Government-funded artificial intelligence programs could soon be organized under a new effort by the General Services Administration. GSA earlier this month created the Data Federation, a site that intends to coordinate the disparate existing data-related efforts at various agencies by sharing standards, case studies and reusable tech tools. On Monday, GSA plans to announce a new community of practice, or subsection dedicated to artificial intelligence, according to Technology Transformation Service data portfolio lead Philip Ashlock. Ashlock was speaking at a Digital Government Institute conference on Thursday. The Data Federation is still in the very early stages, he said--long term, it's working with 18F and the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to develop a "maturity model" to understand how data projects tend to evolve.

From driverless cars to online financial infrastructure payments, Artificial Intelligence obviously will be the heart of the next industrial revolution. The wave of globalisation and democracy cannot be overlooked regarding their contributions steering policy integration. Both concepts will play vital roles towards integrating the African continent under an umbrella perceived to end humanity (Artificial Intelligence). The rise of machines and robotics in high-income economies has been a contested discourse by philosophers, economists, tech geeks and policy makers. There is a rising belief it would steal jobs and render humanity useless and even economists seem not to be certain about the relevance of labour in this period. Immediately Japan was announced as the host of 2020 Olympics, what would strike one's mind is the presence of robotics during the famous sporting event.

Larger data sets and faster computers have enabled a recent flurry of progress--and investment--in artificial intelligence. David Cox of Harvard thinks the next big jump will depend on understanding what happens inside the head of a rat when it plays video games. Cox leads a 28 million project called Ariadne, funded by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that is looking for clues in mammalian brains to make software smarter. "This is a huge, moonshot-like effort to go into the brain and see what clues and tricks are hiding there for us to find," he said today at EmTech MIT 2016. Recent progress in tasks such as image recognition and translation sprang from putting more computing power behind a technique known as deep learning, which is loosely inspired by neuroscience.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. When it comes to new technologies and products, we tend to think of "digital" as synonymous with advanced, modern, and high-def, while "analog" is considered retrograde, outmoded, and low-resolution. But if you think analog is dead, you'd be wrong. Analog processing not only remains at the heart of many vital systems we depend on today, it is now going to make its way into a new breed of compute and intelligent systems that will power some of the most exciting technologies of the future: artificial intelligence and robotics.

According to Elon Musk, driverless car technology is a problem that's pretty much solved -- the regulators just need to catch up. And they might want to start moving faster, because Musk isn't slowing down. The chief executive of electric car maker Tesla said Wednesday that all the cars the company produces going forward will be equipped with the hardware needed to transform them into self-driving cars, as soon as the software and road rules are ready. On Thursday, the company posted a video with a Rolling Stones soundtrack that shows a Tesla Model S driving itself around highways and streets in Silicon Valley, pulling into a Tesla parking lot, searching for a spot and parking itself. It even spins its front wheels to the left so the passenger-side tire properly kisses the curb.

A rainbow flag flies with the Union flag above British Cabinet Offices. Thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted under Britain's now-defunct sexual offense laws will be posthumously pardoned. The Ministry of Justice announced the proposed amendment Thursday that would posthumously pardon thousands convicted under those outdated laws. The so-called "Turing's Law" would also allow those who are living to apply to have their names removed from criminal records. Lord John Sharkey, the man behind the amendment, called the development "momentous" and said that of the 65,000 men convicted under the laws, 15,000 are still alive, BBC reported.

John Bassett, a British spy who worked for the agency GCHQ for nearly two decades, has told Daily Express that the U.S. was considering plans to employ thousands of robots by 2025. At a meeting with police and counter-terrorism officials in London, he said: "At some point around 2025 or thereabouts the U.S. army will actually have more combat robots than it will have human soldiers. Many of those combat robots are trucks that can drive themselves, and they will get better at not falling off cliffs. But some of them are rather more exciting than trucks. So we will see in the West combat robots outnumber human soldiers."

This article is part of an MIT SMR initiative exploring how technology is reshaping the practice of management. The paradox of automation: Earlier this year, Facebook exorcised those pesky human editors who were introducing political bias into its Trending news list and left the job to algorithms. Now, reports Caitlin Dewey in The Washington Post, the Trending news isn't biased, but some of it is fake. Turns out the algorithms can't tell a real news story from a hoax. Facebook says it can improve its algorithms, but errors of judgment aren't the only pitfall in transferring human tasks to machines.

The people who study artificial intelligence for a living say the technology should not make us fear for our lives. This is the gist of the first in a series of reports from a Stanford University team about the effect AI will have over the next century. "The frightening, futurist portrayals of Artificial Intelligence that dominate films and novels, and shape the popular imagination," the report reads, "are fictional." The report focused on how AI might affect the typical American city in 2030. The most sweeping changes laid out were on the transportation front, as self-driving cars are expected to become more commonplace.

The UK government's plans to check whether people are old enough to watch pornography might include creating a database of everyone's viewing habits. The Government has recently been looking to introduce new checks to ensure that adult content can only be viewed by those over 18. To do that, it will introduce age verification schemes, and sites that don't implement them will be rendered inaccessible from within the UK. But the mechanism involved in doing so could create an entire database of the UK's porn viewing habits, according to the Open Rights Group. Doing so will create a vulnerable set of information that could expose anyone, according to the group. The robot developed by Seed Solutions sings and dances to the music during the Japan Robot Week 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight.