Artificial Intelligence is quickly becoming more science fact than science fiction. And despite concerns about thinking machines taking human jobs -- or one day outsmarting their makers -- the federal government's investment in the technology is growing, and could be applied to a wide range of functions, from health care to public safety to criminal justice.

Hoax callers are a special kind of jerk. At best they can cause their targets emotional distress. At worst they can cause or incite property destruction and even divert scarce resources from real emergencies where they are needed to save lives. Technology can sometimes be applied to catch the criminal. Doing so casts technology specialists in the detective role by letting them trace calls to find their origins.

Natural disasters are out of the reach and influence of human beings. However, a lot can be done to minimize loss of lives. Artificial intelligence is one viable option that can potentially prevent massive loss of lives while at the same time make rescue efforts easy and efficient. To learn more, checkout the infographic below created by Eastern Kentucky University's Online Masters in Safety degree program. In the period between 2005 and 2015, a total of 242 natural disasters occurred in the United States of America.

Tech experts believe that artificial intelligence will revolutionize cybersecurity. The emerging field of artificial intelligence technologies can lead to a revolution in cybersecurity. Any individual and business needs to ensure securing their digital assets, whether they are looking to protect company's intellectual property, personal photos, customers' sensitive data, or anything else that can affect business continuity or individual reputation. According to Venture Beat, while billions of dollars are spent on cybersecurity, the magnitude of breaches and the number of reported cyberattacks still keep rising. Fortunately, there are hopes this situation will suddenly change.

Amplyfi, a start-up that specialises in mining and interpreting data from the Deep Web using artificial intelligence, is to create forty new jobs in Cardiff following support from the Welsh Government. A £400,000 0% interest loan from the Welsh Government's Repayable Fund for SMEs will enable Amplyfi to take on more highly skilled staff to support and refine its business intelligence platform, DataVoyant. The funding follows an August 2016 investment by SME investors Finance Wales Group to accelerate the growth of high-potential businesses in Wales. Amplyfi moved to Cardiff in December 2015 where it has been developing and piloting DataVoyant their flagship product. DataVoyant combines Surface and Deep Web data mining, artificial intelligence and data visualisation in a single user-friendly platform - an industry first.

Bletchley Park played an active role in security efforts during World War II. Bletchley Park, the iconic estate where Alan Turing and many other codebreakers helped decrypt Nazi communications, is set to play an active role in national security for the first time since the end of the Second World War, when the UK's first National College for Cyber Security opens its doors on the iconic site. Hitler's "unbreakable" encryption machine - and the Bletchley Park devices which cracked the code The college, designed to nurture cybersecurity skills of'gifted' 16- to 19-year olds, will be backed by QUFARO, a not-for-profit body created by senior figures at Cyber Security Challenge UK, the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park, the Institute of Information Security Professionals, BT Security, and cybersecurity firm Raytheon. QUFARO describes itself as a "new initiative designed to make it simpler for those with career ambitions in cybersecurity to access the UK's cyber-specific education and innovation opportunities". The aim of the organisation is help deliver the workforce necessary to protect British citizens and organisations against the growing threat of hacking and cyberattacks -- and the increasingly sophisticated actors behind them -- which cost the UK hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds a year.

Organisations including the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Work and Pensions will be able to see UK citizen's entire internet browsing history in weeks. The Investigatory Powers Bill, which was all but passed into law this week, forces internet providers to keep a full list of Internet Connection Records (ICRs) for a year, and make them available to the government if it asks. Those ICRs effectively serve as a full list of every website that people have visited, not collecting which specific pages are visited or what's done on them but serving as a full list of every site that someone has visited and when. And those same ICRs will be made available to a wide range of government bodies. Those include expected law enforcement organisations like the police, the military and the secret service – but also contain bodies like the Food Standards Agency, the Gambling Commission, council bodies and the Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust.

The boss of Reddit deleted comments from a Donald Trump-supporting community on his site, he has admitted. Steve Huffman, who co-founded the site and posts on it under the username spez, has said that he removed comments from Reddit's "The_Donald" community. That page has been one of the most prominent communities supporting Donald Trump online. In particular, he deleted comments that took issue with him. When users wrote "fuck u/spez", he changed the name to those of the managers of the subreddit – essentially meaning that any criticism was altered so that it lookde like it was being made towards the subreddit's own moderators.

DeepMind, Google's UK-based AI subsidiary, has signed a new agreement with the NHS after the pair's February deal was scrutinized over the amount and type of patient data Google would have access to. An investigative report by the New Scientist revealed that Google would have access to a huge trove of patient data without the patients' express consent, a potential violation of NHS information governance principles. With the new announcement, DeepMind is taking care to avoid a repeat of that situation with a host of new data protections. The new agreement is a five-year partnership with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. It will be a deployment of DeepMind's Streams app, which helps doctors get information about their acute kidney failure patients – including blood tests– faster, which will enable faster diagnostics in situations where time is of the essence. Once the app gets through the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (similar to the United States' FDA), DeepMind plans to roll it out to NHS hospitals in early 2017.

"If you like me, why would you talk like this to me?" Ask Microsoft's Chinese chatbot Xiaoice about Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and that's how she responds. She also skirts around highly sensitive topics like the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protests, Chinese President Xi Jinping or even President-elect Donald Trump. Xiaoice has become hugely popular since she was introduced in 2014. More than 40 million Chinese smartphone users chat with her on the social media platforms WeChat or Weibo every day, according to Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30). A quarter of them have declared their love for her.