Federal guidance on artificial intelligence needs additions to ensure the U.S. has a seat at the international table. The rapid proliferation of applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning--or AI, for short--coupled with the potential for significant societal impact has spurred calls around the world for new regulation. The European Union and China are developing their own rules, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has developed principles that enjoy the support of its members plus a handful of other countries. In January, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also issued its own draft guidance, ensuring the United States a seat at the table during this ongoing, multi-year, international conversation. The U.S. guidance--covering "weak" or narrow AI applications of the kind we experience today--reflects a light-touch approach to regulation, consistent with a desire to reward U.S. ingenuity.

The American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC), the premier public-private partnership dedicated to advancing government through the application of information technology, today officially announced the release of the "Artificial Intelligence (AI) Playbook for the U.S. Federal Government." It was produced through a collaborative, volunteer effort by a working group of 133 leaders from government and industry plus academia and associations, hosted by the ACT-IAC Emerging Technology Community of Interest (COI). "The AI Playbook is designed to help the United States Federal Government achieve successful outcomes and reduce risk in its understanding and application of AI technologies," said David Wennergren, CEO of ACT-IAC, "and this important work directly supports the President's Management Agenda (PMA), Cross Agency Priority (CAP) Goal 6 - Shifting from Low-Value to High-Value Work." The Playbook also follows the General Service Administration's Office of Government-wide Policy Modernization and Migration Management (M3) framework used for Shared Services. AI has the power to accelerate government services in fields as diverse as medical research and disaster recovery to help save lives and improve quality of service in impactful ways.

The American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC), the premier public-private partnership dedicated to advancing government through the application of information technology, today officially announced the release of the "Artificial Intelligence (AI) Playbook for the U.S. Federal Government." It was produced through a collaborative, volunteer effort by a working group of 133 leaders from government and industry plus academia and associations, hosted by the ACT-IAC Emerging Technology Community of Interest (COI). "The AI Playbook is designed to help the United States Federal Government achieve successful outcomes and reduce risk in its understanding and application of AI technologies," said David Wennergren, CEO of ACT-IAC, "and this important work directly supports the President's Management Agenda (PMA), Cross Agency Priority (CAP) Goal 6 - Shifting from Low-Value to High-Value Work." The Playbook also follows the General Service Administration's Office of Government-wide Policy Modernization and Migration Management (M3) framework used for Shared Services. AI has the power to accelerate government services in fields as diverse as medical research and disaster recovery to help save lives and improve quality of service in impactful ways.

Last week's White House summit on artificial intelligence (AI) is an encouraging sign of American government and industry working collaboratively to advance this transformative technology. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis recently told a congressional committee that the Department of Defense (DoD) is "not going to have more papers, we're going to move on [AI]." DoD is broadly pursuing AI, not just as another set of programs, but also as a powerful enabler for nearly every defense mission and function. Strategic competitors are not standing idly by, either, as they reshape their economies to more service-based industries bolstered by technology. The U.S. commercial sector has a sense of urgency in adopting AI in the face of increasing international competition.

Support for the research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to play a significant part in a new national Digital Strategy to be announced later this week. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) indicated over the weekend that the strategy will include a major review into the potential for AI, and to identify its critical elements, to be led by Wendy Hall, professor of computer science at Southampton University, and Jermoe Pesenti, chief executive officer of AI company BenevolentTech. It will look at how government and industry could work together on developing AI. The strategy will also confirm funds of £17.3 million through the Engineering and Sciences Research Council to support develop the development of AI and robotics in UK universities. DCMS said this reflects the strategy's ambition for Britain to build on areas of strength and develop a global lead in technologies, including cyber security, connected and smart devices, autonomous vehicles as well as AI.

Hard on the heels of the White House's new report about artificial intelligence's potential to address major societal challenges, NVIDIA will be holding Washington's largest ever AI conference. GTC DC will feature some of the most prominent leaders in government and industry when it takes place Oct. 26-27, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington. The event is the latest in a series of GPU Technology Conferences, which have attracted 16,000 people so far this year across Silicon Valley, Europe and Asia. The timing is right for policymakers and AI experts to meet, following yesterday's White House report concluding that "AI has the potential to help address some of the biggest challenges that society faces" and recommending increased funding in AI research to fuel economic growth. The report, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, published by the National Science and Technology Council, notes that "the effectiveness of government itself is being increased as agencies build their capacity to use AI to carry out their missions more quickly, responsively and efficiently."

Aurora Flight Sciences' Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automantion System (ALIAS), is mounted in the co-pilot seat of a Cessena Caravan aircraft which is preparing for take-off at Manassas Airport in Manassas, Va., Monday, Oct. 17. Government and industry are working together on a robot-like autopilot system that could eliminate the need for a second human pilot in the cockpit. But inside the cockpit, in the right seat, a robot with spindly metal tubes and rods for arms and legs and a claw hand grasping the throttle, was doing the flying. In the left seat, a human pilot tapped commands to his mute colleague using an electronic tablet. The demonstration was part of a Defense Department and industry collaboration that is attempting to replace the second human pilot in two-person flight crews with robot co-pilots that never tire, get bored, feel stressed out or become distracted.

Recognizing the central role that technology now plays in the global economy, the World Economic Forum is establishing a new center in San Francisco to connect tech companies and policymakers in the heart of the world's technology industry. Building off the Forum's thesis of a "Fourth Industrial Revolution," the new facility will focus on bringing government officials and tech companies together to create frameworks for more productive legislative policies that can be implemented worldwide. "Depending on the collective choices we make -– as consumers, as communities, as business, government, and civil society leaders -– these technological breakthroughs could give us the power to move into a world that is even more prosperous, while being more sustainable and more inclusive," reads an early version of remarks prepared by World Economic Forum founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab. "Alternatively, we could end up in a world where our economic, political and social systems are more rigid, more unequal and more conflicted." Despite their deep roots in government-funded research, the relationship between policymakers and the tech companies that have sprung from the civic-minded seeds they nurtured with financing has always been a thorny or even openly antagonistic one (cf.

The future of artificial intelligence is now. After years of steady progress in making computers "smarter," AI prototypes are being incorporated into hundreds of day-to-day actions, such as self-driving cars, intelligent smartphone assistants and several applications in academia, government and industry. As the technology improves, it will be applied in ever more high-impact economic, social, political and cultural areas. Stanford's Russ Altman, left, and Fei-Fei Li will host a June 23 panel on artificial intelligence. In the face of this revolution, Stanford and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will host a panel of AI visionaries from academia, government and industry to discuss how to responsibly integrate the ever-evolving technology into the real world.

Which medicines should Europe's health systems pay for – and how much should they pay? No apologies for returning to the issue, because Europe's authorities have seized on it once again, putting drug pricing at the top of the bill at a meeting of Europe's health ministers in mid-April. Pharmaceutical executives never tire of the discussion either -- because they know that if it goes the wrong way, they could be out of a job, and that in the current tough economic climate, nothing can be ruled out. Even Sanofi's CEO Olivier Brandicourt, the strong man of France's drug industry, was ready to admit -- on his home turf, at a meeting in Lyon, on the eve of the health ministers' meeting -- that he was "not optimistic" that the industry was getting its message across. So there is fertile ground for the health ministers' discussions of pricing -- clothed in the modest figleaf of "Innovations for the benefit of the patient", as a concession to the traditional member-state insistence on keeping these decisions at national level.