Fox News chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reports on what the United States and Israel are doing to stay ahead of adversaries in A.I. on'Special Report.' Today, something big and unprecedented is happening in Pittsburgh. The inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation summit at Carnegie Mellon University is the clearest and most dramatic manifestation yet of President Donald Trump's promises to make America energy dominant, lead in advanced technology, and create jobs and opportunity for working families in Pennsylvania and across America. In 2017, Mr. Trump said he was "elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris." Today in the Steel City, I am proud to welcome the President and more than 60 CEOs of the world's most important companies and largest investors to my hometown to announce over 50 billion in new investments in energy, artificial intelligence (AI), and workforce development all targeted at making sure Pennsylvania powers the AI revolution.

The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) and advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) offer an opportunity for computational social science research at scale. Building upon prior explorations of LLM agent design, our work introduces a simulated agent society where complex social relationships dynamically form and evolve over time. Agents are imbued with psychological drives and placed in a sandbox survival environment. We conduct an evaluation of the agent society through the lens of Thomas Hobbes's seminal Social Contract Theory (SCT). We analyze whether, as the theory postulates, agents seek to escape a brutish "state of nature" by surrendering rights to an absolute sovereign in exchange for order and security. Our experiments unveil an alignment: Initially, agents engage in unrestrained conflict, mirroring Hobbes's depiction of the state of nature. However, as the simulation progresses, social contracts emerge, leading to the authorization of an absolute sovereign and the establishment of a peaceful commonwealth founded on mutual cooperation. This congruence between our LLM agent society's evolutionary trajectory and Hobbes's theoretical account indicates LLMs' capability to model intricate social dynamics and potentially replicate forces that shape human societies. By enabling such insights into group behavior and emergent societal phenomena, LLM-driven multi-agent simulations, while unable to simulate all the nuances of human behavior, may hold potential for advancing our understanding of social structures, group dynamics, and complex human systems.

This article was first published in the Virginia Mercury. Last week when Virginia's new Secretary of Transportation Sheppard Miller publicly declared his belief that flying cars will be a reality within the next 50 years as a reason that leaders across the commonwealth should "reexamine transit," some might have scoffed. But just as flying cars consumed the fantasies of many mid-century Americans, today plenty of people put their faith in another utopian technology replete with endlessly elusive promises of improved safety and unbridled freedom: autonomous vehicles. As is often the case in the United States, the regulation of autonomous vehicles is largely left to the states, resulting in a patchwork of conflicting and confusing policies where some sort of national approach ought to exist. Any state has the right to craft their own legal framework for the emerging technology but few have -- our commonwealth included.

Gov. Ralph Northam on Thursday announced that Zasti, Inc., an artificial intelligence (AI) technology company for the healthcare industry, will invest $5.9 million to establish its U.S. headquarters and operations in Loudoun County. The company will utilize the facility to develop and embed ZASTI AI platforms in diagnostic devices and enterprise IT systems to ensure product quality, supply chain security, and affordability. Virginia successfully competed with Maryland for the project, which will create 60 new jobs. "Virginia continues to push new boundaries in artificial intelligence, and we are excited to welcome a global company that is advancing both the technology and healthcare industries with its innovative platform," Northam said in a news release. "Our Commonwealth has the second-highest concentration of technology workers in the country, and Zasti's Loudoun County operation will tap into the deep well of talent in the region to build on its mission of using artificial intelligence to address our most pressing challenges."

This is a continuation of Carlos Rivero's interview with Ask the CIO: SLED Edition on June 25. Last week during my interview with Carlos Rivero, the Commonwealth of Virginia's first chief data officer (CDO), I opined that the growing establishment of state CDO positions across the country reminded me somewhat of the creation of the state chief information officer position back in the mid-1990s. It's gradually becoming commonplace as half the states now have a CDO. In addition, the position's placement within the state organizational hierarchy also continues to evolve with about half reporting to the state CIO while the other half are located within the states' "administration secretariat." Rivero's initial task as CDO likewise reminded me of the role that I and other state CIOs faced during the Y2K drill some two decades ago.

Governor Northam announced that Virginians can now use COVIDCheck, a new online risk-assessment tool to check their symptoms and connect with the appropriate health care resource, including COVID-19 testing. "If you are feeling sick or think you may have been exposed to someone with COVID-19, it is important that you take action right away," said Governor Northam. "This online symptom-checking tool can help Virginians understand their personal risk for COVID-19 and get recommendations about what to do next from the safety of their homes. As we work to flatten the curve in our Commonwealth, telehealth services like this will be vital to relieving some of the strains on providers and health systems and making health care more convenient and accessible." COVIDCheck is a free, web-based, artificial intelligence-powered telehealth tool that can help individuals displaying symptoms associated with COVID-19 self-assess their risk and determine the best next steps, such as self-isolation, seeing a doctor, or seeking emergency care.

New and emerging technologies throughout history have transformed our lives, well-being, and day to day tasks. This is true in financial services as well: we use cash less and cards more, have access to banking services 24/7, and can perform most aspects of our financial lives without visiting a bank branch. Emerging technologies also carry new risks and are distributed unevenly, with some populations using cutting edge technology to get ahead, while others are left out of the system. When it comes to financial services, Commonwealth believes that it is crucial to ensure financially vulnerable consumers are included as our financial system continues to evolve. Our team focused on getting a deeper understanding of the technology and use cases for blockchain, machine learning, and data science.

Artificial intelligence could change the way Kentucky runs its service desk, the state's CIO says. "We're actually looking at AI to help us with our service desk. We run about 16,000 trouble tickets a month -- 42 percent of those are literally password resets," Chuck Grindle, Kentucky's chief information officer, says in a video interview. "Can we implement artificial intelligence and allow that to occur automatically?" Automating that piece of the service desk would free up employees to tackle more complex requests, and ultimately, make the state's investment in information technology go further, Grindle says. That efficiency builds on the work the state is already doing in modernization. According to Grindle, the state will wrap up the migration of more than 1,000 physical servers and 3,000 virtual servers to new environments in the state's primary and alternate data center this month.

Meghan Markle was the most Googled person in Britain this year, the tech giant has revealed. The American actress, who married Prince Harry in May, has seen more people look up her name than any other figure in the UK. This is the second time the former Suits star has soared to the top of the search engine's'top trending people' list. Meghan Markle was the most Googled person in Britain this year, the tech giant has revealed. This is the second time the former Suits star has soared to the top of the search engine's'top trending people' list Celebrity Big Brother contestant Roxanne Pallett came in second place.

In some very sad but not at all surprising news considering how things have been going for social robots lately, The Robot Report is, er, reporting that Jibo Inc. has completed the sale of its assets and intellectual property to a New York–based investment management firm, which I suspect is not going to be using Jibo's IP to build robots. We've known for a while that Jibo (the company) was having some challenges both in selling robots and meeting expectations. Layoffs followed, and back in June, a Boston Globe reporter stopped by Jibo's Boston office to find it deserted and full of packing material and sold furniture. New Jibos haven't been available to purchase for months, although owners reported getting software updates as recently as August. According to The Robot Report, however, Jibo has now sold all of its IP and assets to SQN Venture Partners, which is probably just going to try to sell them off for as much money as possible. We'll update the post if we hear back.)