Three key guiding philosophies were presented across the reports: AI needs to augment humanity instead of replacing it, AI needs to be ethical, and there must be an equal opportunity for everyone to develop these systems. Human-machine collaboration in its many forms is major theme in the reports, titled "Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence" and "National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan." "The walls between humans and AI systems are slowly beginning to erode, with AI systems augmenting and enhancing human capabilities," the Strategic Plan report says. The White House imagines virtual personal assistants housed in smart glasses, automated factories that assist humans in complex building tasks, and systems that provide better data for farmers, all in the context that these could be job creators and not job stealers.

Mark Zuckerberg says he's ready to voice the Jarvis artificial intelligence system (AI) he built to run his home. One apparently willing candidate stands out -- Iron Man himself. Jarvis, of course, is the AI character that assists Tony Stark's Iron Man in the mega-successful "Iron Man" film franchise based on the Marvel Comics character. Jarvis, which in Marvel's universe is an acronym for "just a rather very intelligent system," is a bit more human as the butler in "Marvel's The Avengers." In response to Zuckerberg's Facebook ask, Robert Downey, Jr., who plays Stark/Iron Man, says he'd do it, with a few altruistic conditions. English actor Paul Bettany voiced Jarvis.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been touted as the next Industrial Revolution, with pervasive connectivity and the insights it can generate offering a new digital lens for viewing and managing the physical world. But in addition to the tangible process efficiencies and quality of life improvements expected from the IoT, it's also a stepping stone to perhaps the greatest achievement in human history: artificial intelligence (AI). In many ways the technological progression of AI and the IoT are intertwined. IoT will provide the information that fuels our data-driven economy, while AI is the engine that will consume it. Though both paradigms are still in their infancy, each's success is contingent upon the other's: The IoT can never reach its potential without a mechanism for autonomously processing large heterogeneous data sets, just as AI is incapable of expanding without being fed massive amounts of data.

Google employee Suzanna Bobadilla wants to encourage more Latinos to pursue career paths in the tech industry. SAN FRANCISCO -- Google is giving 1 million to Silicon Valley organizations that serve Latino students and their families as it pushes to increase the diversity of its workforce. The Internet giant's philanthropic arm Google.org is making a 750,000 grant to Silicon Valley Education Foundation to support its work narrowing the achievement gap and 250,000 to the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley to increase high school and graduation rates for Latino students. Both organizations are working to build career pathways for Latinos into tech companies like Google. Ron Gonzales, president and CEO of the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, says programs like his are "low-cost, local solutions to this (tech) industry crisis of not having enough diversity in the work force."

Google wants its Assistant to be more than just an order-taking robot -- so it hired some clever writers from outside the company to help make it happen. A new story from the Wall Street Journal's Christopher Mims details the advancements of different artificial intelligence devices like Amazon Echo and Google's rival product Home, and how they're comforting for those who live alone thanks to how personable the AI's have become. For Google, that friendly personality is thanks to a team of writers from Pixar and The Onion who helped make the Assistant -- which powers Google's Home device -- sound more like a human and less like a robot, according to the Journal. Google's eventual goal is to help users build an emotional connection with the Assistant, the Journal reports. Google unveiled its Assistant-enabled Home device last week, a direct competitor to other AI-powered hardware devices like Amazon's Echo.

Machine learning is a fashionable buzzword right now in infosec, and is often referenced as the key to next-gen, signature-less security. But along with all of the hype and buzz, there also is a mind-blowing amount of misunderstanding surrounding machine learning in infosec. Machine learning isn't a silver bullet for all information security problems, and in fact can be detrimental if misinterpreted. For example, company X claims to block 99% of all malware, or company Y's intrusion detection will stop 99% of all attacks, yet customers see an overwhelming number of false positives. What do the accuracy numbers really mean? In fact, these simple statistics lose meaning without the proper context.

TYSONS CORNER, VA, Oct. 13, 2016 -- In-Q-Tel has partnered with Brainspace in an investment agreement that seeks to advance the latter's machine learning and data analytics tools to support digital investigations, ExecutiveBiz reported Wednesday. Brainspace said Tuesday the partnership also serves to build on its efforts to meet the operational requirements of the Intelligence Community. About Executive Mosaic: Founded in 2002, Executive Mosaic is a leadership organization and media company. It provides its members an opportunity to learn from peer business executives and government thought leaders while providing an interactive forum to develop key business and partnering relationships. Executive Mosaic offers highly coveted executive events, breaking business news on the Government Contracting industry, and delivers robust and reliable content through seven influential websites and four consequential E-newswires.

Carahsoft Technology and IPsoft have partnered to offer the latter company's artificial intelligence-based digital labor platforms through the General Services Administration's Schedule contract vehicle. The partnership aims to drive demand for IPsoft's AI offerings across the public sector market, Carahsoft said Wednesday. "Federal organizations are under considerable pressure to deliver more with less, particularly when it comes to improving their service to citizens," said Brian O'Donnell, a Carahsoft vice president. O'Donnell said the addition of IPSoft's digital labor products to Carahsoft's GSA schedule will help resellers and government clients to automate computing processes and provide a digital customer service experience. IPsoft's AI platforms include the Amelia virtual agent designed to automate human interaction, read natural language, understand context and apply logic to address problems.

Microsoft is all in with Cloud Computing and that was never more evident than at its annual Ignite Conference that was held in Atlanta. While Azure was not the only story, it was the lead one. This blog recaps some of the key things we observed at Ignite. Microsoft is all in with cloud computing. One of the big things we noticed at Microsoft is that its swagger is back.

Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence lab does more than just develop computer programs capable of beating the world's best human players in the ancient game of Go. The DeepMind unit has also been working on the next generation of deep learning software that combines the ability to recognize data patterns with the memory required to decipher more complex relationships within the data. Deep learning is the latest buzz word for artificial intelligence algorithms called neural networks that can learn over time by filtering huge amounts of relevant data through many "deep" layers. The brain-inspired neural network layers consist of nodes (also known as neurons). Tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft have been training neural networks to learn how to better handle tasks such as recognizing images of dogs or making better Chinese-to-English translations. These AI capabilities have already benefited millions of people using Google Translate and other online services.