Despite suggestions it has been losing its edge, California is way ahead of others when it comes to the hottest technology right now: artificial intelligence. The regions around San Francisco, San José and Los Angeles are among the best prepped for AI in the country, according to a report released Wednesday by the Brookings Institution. The Washington think tank dubbed the San Francisco and San José metropolitan areas "superstars" when it comes to AI readiness. Three out of the top 10 city regions most ready for AI are in California, according to the report. No other state has more than one region in the top 10.

British-born Andrew Ng has had a rich career in the technology industry as Co-Founder and Head of Google Brain, former Chief Scientist at Baidu and Co-Founder of Coursera. At Baidu, Ng built the company's artificial intelligence (AI) sector into a team of several people. In an interview with Lex Fridman, Ng shared where his passion for the industry started: " Growing up in Hong Kong and Singapore, I started learning to code when I was five or six years old. At that time I was learning the BASIC programming language and they would take these folks and they'll tell you type this program into your computer." "So I typed out programs on my computer and as the result of all the typing, I would get to play these very simple, shoot them up games that I had implemented on my little computer. So I thought it was fascinating as a young kid that I could write this code. I was really just copying code from a book into my computer to then play these cool little video games. Another moment for me was when I was a teenager and my father was a doctor was reading about expert systems and about neural networks. So he got me to read some of these books and I thought it was really cool that you could write a computer that started to exhibit intelligence." he continued.

The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, in its final report to Congress and the Biden administration last year, warned artificial intelligence will soon become "weapons of first resort in future conflicts." That warning, as well as the commission's recommendation for the federal government to increase spending on basic research and development, remains urgent for the U.S. to remain AI-ready in the coming years, even though the commission no longer remains. The commission disbanded in October 2021, but many of its leading experts have shifted to a private-sector entity, the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP). The name stems from the Rockefeller Special Studies Project, launched in 1956 by Nelson Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger following the Soviet Union's launch of the satellite Sputnik. SCSP chief executive officer Ylli Bajraktari, NSCAI's former executive director, said Rockefeller and Kissinger saw their project as a way for the U.S. to further define its national objectives when it came to defense, security and foreign policy. "This is not the first time that we're seeing technology playing a critical role in great power competition," Bajraktari said.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a force multiplier that has the potential to deliver faster, smarter and safer military effects with less resources. It is an essential technology that is at the heart of advances in decision support, situational awareness, logistics, robotic process automation, natural language processing and digital twin modelling. Massive investments have already been made by both allies and competitors seeking to lead or gain advantage through application of AI. To highlight this, a recent report from the US National Security Commission on AI recommends that, "by 2025, the (US) Department of Defense and Intelligence Community must be AI-ready". What does an "AI-ready" organisation look like, and what does Air Force need to do to realise the benefits?

Dr. Steven Gustafson is Noonum's CTO and an AI scientist, passionate about solving hard problems while having fun and building great teams. Organizations often begin their AI journeys with the expectation that technology can augment their existing processes. While this is sometimes true, more often, organizational processes and business operations need to change to leverage AI. This article is the first step of a process I've used for many years to help businesses architect AI solutions to help make better decisions and achieve a positive return on their AI investments. The goal of this step is to answer the following question: Are we ready to invest in AI? Decide: What decision in your business do you need to use AI for? Organizations make decisions all the time that can be improved using AI -- for example, who to hire, what sales lead to approach or what products to offer for a discount.

As AI being associated with many promises, our expectations are high. It is thought to make processes faster and more accurate – translating into more efficiency and return on investment. Thinking big is, however, never bad. But it is important to stay realistic, get the basics right, and start small. First and foremost, we must not to forget, AI is not something that we "plug in and play".

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have burst into the spotlight in recent years getting attention from businesses and all levels of society. Awareness of AI has drastically increased as people become more familiar with how the tech giants are using data to enhance their products and create better solutions. The market is opening up to more AI-infused products, and the public are regularly interacting with AI as it slips into their day-to-day lives through smartphones and virtual assistants. Many companies who are taking the plunge with AI initiatives are not coming out on top, and this is usually because they were not AI Ready when they thought they were. So what does it mean for a business to be AI Ready?

Having access to the right data when it is needed will significantly ease and speed the development of future Department of Defense artificial intelligence capabilities. Unfortunately, much of the data that could be used for AI development in the DoD is not collected or stored effectively for optimal use. For this reason, data scientists and AI practitioners from the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center are encouraging DoD components to begin thinking about how to make their systems and procedures "AI-Ready." "When someone comes and asks us to build an impactful AI application to help them make better decisions on the battlefield, we don't want to have to respond with, 'Well, we'd love to help you, but you don't have any data. So, we'll have to start from scratch,'" said Colonel Bradley Boyd, lead for the JAIC's Joint Warfighting Operations Mission Initiative.

Earlier this week, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a report outlining what it believes must happen for the U.S. to advance "industries of the future." Several of the committee's suggestions touched on the field of AI as it relates to federal, state, and private-sector partnerships, as well as departmental budgetary considerations. In particular, the report recommends that the U.S. grow nondefense federal investments in AI by 10 times over the next 10 years and for the federal government to create national AI "testbeds," expanding the National Science Foundation's (NSF) AI Institutes with at least one AI Institute in each state and creating a "National AI Consortia" to share capabilities, data, and resources. Loosely, PCAST -- which lives in the Office of Science and Technology -- provides advice to the president on science and technology policy. In the report, the committee argues the U.S. will need to boost AI R&D investments from $1 billion a year in 2020 to $10 billion a year by 2030 in order to remain competitive.