No one in Washington seems to know what the story is, or even where to set the dateline. Is it the culture war over masks, in the Florida sunshine? Is it the crisis along the southern border? CNN's prime-time viewership is down thirty-seven per cent, MSNBC's numbers are not much better, and even Fox's are in decline. The morning political-newsletter writers, and many of the rest of us, have been reduced to replaying the dramas of the Trump Administration (Why is John Boehner backing an Ohio congressman whom Trump opposes?) or even the Obama years (How much hold does Larry Summers have on the Democratic Party?). For a moment this week the story was whether one of the Bidens' German shepherds, Major, has a biting problem.

The creators of a new artificial intelligence programme hope it could one day save democracy. Are we ready for robots to take over politics? "Siri, who should I vote for?" It has stock, non-committal answers for anything that sounds remotely controversial. But the next generation of digital helpers, powered by advances in artificial intelligence (AI), might not be so reticent.

In January, UC San Diego announced that a group of scientists had succeeded in training a computer to tell the difference between a person with a "healthy" intestine from someone with inflammatory bowel disease by analyzing the genetic makeup of the microbes in their gut. Less than two weeks later, scientists at Stanford University said they also had created an artificial intelligence algorithm that could diagnose skin cancer as accurately as a panel of 21 board-certified dermatologists. These recent advances suggest we are on the verge of some major innovations in the use of machine learning for medical diagnoses. Think what it would mean, for example, if you could use your smartphone to take a photo of a worrisome mole and send the image in to be remotely analyzed by a computer system. The Xconomy Forum on the Human Impact of Innovation, set for next Wednesday, April 19, at the Alexandria at Torrey Pines, was organized to highlight innovations that are expected to bring transformational change to how we live our lives.

A new company launched Monday by former NASA chief Dan Goldin aims to deliver a major boost to the field of neural computing. KnuEdge's debut comes after 10 years in stealth; formerly it was called Intellisis. Now, along with its launch, it's introducing two products focused on neural computing: KnuVerse, software that focuses on military-grade voice recognition and authentication, and KnuPath, a processor designed to offer a new architecture for neural computing. "While at NASA I became fascinated with biology," said Goldin in an interview last week. "When the time came to leave NASA, I decided the future of technology would be in machine intelligence, and I felt a major thrust had to come from inspiration from the mammalian brain."

From 1992 to 2001, Dan Goldin served as the longest-tenured administrator of NASA, overseeing projects like the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavor and the redesign of the International Space Station. After leaving NASA, Goldin spent some time bouncing around and studying robotics before accepting a position as the president of Boston University in 2003. He never officially held the position, however, because the school terminated his contract a day before he was slated to start (though he still got a 1.8 million payout). And then Goldin mostly vanished from the public eye for over 10 years. Today, the 75-year-old Goldin has reemerged to reveal what he has been working on for the past decade: KnuEdge, a top-secret startup based in San Diego, with a mission to one-up Google, AMD, and Intel with the "fundamental invention" of the next-generation computer processor.

It's not all that easy to call KnuEdge a startup. Created a decade ago by Daniel Goldin, the former head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, KnuEdge is only now coming out of stealth mode. It has already raised 100 million in funding to build a "neural chip" that Goldin says will make data centers more efficient in a hyperscale age. Goldin, who founded the San Diego, California-based company with the former chief technology officer of NASA, said he believes the company's brain-like chip will be far more cost and power efficient than current chips based on the computer design popularised by computer architect John von Neumann. In von Neumann machines, memory and processor are separated and linked via a data pathway known as a bus.

After almost 10 years of working incognito, former National Aeronautics and Space Administration head Daniel Goldin is finally ready to formally present KnuEdge to the world. KnuEdge is a "neural technology innovation company," an outfit that builds hardware and software based on neural technology, with a main focus on human-machine interaction. While newly revealed publicly, it has been in stealth mode for a decade now, and has already raised 100 million in funding to build its neural chips. The company has revealed its two primary products: KnuVerse, which is a voice authentication technology, and KnuPath, its state-of-the-art neural chip. It has also unveiled Knurld.io, a software development kit with a cloud-based voice recognition and authentication service. Foremost of these offerings is KnuPath.

From 1992 to 2001, Dan Goldin served as the longest-tenured Adminstrator of NASA, overseeing projects like the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the redesign of the International Space Station. After leaving NASA, Goldin spent some time bouncing around and studying robotics, before accepting a position as the president of Boston University in 2003 -- a position Goldin never officially held, because the school terminated his contract a day before he was slated to start, though he still got a 1.8 million payout. And then, Goldin mostly vanished from the public eye for over ten years. Today, the 75-year-old Goldin has reemerged to reveal what he's been working on for the last decade: KnuEdge, a top-secret startup based in San Diego, with a mission to one-up Google, AMD, and Intel with the "fundamental invention" of the next-generation computer processor. "I'm not an incrementalist; I wanted to wait for the grand slam," Goldin tells Business Insider.

One of the lesser-known projects being pursued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the development of software that learns automatically to find patterns in scientific data. Now, the project could get its computer hardware from an oddly familiar source: the agency's former chief, Dan Goldin, who founded a startup making chips to better handle those calculations The company, KnuEdge, has modeled its computer chip on the human brain in an attempt to increase the speed of programs that fall under the umbrella of machine learning. The new chip could be plugged into data centers to teach itself such jobs as sorting images, understanding language, and following trends in streams of data. Goldin founded the company in 2005, keeping its operations secret until he revealed the new chip on Monday morning, along with voice recognition software that excels in noisy environments. Over the last 10 years, he has supervised the slow process of building the new chip from scratch.

One of the lesser-known projects being pursued by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the development of software that learns automatically to find patterns in scientific data. Now, the project could get its computer hardware from an oddly familiar source: the agency's former chief, Dan Goldin, who founded a startup making chips to do those kinds of tasks. The company, KnuEdge, has modeled its computer chip on the human brain in an attempt to better handle programs that fall under the umbrella of machine learning. The new chip could be plugged into data centers to teach itself such jobs as sorting images, understanding language, and following trends in streams of data. Goldin founded the company in 2005, keeping its operations secret until he revealed the new chip on Monday morning, along with voice recognition software that excels in noisy environments.