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Last week an artificial intelligence called NooK beat eight world champion players at bridge. That algorithms can outwit humans might not seem newsworthy. IBMs Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. In 2016, Googles AlphaGo defeated a Go grandmaster. A year later the AI Libratus saw off four poker stars. Yet the real-world applications of such technologies have been limited. Stephen Muggleton, a computer scientist, suggests this is because they are black boxes that can learn better than people but cannot express, and communicate, that learning.

NooK, from French startup NukkAI, is different. It won by formulating rules, not just brute-force calculation. Bridge is not the same as chess or Go, which are two-player games based on an entirely known set of facts. Bridge is a game for four players split into two teams, involving collaboration and competition with incomplete information. Each player sees only their cards and needs to gather information about the other players hands. Unlike poker, which also involves hidden information and bluffing, in bridge a player must disclose to their opponents the information they are passing to their partner.

This feature of bridge meant NooK could explain how its playing decisions were made, and why it represents a leap forward for AI. When confronted with a new game, humans tend to learn the rules and then learn to improve by, for example, reading books. By contrast, black box AIs train themselves by deep learning: playing a game billions of times until the algorithm has worked out how to win. It is a mystery how this software comes to its conclusions or how it will fail.

NooK nods to the work of British AI pioneer Donald Michie, who reasoned that AIs highest state would be to develop new insights and teach these to humans, whose performance would be consequently increased to a level beyond that of a human studying by themselves. Michie considered weak machine learning to be just improving AI performance by increasing the amount of data ingested.

His insight has been vindicated as deep learnings limits have been exposed. Self-driving cars remain a distant dream. Radiologists were not replaced by AI last year, as had been predicted. Humans, unlike computers, often make short work of complicated, high-stake tasks. Thankfully, human society is not under constant diagnostic surveillance. But this often means not enough data for AI is available, and frequently it contains hidden, socially unacceptable biases. The environmental impact is also a growing concern, with computing projected to account for 20% of global electricity demand by 2030.

Technologies build trust if they are understandable. Theres always a danger that black box AI solves a problem in the wrong way. And the more powerful a deep-learning system becomes, the more opaque it can become. The House of Lords justice committee this week said such technologies have serious implications for human rights and warned against convictions and imprisonment on the basis of AI that could not be understood or challenged. NooK will be a world-changing technology if it lives up to the promise of solving complex problems and explaining how it does so.

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The Guardian view on bridging human and machine learning: its all in the game - The Guardian

Rapidly developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology is becoming increasingly critical for innovation and economic growth. To secure American leadership and competitiveness in this emerging field, policymakers should create an innovation-friendly environment for AI research. To do so, federal authorities should identify ways to engage the private sector and research institutions.

The National AI Research and Development (R&D) Strategic Plan, which will soon be updated by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), presents such an opportunity. However, the AI Strategic Plan needs several updates to allow the private sector and academic institutions to become more involved in developing AI technologies.

First, the OSTP should propose the creation of a federal AI regulatory sandbox to allow companies and research institutions to test innovative AI systems for a limited time. An AI sandbox would not only benefit consumers and participating companies; it would also enable regulators to gain first-hand insights into emerging AI systems and help craft market-friendly regulatory frameworks and technical standards. Regulators could also create sandbox programs to target innovation on specific issuessuch as human-machine interaction and probabilistic reasoningthat the AI Strategic Plan identifies as priority areas in need of further research.

Second, the updated AI strategy should outline concrete steps to publish high-quality data sets using the vast amount of non-sensitive and non-personally identifiable data that the federal government possesses. AI developers need high-quality data sets on which AI systems can be trained, but the lack of access to these data sets remains a significant challenge for developing novel AI technologies, especially for startups and businesses without the resources of big tech companies. The costs associated with creating, cleaning, and preparing such data sets are too high for many businesses and academic institutions. For example, AlphaGo, a software produced by Google subsidiary DeepMind, made headlines in March 2016 when it defeated the human champion of a Chinese strategy game. More than $25 million was spent on hardware alone to train data sets for this program.

