challenge than the corporations that dominate the space--the infrastructure necessary for an AI revolution in India has been neglected by policymakers. While lack of physical infrastructure is certainly a major impediment, India's AI development also suffers from the paucity of the necessary cultural infrastructure, which is key for recent advances from lab to marketplace in AI.

The Trump administration's controversial attempt to declare its recent presidential inauguration as having "the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period," has inadvertently highlighted the fact that counting crowds remains a painstaking and inexact science. But the rise of artificial intelligence could soon spare crowd scientists the task of manually counting heads. An early glimpse of how artificial intelligence (AI) could help count crowds appeared in 2013. University of Central Florida researchers showed how computer software based on machine learning can swiftly provide automated headcount estimates for crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Such AI tools still have room for improvement in terms of achieving accurate headcounts based on images.

Elite Iraqi units clearing Mosul from Islamic State occupation face aerial bombardment from modified ISIS drones every day. I just returned from two weeks on the ground inside Mosul with Iraq's Emergency Response Division and the Counter Terrorism Service. These two units are Iraq's best, and are taking the fight to ISIS daily. ISIS is using snipers, suicide car bombs and drones to attack Iraqi forces. ISIS modifies commercial drones to drop 40mm rifle grenades.

NASA is developing artificial intelligence (AI) software that will navigate submarine-like drones through extraterrestrial water worlds. The technology would let these unmanned machines plot their own course based on what is detected in the water around them, looking for signs of microbial life. Scientists hope the system will be able to search in swarms in the icy oceans believed to exist on Jupiter's moon, Europa. NASA is developing artificial intelligence (AI) to navigate submarine-like drones (pictured) through extraterrestrial water worlds. NASA has developed an AI that will be used to power submarine-like drones through extraterrestrial water worlds - specifically Jupiter's moon Europa.

White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, left, and Klaus Kleinfeld of Arconic speak with Elon Musk before a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, on Jan. 23. Auto industry engineers, scientists and regulators are racing to work out all the details of how autonomous cars will function so that they can be ready to come to market by the early 2020s. Elon Musk, Tesla's brash CEO, says his electric vehicles will gain that capability within just six months. Musk made his pronouncement in Twitter comments late Monday, following previous remarks about the pace of upgrades to Tesla's semi-automated Autopilot driving system. In response to a question about the value of adding "Full Self Driving Capability" to the Palo Alto, California-based company's products ahead of "regulatory approval," Musk wrote: "…safety should improve significantly due to autonomy features, even if regs disallow no driver present."

Concerns have recently been widely expressed that artificial intelligence presents a threat to humanity. For instance, Stephen Hawking is quoted in Cellan-Jones1 as saying: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." Similar concerns have also been expressed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and others. Such concerns have a long history. John von Neumann is quoted by Stanislaw Ulam8 as the first to use the term the singularitya--the point at which artificial intelligence exceeds human intelligence.

Keith Kirkpatrick is principal of 4K Research & Consulting, LLC, based in Lynbrook, NY.