… a machine-learning-driven program based at the University of Central Florida that predicts coups for a variety of countries.

Does the value of art come from the person who creates the art? Is that value inherent, or is it reliant on the beholder? How do you place a numeric valuation on something as subjective as art? All interesting questions, but let's throw a proverbial spanner in the works. What if the artist was an artificial intelligence (AI) programmed into a humanoid robot body?

Researchers in Switzerland have figured out how to use AI to predict when and where lightning will strike. Researchers from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne used standard meteorological data and machine learning to build a simple system that can predict lightning strike to the nearest 10 to 30 minutes inside a radius of about 18.6 miles, according to an account in Popular Mechanics. "We have used machine learning techniques to successfully hindcast nearby and distant lightning hazards by looking at single-site observations of meteorological parameters," wrote the authors in a new paper published recently in the journal Climate and Atmospheric Science. The researchers used data about past lightning strikes to build an algorithm that can make predictions about new lightning strikes, in a process called hindcasting, as opposed for forecasting. Estimates based on past events are fed into a model to see how well the output matches known results.

Artificial Intelligence, depending on who you speak to, will either be our greatest achievement or our last great achievement as a species. It will either provide complete freedom from laborious tasks or further enslave or exterminate us. AI will either provide a world free of warfare or become the world's greatest war machine turning on its masters. The potential liberation and enhancement to mankind cannot be underestimated, but fears are well founded. Given the latter, let's take a quick look at the concerns about AI.