Recognizing this challenge, the AI Strategic Plan recommended the development of shared public data sets, but progress in this area appears to be slow. Under the 1974 Privacy Act, the U.S. government has not created a central data repository, which is important due to the privacy and cybersecurity risks that such a repository of sensitive information would pose. However, different U.S. agencies have created a wide range of non-personally identifiable and non-sensitive data sets intended for public use. Two notable examples are the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations climate data and NASAs non-confidential space-related data. Making such data readily available to the public can promote AI innovation in weather forecasting, transportation, astronomy, and other underexplored subjects.

Therefore, the AI strategy should propose a framework that enables the OSTP and the NSTC to work with government agencies in order to ensure that non-sensitive and non-personally identifiable dataintended for public useare made available in a format suitable for AI research by the private sector and research institutions. To that end, the OSTP and the NSTC could use the federal governments existing FedRAMP classification of different data types to decide which data should be included in such data sets.

Finally, the AI Strategic Plan would benefit from a closer examination of other countries AI R&D strategies. While policymakers should exercise caution in making international comparisons, awareness of these broader trends can help the United States capitalize on different countries successes and avoid their regulatory mistakes. For example, the British and French governments recently spearheaded initiatives to promote high-level interdisciplinary AI research in multiple disciplines. Likewise, the Chinese government has launched similar initiatives to encourage cross-disciplinary academic research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, economics, psychology, and other disciplines. Studying and evaluating other countries approaches could provide American policymakers insights into which existing R&D resources should be devoted to interdisciplinary AI projects.

To maximize the benefit of this comparative approach, the AI Strategic Plan should propose mechanisms to conduct annual reviews of the global AI research and regulatory landscape andevaluations of its successes and failures.

Ultimately, due to AIs general-purpose nature and its diffusion across the economy, the AI Strategic Plan should focus on enabling a wide range of actors, from startups to academic and financial institutions, to play a role in strengthening American AI innovation. An innovation-friendly research environment and an adaptable, light-touch regulatory approach are vital to secure Americas global economic competitiveness and technological innovation in artificial intelligence.

Ryan Nabil is a Research Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.

Image: Flickr/U.S. Air Force.

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How to Strengthen America's Artificial Intelligence Innovation - The National Interest

The Future of Life Institute (FLI) was founded in March 2014 by eminent futurologists and researchers to reduce catastrophic and existential risks to humankind from advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). Elon Musk, who is on FLI's advisory board, donated $10 million to jump-start research on AI safety because, in his words, 'with artificial intelligence, we are summoning the devil'. For something that everyone is singing hosannas to these days, and treating as a solution to almost all challenges faced by industry or healthcare or education, why this cautionary tale?

AI's perceived risk isn't only from autonomous weapon systems that countries like the US, China, Israel and Turkey produce that can track and target humans and assets without human intervention. It's equally about the deployment of AI and such technologies for mass surveillance, adverse health interventions, contentious arrests and the infringement of fundamental rights. Not to mention about the vulnerabilities that dominant governments and businesses can insidiously create.

AI came into global focus in 1997 when IBM's Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov. We came to accept that the outcome was inevitable, considering it was a game based on logic. And that the ability of the computer to reference past games, figure options and select the most effective move instantly, is superior to what humans could ever do. When Google DeepMind's AlphaGo program bested the world's best Go player Lee Sedol in 2016, we learnt that AI could easily master games based on intuition too.

AI, AI, SirAs the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) sharpened the focus in recognising the ethical dilemmas that AI could create, it has embarked on developing a legal, global document on the subject. Situations discussed include how a search engine can become an echo chamber upholding real-life biases and prejudices - like when we search for the 'greatest leaders of all time', and get a list of only male personalities. Or the quandary when a car brakes to avoid a jaywalker and shifts the risk from the pedestrian to the travellers in the car. Or when AI is exploited to study 346 Rembrandt paintings pixel by pixel, leveraging deep-learning algorithms to produce a magnificent, 3D-printed masterpiece that could deceive the best art experts and connoisseurs.

Then there is the AI-aided application of justice in legislation, administration, adjudication and arbitration. Unesco's quest to provide an ethical framework to ensure emerging technologies benefit humanity at large is, indeed, a noble one.

Interestingly, computer scientists at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wein), Austria, are studying Indian Vedic texts, and applying them to mathematical logic. The idea is to develop reasoning tools to address deontic - relating to duty and obligation - concepts like prohibitions and commitments, to implement ethics in AI.

