Who will have the AI edge?

That's the question Mary Cummings of Duke University puts forward in a new paper for the think tank Chatham House. Citing R&D spending in recent years, Cummings argues that companies like Google and Facebook could outpace militaries when it comes to the science of artificial intelligence, which in turn could lead to potentially dangerous technologies going into use before they have been properly tested. The matter will probably come down to who will be the first to make automated systems truly autonomous--or at least more autonomous then they are now. As Cummings explains, there's a range of capabilities when it comes to processing information and making decisions. At one end there's the pilot reading instrument displays and making quick adjustments at the controls--behavior that eventually becomes automatic.