Google subsidiary DeepMind announced today that it's working with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to use machine learning in an attempt to predict when patients will deteriorate during a hospital stay. Deterioration (when a patient's condition worsens) is a significant issue, since care providers can miss warning signs for potentially lethal conditions that arise as part of other treatment. DeepMind and the VA aim to tackle Acute Kidney Injury (AKI), which, as the name implies, occurs when a person's kidneys temporarily stop working as well as they should. That can mean kidney failure, or just injury that reduces kidney function. AKI can be fatal if untreated.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced a research partnership with Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind that will tackle issues concerning patient deterioration during hospital care. Using a dataset comprised of 700,000 historical, de-personalized health records, the machine learning platform will help the VA identify risk factors for deterioration while predicting its onset. "Medicine is more than treating patients' problems," VA Secretary David J. Shulkin said in a statement. "Clinicians need to be able to identify risks to help prevent disease. This collaboration is an opportunity to advance the quality of care for our nation's veterans by predicting deterioration and applying interventions early."

On Tuesday, OpenAI announced that Elon Musk, one of the non-profit AI research company's founding members and foremost benefactors, would be vacating his position on the OpenAI board of directors. Musk helped craft OpenAI's vision and financed much of the nonprofit's growth. Elon Musk will depart the OpenAI Board but will continue to donate and advise the organization. As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon. The OpenAI board of directors now consists of Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Holden Karnofsky, and Sam Altman, with whom Musk co-founded the venture.

Elon Musk is stepping down from the board of a $1 billion AI organisation he helped create. On Tuesday, OpenAI announced that the billionaire entrepreneur is exiting his role at the company to avoid potential conflicts of interest with his work at Tesla. Founded in 2015 with $1 billion in funding, OpenAI is a non-profit organisation focused on research about artificial intelligence technology and on examining its potential social implications and safety risks. It has developed AI capable of playing video games like "Dota 2," and earlier this week co-authored a report looking at how artificial intelligence technology could be abused for malicious purposes, from drone attacks to fraudulent videos. In a blog post published Tuesday, OpenAI said Musk was leaving its board, but will continue to provide funding and advice. "As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon," the post said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is stepping down from OpenAI's board amid concerns of a possible conflict of interest. Elon Musk will step down as chairman of OpenAI, the nonprofit artificial intelligence research company he co-founded two years ago, amid concerns of a possible conflict of interest. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will depart the board but continue to "donate and advise the organization," the OpenAI said in a blog post Tuesday. "As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon," OpenAI said. Research in artificial intelligence, a term used for the ability of machined, computers or systems to exhibit humanlike intelligence, has been dominated lately by large tech companies such as Google and Facebook.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is leaving the board of OpenAI, the nonprofit research group he co-founded with Y Combinator president Sam Altman to study the ethics and safety of artificial intelligence. The move was announced in a short blog post, explaining that Musk is leaving in order to avoid a conflict of interest between OpenAI's work and the machine learning research done by Telsa to develop autonomous driving. "As Tesla continues to become more focused on AI, this will eliminate a potential future conflict for Elon," says the post. Musk will stay on as a donator to OpenAI and will continue to advise the group. The blog post also announced a number of new donors, including video game developer Gabe Newell, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, and the former US and Canadian Olympians Ashton Eaton and Brianne Theisen-Eaton.

If you weren't already worried about AI, the ominously named The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence report has just been released to fuel your nightmares. Written by 26 authors from 14 academic and industrial institutions and think tanks including nonprofit research OpenAI, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the national security think tank, Center for a New … Continue reading "AI is coming for you, warns ominous new study" ...

"For many decades hype outstripped fact in terms of AI and machine learning. "This report looks at the practices that just don't work anymore and suggests broad approaches that might help: for example, how to design software and hardware to make it less hackable - and what type of laws and international regulations might work in tandem with this." The report urges policy makers and researchers to work together to understand and prepare for how the technology could be used maliciously, and calls for developers to be proactive and mindful of how it could be misused. Those who contributed to the study include the Elon Musk-founded non-profit research firm OpenAI and international digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

We've co-authored a paper that forecasts how malicious actors could misuse AI technology, and potential ways we can prevent and mitigate these threats. This paper is the outcome of almost a year of sustained work with our colleagues at the Future of Humanity Institute, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, the Center for a New American Security, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and others. AI challenges global security because it lowers the cost of conducting many existing attacks, creates new threats and vulnerabilities, and further complicates the attribution of specific attacks. Like our work on concrete problems in AI safety, we've grounded some of the problems motivated by the malicious use of AI in concrete scenarios, such as: persuasive ads generated by AI systems being used to target the administrator of a security systems; cybercriminals using neural networks and "fuzzing" techniques to create computer viruses with automatic exploit generation capabilities; malicious actors hacking a cleaning robot so that it delivers an explosives payload to a VIP; and rogue states using omniprescent AI-augmented surveillance systems to pre-emptively arrest people who fit a predictive risk profile. We're excited to start having this discussion with our peers, policymakers, and the general public; we've spent the last two years researching and solidifying our internal policies at OpenAI and are going to begin engaging a wider audience on these issues.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is hot. Although its capabilities have been steadily increasing for years, it was the victory of DeepMind's AlphaGo program over the top Go expert Lee Se-dol last year that alerted many to the rapid pace of development in the AI field.