The future depends on connectivity. From artificial intelligence and self-driving cars to telemedicine and mixed reality to as yet undreamt technologies, all the things we hope will make our lives easier, safer, and healthier will require high-speed, always-on internet connections. To keep up with the explosion of new connected gadgets and vehicles, not to mention the deluge of streaming video, the mobile industry is working on something called 5G--so named because it's the fifth generation of wireless networking technology. The promise is that 5G will bring speeds of around 10 gigabits per second to your phone. US carriers promise that 5G will be available nationwide by 2020, but the first 5G networks won't be nearly so fast. Carriers have launched demos and pilot programs that demonstrate big leaps in wireless performance, but mobile networks based on the "millimeter-wave" technology that may deliver the fastest speeds probably won't be widely available for years.

Aurora Insight, a startup that provides a "dynamic" global map of wireless connectivity that it built and monitors in real time using AI combined with data from sensors on satellites, vehicles, buildings, aircraft and other objects, is emerging from stealth today with the launch of its first publicly-available product, a platform providing insights on wireless signal and quality covering a range of wireless spectrum bands, offered as a cloud-based, data-as-a-service product. "Our objective is to map the entire planet, charting the radio waves used for communications," said Brian Mengwasser, the co-founder and CEO. He said that to do this the company first "built a bunker" to test the system before rolling it out at scale. With it, Aurora Insight is also announcing that it has raised $18 million in funding -- an aggregate amount that reaches back to its founding in 2016 and covering both a seed round and Series A -- from an impressive list of investors. Led by Alsop Louie Partners and True Ventures, backers also include Tippet Venture Partners, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Promus Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, ValueStream Ventures, and Intellectus Partners.

As 5G networks continue to expand in cities and countries across the globe, key researchers have already started to lay the foundation for 6G deployments roughly a decade from now. This time, they say, the key selling point won't be faster phones or wireless home internet service, but rather a range of advanced industrial and scientific applications -- including wireless, real-time remote access to human brain-level AI computing. That's one of the more interesting takeaways from a new IEEE paper published by NYU Wireless's pioneering researcher Dr. Ted Rappaport and colleagues, focused on applications for 100 gigahertz (GHz) to 3 terahertz (THz) wireless spectrum. As prior cellular generations have continually expanded the use of radio spectrum from microwave frequencies up to millimeter wave frequencies, that "submillimeter wave" range is the last collection of seemingly safe, non-ionizing frequencies that can be used for communications before hitting optical, x-ray, gamma ray, and cosmic ray wavelengths. Dr. Rappaport's team says that while 5G networks should eventually be able to deliver 100Gbps speeds, signal densification technology doesn't yet exist to eclipse that rate -- even on today's millimeter wave bands, one of which offers access to bandwidth that's akin to a 500-lane highway. Consequently, opening up the terahertz frequencies will provide gigantic swaths of new bandwidth for wireless use, enabling unthinkable quantities and types of data to be transferred in only a second.

It's been a big week for 5G, the next generation of wireless networks. Samsung announced its first 5G capable phone, the S10, on Wednesday. Qualcomm announced a new 5G modem on Tuesday. But President Trump is aiming higher. "I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible," Trump wrote in a tweet urging carriers to pick up their pace.

The future depends on connectivity. From artificial intelligence and self-driving cars to telemedicine and mixed reality to as yet undreamt technologies, all the things we hope will make our lives easier, safer, and healthier will require high-speed, always-on internet connections. The FCC regulates who can use which ranges, or bands, of frequencies to prevent users from interfering with each other's signals. Low-Band Frequencies Bands below 1 GHz traditionally used by broadcast radio and television as well as mobile networks; they easily cover large distances and travel through walls, but those are now so crowded that carriers are turning to the higher range of the spectrum. Mid-Band Spectrum The range of the wireless spectrum from 1 GHz to 6 GHz, used by Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, mobile networks, and many other applications.

A natural reaction today may be to chalk up the sale of a smudgy-looking portrait as the latest sign that AI, no longer satisfied with taking jobs, is now moving on to creating artwork and general AI is here and don't forget Skynet, etc. But leave it to Artnet, an art market website, to provide a clear description of Generative Adversarial Networks, an AI system of algorithms and two neural networks used to generate photorealistic images. It also put artificial intelligence's potential in context for artists and business practitioners alike. "We would do better to stop asking where the boundary line lies between human artists' agency and that of AI toolsets, and instead start asking whether human artists are using AI to plumb greater conceptual and aesthetic depths than researchers or coders," Artnet writes. In art and in business, everyone would be better served if AI was treated as a tool, with benefits and risks noted.

DARPA today announced the newest of its Grand Challenges, one designed to ensure that the exponentially growing number of military and civilian wireless devices will have full access to the increasingly crowded electromagnetic spectrum. The agency's Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2) will reward teams for developing smart systems that collaboratively, rather than competitively, adapt in real time to today's fast-changing, congested spectrum environment--redefining the conventional spectrum management roles of humans and machines in order to maximize the flow of radio frequency (RF) signals. DARPA officials unveiled the new Challenge before some 8000 engineers and communications professionals gathered in Las Vegas at the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE). The primary goal of SC2 is to imbue radios with advanced machine-learning capabilities so they can collectively develop strategies that optimize use of the wireless spectrum in ways not possible with today's intrinsically inefficient approach of pre-allocating exclusive access to designated frequencies. The challenge is expected to both take advantage of recent significant progress in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning and also spur new developments in those research domains, with potential applications in other fields where collaborative decision-making is critical.

The Defense Department has decided to make a game out of the problem of spectrum crowding. The Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2), the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency's newest Grand Challenge, will reward teams that develop systems that collaboratively (as opposed to competitively) adapt in real time to changes in congested electromagnetic spectrum, DARPA said in a release. SC2's primary goal is to imbue radios with advanced machine-learning capabilities to collectively develop strategies for optimizing use of the wireless spectrum that aren't possible today due to the intrinsically inefficient approach of pre-allocating exclusive access to designated frequencies. Making more efficient use of the finite spectrum environment has become a DOD priority as the spectrum becomes ever more crowded, and DOD has to comply with a presidential order to free up 500 MHz of its spectrum for commercial use by 2020. "I think today we're in a good spot…We did well with the last auction and the money is there to change where DOD can move and share spectrum," DOD CIO Terry Halvorsen said on March 22.