Netra, co-founded by Shashi Kant SM '06, uses artificial intelligence to help companies sort and manage video content. At any given moment, many thousands of new videos are being posted to sites like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. An increasing number of those videos are being recorded and streamed live. But tech and media companies still struggle to understand what's going in all that content. Now MIT alumnus-founded Netra is using artificial intelligence to improve video analysis at scale.

At any given moment, many thousands of new videos are being posted to sites like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. An increasing number of those videos are being recorded and streamed live. But tech and media companies still struggle to understand what's going in all that content. Now MIT alumnus-founded Netra is using artificial intelligence to improve video analysis at scale. The company's system can identify activities, objects, emotions, locations, and more to organize and provide context to videos in new ways.

Something curious is happening in Finland. Though much of the global debate around artificial intelligence (A.I.) has become concerned with unaccountable, proprietary systems that could control our lives, the Finnish government has instead decided to embrace the opportunity by rolling out a nationwide educational campaign. Conceived in 2017, shortly after Finland's A.I. strategy was announced, the government wants to rebuild the country's economy around the high-end opportunities of artificial intelligence, and has launched a national program to train 1 percent of the population -- that's 55,000 people -- in the basics of A.I. "We'll never have so much money that we will be the leader of artificial intelligence," said economic minister Mika Lintilä at the launch. "But how we use it -- that's something different." Artificial intelligence can have many positive applications, from being trained to identify cancerous cells in biopsy screenings, predict weather patterns that can help farmers increase their crop yields, and improve traffic efficiency.

The five-day event hosted around 4,500 exhibitors from more than 100 different countries. An estimated 100,000 visitors attended the annual event which focused on Artificial Intelligence as a key theme. Industry titans such as Google, Amazon, Alibaba and LinkedIn came together to discuss the latest trends. Google's Chief Decision Scientist Cassie Kozyrkov (left), LinkedIn's Chief Data Officer Igor Perisic (center) and Alibaba's Chief Machine Intelligence Scientist Wanli Min (right) debate on how AI is transforming decision making in major sectors On the hot topic of AI investment, the CDO of the networking and jobs portal Linkedin, Igor Perisic, spoke of the "blind spots" that companies integrating the technology into their businesses must be aware of. Alibaba's Chief Machine Intelligence Scientist, Wanli Min also explored how emerging technologies like autonomous vehicles and building smarter cities could meet the demands of swelling populations.

Seventy years ago was arguably the start of the modern computer age. A machine that took up an entire room at a laboratory in Manchester University ran its first programme at 11am on 21 June 1948. The prototype completed the task in 52 minutes, having run through 3.5 million calculations. The Manchester Baby, known formally as the Small-Scale Experimental Machine, was the world's first stored-program computer. It paved the way for the first commercially-available computers in a city known for centuries of science and innovation. Dr "Tommy" Gordon Thomas was 19 and in the final year of a physics degree at Manchester when he met Sir Freddie Williams, who designed The Baby with colleagues Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill.

PWC Deals Exchange April 26, 2018 How is the economy changing? What are the implications for business? What does technology now make possible that was previously impossible? We have to let go of the maps that are steering us wrong In 1625, we thought California was an island In 2018, we still think in terms of standalone firms. We need to think about every company as if it is a network Networks and the Nature of the Firm "The existence of high transaction costs outside firms led to the emergence of the firm as we know it, and management as we know it….The reverse side of Coase's argument is as important: If the (transaction) costs of exchanging value in the society at large go down drastically as is happening today [because of networks], the form and logic of economic and organizational entities necessarily need to change! The mainstream firm, as we have known it, becomes the more expensive alternative."Esko

As a combat veteran and more recently an industry technologist and university professor, I have observed with concern the increasing automation--and dehumanization--of warfare. Sarah Underwood's discussion of autonomous weapons in her news story "Potential and Peril" (June 2017) highlighting this trend also reminded me of the current effort to update the ACM Code of Ethics, which says nothing about the responsibilities of ACM members in defense industries building the software and hardware in weapons systems. Underwood said understanding the limitations, dangers, and potential of autonomous and other warfare technologies must be a priority for those designing such systems in order to minimize the "collateral damage" of civilian casualties and property/infrastructure destruction. Defense technologists must be aware of and follow appropriate ethical guidelines for creating and managing automated weapons systems of any kind. Removing human control and moral reasoning from weapons will not make wars less likely or less harmful to humans.

At a recent Internet Association Gala, Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, intimated that we are currently living the "golden age" of artificial intelligence. With product development and artificial intelligence (AI) applications on a seemingly rapid upward trajectory, Bezos might not be wrong. Open source software and the emergence of edge computing have allowed widespread AI development. Due to standardized operating frameworks and interconnectivity of technology, it's never been easier to develop AI products. Skeptics, such as Tim Berners-Lee and Stephen Hawking, however, argue that an AI renaissance will likely herald the end of mankind.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the world wide web, has given a series of interviews in which he has criticised how the internet has developed, condemned how advertising has evolved and warned of the risks that global connectivity poses to users' privacy. In an interview with The Guardian, Sir Tim said that the Trump administration's decision to allow internet service providers to sign away their customers' privacy and sell users' browsing habits is "disgusting" and "appalling". The problem with the internet, he said, is that it can be "ridiculously revealing". "You have the right to go to a doctor in privacy where it's just between you and the doctor. And similarly, you have to be able to go to the web."

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, was declared recipient of the prestigious Association for Computing Machinery's AM Turing award on Tuesday. In an interview with the Guardian, Berners-Lee discussed the "appalling" attitude of Republican politicians seeking to roll back net neutrality protections, how his own legacy intersects with the great Alan Turing's, and the astonishing progress of the web since he launched the very first website on 1 August 1991. Berners-Lee hasn't rested on his laurels since creating the information space in which this article is being read: the 61-year-old information scientist, now at Boston's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has spent years fighting to protect an open internet and against privatization of personal data. The 51-year-old prize could scarcely go to a more appropriate recipient. Turing's innovations helped to standardize computing, and Berners-Lee helped to make standardized conversation between computers possible for the layman.