The NHS recently announced plans to trial an artificially intelligent mobile health app to a million people in London. The aim is to help diagnose and treat patients by engaging them in a real time text message conversation which will complement the NHS 111 phone based service (which was criticised by the Care Quality Commission watchdog). The app's designers, Babylon Healthcare Ltd, use algorithms to make initial diagnoses which are then followed up with human consultations. It has already received a glowing CQC evaluation. The app is likely to provoke a mixed response, with enthusiastic technophiles up against those concerned that more technology means a less human healthcare service.

It's already been a busy year for cybersecurity, as U.S. President Barack Obama warned NATO allies last weekend to closely monitor their impending elections for the kind of suspected Russian hacking that afflicted the latest U.S. presidential election. And last week top U.S. intelligence directors testified about those hacks at a Senate hearing, where topics included ever more sophisticated cyber-attacks and the growing need to fortify American cybersecurity strategy. Machine learning -- along with solid fundamentals -- will likely be a key component of reliable cybersecurity in 2017. "Criminals are fighting a 21st century war, attacking our critical infrastructure and financial systems using unconventional techniques, while we defend ourselves with antiquated methods," The Hill stated last week. "All the passwords, tokens and other forms of strong authentication are meaningless if a person is tricked into handing over their credentials, inadvertently installs rogue software on their device that performs certain actions, or unwittingly gives a criminal access to their machine or account."

Today on In Case You Missed It: The Department of Defense created a drone swarm for spying that can replenish a fallen UAVs position, much the way the alien swarms act in Independence Day. A video of the test was just posted by the DoD, although the test actually took place last fall. A video of the 3D printed sculptures is here and while there are many important news stories from this week, I recommend reading up on the ethical use of artificial intelligence. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Robots should one day have rights as "electronic persons," members of the European Parliament recommended Thursday -- but not until the machines are all fitted with "kill" switches to shut them down in an emergency. Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee wants the European Commission to propose legislation that will settle a number of ethical and liability issues in the field of robotics -- including who is to blame when an autonomous vehicle is involved in a collision. Granting the more sophisticated autonomous robots some kind of electronic personhood could settle issues of who is responsible for their actions, the committee suggested. More urgent than the question of robot rights, though, is the setting up of an obligatory insurance scheme that would pay out to the victims of a self-driving car if it caused an accident in the European Union. The MEPs also want an EU agency to advise on the technical, ethical and regulatory issues around robotics, and a voluntary ethical code of conduct for those who design and work with robots.

In December, I attended the Amsterdam RiskMinds Conference, which highlighted current priorities of Chief Risk Officers [CROs] and risk professionals. Having reflected over Christmas sherry and Mariah Carey New Year PR disasters, I consider 7 key CRO and risk priorities. The modern Chief Risk Officer was beautifully characterized by Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Geoffrey Greener, a CRO who has travelled from the "dark side" of hedge fund proprietary trading to the comparative "light" of risk management. He services his "much simpler" organization, by being his customer's Chief Risk Officer or "Chief Worrier". An EMEA CRO, pointing to her Financial Conduct Authority personal liability, reiterated the point: "I worry about that 3am call, with a London Whale thing."

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman is one of a host of investors bank-rolling a new initiative to develop ethics and governance standards for artificial intelligence (AI), reports Telecoms.com. The $27 million Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund, which also features Omidyar Network as a founder, will be built around not only engineers and corporations, but also social scientists, ethicists, philosophers, faith leaders, economists, lawyers and policymakers, with the intention of defining standards for AI both in the US and internationally. The team will aim to address such areas as ethical frameworks, moral values, accountability and social impact. "Artificial intelligence agents will impact our lives in every society on Earth. Technology and commerce will see to that," said Alberto Ibargüen, President of Knight Foundation, which has committed $5 million to the initiative.

In his seminal book "Superintelligence," the Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom highlights the need to draft a set of rules to keep machines under human control much before an inevitable "intelligence explosion" occurs. European lawmakers, it seems, are listening. On Thursday, the European Parliament's legal affairs committee approved a wide-ranging report that outlines a possible framework under which humans would interact with AI and robots. Among other things, the report mulls over the need to create a specific legal status for robots -- one that designates them as "electronic persons" -- and the need for designers to incorporate a "kill switch" into their designs. In addition, the report also calls for the creation of a European agency for robotics and AI that would be capable of responding to new opportunities and challenges arising from technological advancements in robotics.

Before he took office in 2008, Barack Obama vowed to end America's grueling conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. During his second term, he pledged to take the country off what he called a permanent war footing. "Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue," he said in May 2013. "But this war, like all wars, must end. But Obama leaves a very different legacy as he prepares to hand his commander-in-chief responsibilities to Donald Trump. U.S. military forces have been at war for all eight years of Obama's tenure, the first two-term president with that distinction. He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. Yet the U.S. faces more threats in more places than at any time since the Cold War, according to U.S. intelligence. For the first time in decades, there is at least the potential of an armed clash with America's largest adversaries, Russia and China.

The rise of new and emerging technologies are driving new forms of cyberattacks which will expose businesses to threats they're unprepared to face, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has warned. Its Global Risks Report 2017 details some of the key challenges facing the world this year, ranging from political uncertainty and climate change to how society isn't keeping up with the risks presented by technological change. IoT devices offered by firms ranging from Samsung to Phillips may be vulnerable to exploit and hijacking. While the report notes that new technology has the potential to bring great benefit to the world, practices such as connecting more and more business, industrial, and consumer devices to the internet in the name of productivity and efficiency also increases the risk of hacking and data breaches. "When you think about new technologies like AI and the Internet of Things, they're creating a broader attack surface for cyberattacks for those who want to steal data, disrupt business, attack industrial controls," said John Drzik, president of global risk & specialties at global insurance broker and risk management Marsh, at the launch of the report, which lists both data breaches and cyberattacks in the top ten most likely risks.

In another example of glacial bureaucracy, a committee from the European Parliament has written a report which recommends a meeting about robots and artificial intelligence (AI), reports Jamie Davies at Telecoms.com The Legal Affairs Committee has produced a report that strongly urges the European Commission (hereafter known as the Gaggle of Red-tapers) to create legislation and regulation to govern the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence. It suggests the Gaggle of Red-tapers creates a new department to "to supply public authorities with technical, ethical and regulatory expertise". The Legal Affairs Committee set up this working group to look into artificial intelligence in April 2016, and it would appear this report is the result of ten months' hard work. It took 21 MEP's, two of whom abstained from voting alongside two who rejected the proposals in the report (for some reason), ten months to come to the conclusion it should recommend the European Commission should regulate the development of artificial intelligence.