Artificial Intelligence

Executives from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook met officials at Downing Street on Wednesday to discuss their role in the coronavirus crisis. One of the things discussed was their role in "modelling and tracking data". In similar meetings at the White House, meanwhile, companies were asked how they could use artificial intelligence. A World Health Organization report last month said AI and big data were a key part of China's response to the virus.

The world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) news anchor made “his” debut at the ongoing fifth World Internet Conference in east China’s Zhejiang province. AI is a way of making a machine or a software ‘think’ and ‘demonstrate’ intelligently in a manner similar to humans. The AI news anchor has a male image with a voice, facial expressions and actions of a real person. “He” learns from live broadcasting videos by himself and can read texts...

An artwork made by an artificial intelligence program sold at a Christie’s auction for $432,500, nearly 45 times its high estimate. Portrait of Edmond Belamy, a painting created by a Paris-based art collective called Obvious, was generated by using an algorithm and a data set of 15,000 portraits painted between the 14th and 20th centuries. It sold during the October 23-25 Prints & Multiples sale at Christie’s, making it the first piece of AI art to go under the hammer...

Some notable individuals such as legendary physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla and SpaceX leader and innovator Elon Musk suggest AI could potentially be very dangerous; Musk at one point was comparing AI to the dangers of the dictator of North Korea. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also believes there’s reason to be cautious, but that the good can outweigh the bad if managed properly. Since recent developments have made super-intelligent machines...

More than a third of AI experts surveyed by Pew Research said they are concerned that artificial intelligence will leave humanity worse off in 2030 than they are now, with the majority optimistic that the benefits will make life better for individuals. Pew surveyed 979 “technology pioneers, innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists,” asking whether they thought that AI advances would leave most people better off...

Robots with minds of their own, bad guys manipulating data, and getting sorely outpaced by the Chinese. Those are just a few concerns shared by leaders tasked with weaving machine learning into military operations. Exactly how artificial intelligence will play out on the battlefield remains to be seen. Defense leaders and researchers are on the hunt for ways to free up troops' time so they can address more pressing issues. How can we lighten the load for soldiers...