Paris – From "intelligent" vacuum cleaners and driverless cars to advanced techniques for diagnosing diseases, artificial intelligence has burrowed its way into every arena of modern life. Its promoters reckon it is revolutionizing human experience, but critics stress that the technology risks putting machines in charge of life-changing decisions. Regulators in Europe and North America are worried. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software. Please add japantimes.co.jp and piano.io to your list of allowed sites.

From "intelligent" vacuum cleaners and driverless cars to advanced techniques for diagnosing diseases, artificial intelligence has burrowed its way into every arena of modern life. Its promoters reckon it is revolutionising human experience, but critics stress that the technology risks putting machines in charge of life-changing decisions. Regulators in Europe and North America are worried. The European Union is likely to pass legislation next year -- the AI Act -- aimed at reining in the age of the algorithm. The United States recently published a blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and Canada is also mulling legislation.

From programs that can process a vast amount of data for intelligence gathering to the future of autonomous weapons, AI is becoming key to our operations -- and our international competition. Why it matters: Military dominance in the future won't be decided just by the size of a nation's army, but the quality of its algorithms. Driving the news: The National Counterintelligence and Security Center said in a new paper published Friday that China and Russia are using legal and illegal methods to undermine and overtake U.S. dominance in critical industries including AI and autonomous systems, my Axios colleague Zach Basu writes. Yes, but: So is the U.S., particularly in defense. Between the lines: Intelligence gathering and analysis is one of the fields where AI can make the biggest difference now for defense, says George Hoyem, managing partner at In-Q-Tel (IQT), the venture investment unit for the U.S. intelligence community.

From Connecticut to California, states across the country are in desperate need of COBOL - Common Business-Oriented Language - programmers. When the deluge of coronavirus-related unemployment claims began pouring in at the pandemic's onset, many of the decades-old government computer systems responsible for processing those claims struggled and, in many cases, crashed. Steve Brothers is President at Phase Change. With nearly 17 million unemployment claims filed between March 15 and April 4 of 2020, the exceptionally large volume of traffic and number of requests the U.S.'s unemployment systems experienced put myriad states behind the proverbial eight ball since they don't have the resources to maintain them. Consequently, the global crisis has left many state governments scrambling in search of COBOL-fluent coders.

Approvals for AI-based healthcare products are streaming in from regulators around the globe, with medical imaging leading the way. It's just the start of what's expected to become a steady flow as submissions rise and the technology becomes better understood. More than 90 medical imaging products using AI are now cleared for clinical use, thanks to approvals from at least one global regulator, according to Signify Research Ltd., a U.K. consulting firm in healthcare technology. Regulators in Europe and the U.S. are leading the pace. Each has issued about 60 approvals to date.