Logicians at the Institute of Logic and Computation at TU Wein and the Austrian Academy of Science are also gleaning the Mimamsa, which interprets the Vedas and suggests how to maintain harmony in the world, to resolve many innate contradictions. Essentially, as classical logic is less useful when dealing with ethics, deontic logic needs to be developed that can be expressed in mathematical formulae, creating a framework that computers can comprehend and respond to.

Isaac Asimov's iconic 1950 book, I, Robot, sets out the three rules all robots must be programmed with: the Three Laws of Robotics - 1. To never harm a human or allow a human to come to harm. 2. To obey humans unless this violates the first law. 3. To protect its own existence unless this violates the first or second laws. In the 2004 film adaptation, a larger threat is envisaged - when AI-enabled robots rebel and try to enslave and control all humans, to protect humanity for its own good, by their dialectic.

Artificially RealIn the real world, there is little doubt that AI has to be mobilised for the greater good, guided by the right human intention, so that it can be leveraged to control larger forces of nature like climate change and natural disasters that we can't otherwise manage. AI must be a means to nourish humanity in multifarious ways, rather than unobtrusively aid its destruction. It is obvious that the Three Laws of Robotics must be augmented, so that expanded algorithms help the AI engine respect privacy, and not discriminate in terms of race, gender, age, colour, wealth, religion, power or politics.

We're seeing the mainstreaming of AI in an age of exponential digital transformation. How we figure its future will shape the next stage of human evolution. The time is opportune for governments to confabulate - to shape equitable outcomes, a risk management strategy and pre-emptive contingency plans.

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Why it's time to address the ethical dilemmas of artificial intelligence - Economic Times

WASHINGTON A federal judge ruled on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump and a lawyer who had advised him on how to overturn the 2020 election most likely had committed felonies, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.

The judges comments in the civil case of the lawyer, John Eastman, marked a significant breakthrough for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The committee, which is weighing making a criminal referral to the Justice Department, had used a filing in the case to lay out the crimes it believed Mr. Trump might have committed.

Mr. Trump has not been charged with any crime, and the judges ruling had no immediate, practical legal effect on him. But it essentially ratified the committees argument that Mr. Trumps efforts to block Congress from certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.s Electoral College victory could well rise to the level of a criminal conspiracy.

The illegality of the plan was obvious, wrote Judge David O. Carter of the Central District of California. Our nation was founded on the peaceful transition of power, epitomized by George Washington laying down his sword to make way for democratic elections. Ignoring this history, President Trump vigorously campaigned for the vice president to single-handedly determine the results of the 2020 election.

The actions taken by Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman, Judge Carter found, amounted to a coup in search of a legal theory.

The Justice Department has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation of the Capitol assault but has given no public indication that it is considering a criminal case against Mr. Trump. A criminal referral from the House committee could increase pressure on Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to do so.

The judges ruling came as the committee was barreling ahead with its investigation. This week alone, people familiar with the investigation said, the panel has lined up testimony from four top Trump White House officials, including Jared Kushner, the former presidents son-in-law and adviser, whose interview was scheduled for Thursday.

The committee also voted 9 to 0 on Monday night to recommend criminal contempt of Congress charges against two other allies of Mr. Trump Peter Navarro, a former White House adviser, and Dan Scavino Jr., a former deputy chief of staff for their participation in efforts to overturn the 2020 election and their subsequent refusal to comply with the panels subpoenas. The matter now moves to the Rules Committee, then the full House. If it passes there, the Justice Department will decide whether to charge the men. A contempt of Congress charge carries a penalty of up to a year in jail.

But Judge Carters decision was perhaps the investigations biggest development to date, suggesting its investigators have built a case strong enough to convince a federal judge of Mr. Trumps culpability and laying out a road map for a potential criminal referral.

Judge Carters decision came in an order for Mr. Eastman, a conservative lawyer who had written a memo that members of both parties have likened to a blueprint for a coup, to turn over more than 100 emails to the committee.

A lawyer for Mr. Eastman said in a statement on Monday that he respectfully disagrees with Judge Carters findings but would comply with the order to turn over documents.

In a statement hailing the judges decision, the chairman of the House committee, Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, and its vice chair, Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said the nation must not allow what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, to be minimized and cannot accept as normal these threats to our democracy. Mr. Trump made no public statement about the ruling.

Many of the documents the committee will now receive relate to a legal strategy proposed by Mr. Eastman to pressure Vice President Mike Pence not to certify electors from several key swing states when Congress convened on Jan. 6, 2021. The true animating force behind these emails was advancing a political strategy: to persuade Vice President Pence to take unilateral action on Jan. 6, Judge Carter wrote.

One of the documents, according to the ruling, is an email containing the draft of a memo written for another one of Mr. Trumps lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, recommending that Mr. Pence reject electors from contested states.

This may have been the first time members of President Trumps team transformed a legal interpretation of the Electoral Count Act into a day-by-day plan of action, Judge Carter wrote.

Mr. Eastman had filed suit against the panel, trying to persuade a judge to block the committees subpoena for documents in his possession. As part of the suit, Mr. Eastman sought to shield from release documents he said were covered by attorney-client privilege.

In response, the committee argued under the legal theory known as the crime-fraud exception that the privilege did not cover information conveyed from a client to a lawyer if it was part of furthering or concealing a crime.

The panel said its investigators had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, Mr. Eastman and other allies could be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.

Judge Carter, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, agreed, writing that he believed it was likely that the men not only had conspired to defraud the United States but dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history, he wrote.

In deciding that Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman had more likely than not broken the law the legal standard for determining whether Mr. Eastman could claim attorney-client privilege Judge Carter noted that the former president had facilitated two meetings in the days before Jan. 6 that were explicitly tied to persuading Vice President Pence to disrupt the joint session of Congress.

Justice Department widens inquiry. Federal prosecutors are said to have substantially widened their Jan. 6 investigationto examine the possible culpability of a broad range of pro-Trump figures involved in efforts to overturn the election. The investigation was initially focused on the rioters who had entered the Capitol.

Investigating Trump's actions. Evidence gathered by the Justice Department and House committee show how former President Donald J. Trumps Be there, willbe wild! tweetincited far-right militants ahead of Jan. 6, while call logsreveal how personally involved Mr. Trump was in his attempt to stay in office before and during the attack.

Judge says Trump likely committed crimes. In a court filing in a civil case, the Jan. 6 House committee laid out the crimes it believed Mr. Trump might have committed. The federal judge assigned to the case ruled that Mr. Trump most likely committed feloniesin trying to overturn the 2020 election.

Virginia Thomass text messages. In the weeks before the Capitol riot, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent several textsimploring Mark Meadows, President Trumps chief of staff, to take steps to overturn the election.The Jan. 6 House committee is likely to seek an interview with Ms. Thomas, said those familiar with the matter.

At the first meeting, on Jan. 4, Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman invited Mr. Pence and two of his top aides, Greg Jacob and Marc Short, to the Oval Office. There, Judge Carter wrote, Mr. Eastman presented his plan to Vice President Pence, focusing on either rejecting electors or delaying the count.

That meeting was followed by another, Judge Carter wrote, on Jan. 5, during which Mr. Eastman sought again to persuade Mr. Jacob to go along with the scheme.

Mr. Trump continued to pressure Mr. Pence even on Jan. 6, Judge Carter wrote, noting that the former president had made several last-minute appeals to Mr. Pence on Twitter. Mr. Trump called Mr. Pence by phone, Judge Carter wrote, and once again urged him to make the call and enact the plan.

While the House committee has no authority to directly bring charges against Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump was not a party to the Eastman civil case, Judge Carters ruling on Monday underscored the persistent questions of whether Mr. Trump could face criminal culpability for both his business dealings and his efforts to reverse the outcome of the election.

Last week, The New York Times reported that a prosecutor in New York City who was investigating Mr. Trumps financial dealings believed the former president was guilty of numerous felonies in how he handled his real-estate and business transaction before taking office. The assessment of Mr. Trump by the prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, came in a letter last month in which Mr. Pomerantz announced he was resigning from the Manhattan district attorneys office, which had stopped pursuing an indictment of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump is also facing investigation from the district attorney in Atlanta who recently convened a special grand jury to help probe the former presidents attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

That inquiry centers on Mr. Trumps actions in the two months between his election loss and Congresss certification of the results, including a call he made to Brad Raffensperger, Georgias secretary of state, to pressure him to find 11,780 votes the margin by which Mr. Trump lost the state.

The House committee has been seeking to assemble a definitive account of Mr. Trumps efforts to hold on to the White House and how they led to the assault on the Capitol. Among the documents the committee will now receive from Mr. Eastman is an email that sketched a series of events for the days leading up to and following Jan. 6, if Vice President Pence were to delay counting or reject electoral votes, Judge Carter wrote.

The email maps out potential Supreme Court suits and the impact of different judicial outcomes were Mr. Pence to enact the plan.

The committee will also get documents related to state legislators who were involved in the effort to persuade Mr. Pence not to certify some electoral votes. One of them, Judge Carter wrote, is a letter from the Republican members of the Arizona legislature to Mr. Pence. Two others are letters from a Georgia state senator to Mr. Trump.

The committee has already heard from more than 750 witnesses. John McEntee, the former presidents personnel chief, testified Monday; Anthony Ornato, the former White House chief of operations, was scheduled to testify Tuesday; and Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser, will do so at a later date, those familiar with the investigation said.

Both Mr. Navarro and Mr. Scavino have argued they are prevented from testifying by Mr. Trumps assertions of executive privilege, and that President Biden who waived executive privilege for both men does not have the authority to waive executive privilege over the testimony of a former presidents senior aide.

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Federal Judge Finds Trump Most Likely Committed Crimes Over 2020 Election - The New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 30 (Reuters) - Washington on Wednesday imposed sanctions on a procurement agent in Iran and his companies and accused them of helping to support Tehran's ballistic missile program following missile attacks by suspected Iran-backed proxies against countries in the region.

In a statement issued as talks stalled on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. Treasury Department cited Iran's March 13 missile attack on Erbil in Iraq and an "Iranian enabled" Houthi missile attack on Friday against a Saudi Aramco facility as well as other missile attacks by Iranian proxies against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. read more

It accused the agent Mohammad Ali Hosseini and his network of companies of procuring ballistic missile propellant-related materials for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unit responsible for research and development of ballistic missiles. Iran's IRGC is subject to U.S. sanctions.

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The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the sanctions were unrelated to efforts to revive the nuclear deal under which Iran had limited its nuclear program to make it harder to develop a nuclear bomb - an ambition it denies - in return for relief from global economic sanctions.

The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets of those targeted and generally bars Americans from dealing with them. Those that engage in certain transactions with them also risk being hit with sanctions, the Treasury said.

The network of companies includes Iran-based Jestar Sanat Delijan and Sina Composite Delijan Co. Also sanctioned was P.B. Sadr Co, which the Treasury accused of acting on behalf of Parchin Chemical Industries, an element of Iran's Defense Industries Organization also under U.S. sanctions.

A nascent plan for Iraq's Kurdish region to supply gas to Turkey and Europe - with Israeli help - is part of what prompted Iran to strike Erbil with ballistic missiles this month, Iraqi and Turkish officials say. read more

The Houthis said they launched attacks on Saudi energy facilities on Friday and the Saudi-led coalition said oil giant Aramco's petroleum products distribution station in Jeddah was hit, causing a fire in two storage tanks but no casualties. read more

The indirect U.S.-Iran nuclear talks were nearing an agreement in early March before last-minute Russian demands for sweeping guarantees that would have hollowed out sanctions imposed following its invasion of Ukraine derailed the talks.

Russia has since appeared to have narrowed its demands to cover only work linked to the nuclear deal, leaving a small number of issues to be resolved between Washington and Tehran, diplomats say.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to assure Gulf monarchies on Tuesday that Washington is determined to help them fend off attacks from the Iran-aligned Houthi group in Yemen. read more

Blinken met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, de facto ruler of the United Arab Emirates, in Morocco as part of a trip to the Middle East and North Africa.

Gulf states have for years been frustrated by what they see as U.S. inaction in confronting Iran's role in the region, but their concerns have grown since Joe Biden became president 14 months ago.

Some Gulf nations, as well as Israel, fear that a revived nuclear deal would give Iran more oil revenues that it could use to support regional proxies, potentially leading to more attacks on them.

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Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis, Arshad Mohammed and Chris Gallagher; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Howard Goller

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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U.S. imposes sanctions on key actors in Iran's ballistic ...