Major Tech companies are all set to launch Vendor Security Alliance (VSA) - a new coalition committed to improve cyber security standards. The mission of VSA is to address cyber security risks and to establish cyber security standards that will help businesses to evaluate the security of third party vendors.This initiative is headed by Ken Baylor, Uber’s Head of Compliance. The VSA will work with top security experts and compliance officers and will release a yearly questionnaire to benchmark risk. The questionnaire aims to provide a standardized assessment that can be applied across different industries. It will enable companies to ensure that the other companies they are working with are secure. This will also save time and money that companies usually spend to evaluate the partners they work with. To read more about it, visit: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/uber-twitter-and-others-join-forces/

Whenever we talk about some advanced applications, we can see that we have moved way too ahead in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Machine Learning (ML), a branch of AI, is a major factor to turn applications into intelligent ones. There are companies which are building such ML/AI technologies and others are incorporating ML/AI technologies in their applications and services to make it smarter and to provide customer better and easy facilities. But for the automated applications to provide better customer experiences, we need to have human beings in the loop. Although we have achieved great success in building many ML/AI applications, but we are still in the early stages of the journey. For more details, check the given link: https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/06/key-trends-in-machine-learning-and-ai/

The Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, is considered as a basic definition of Artificial Intelligence. It was used to see if something is a person or a machine. A computer passes the test if an interrogator cannot tell whether the answers come from a person or a computer. To pass a rigorously applied test, computer need to have certain capabilities like Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Representation, Automated Reasoning and Machine Learning.

But a recent study shows that the Turing Test has some limitations. Co-author Kevin Warwick, a computer scientist at Coventry University in England said that the Turing Test will not work in the case where the person or machine whoever is being interrogated chooses to stay silent. Read more about it at: http://www.livescience.com/55356-flaw-detected-in-turing-test.html

We have come a long way from coding a simple calculator to programming robots to do our tasks. In the near future, we will be relying on robotic systems that are completely autonomous for tasks varying from driving a car to making life-death decisions like performing a surgery or prescribing medications. But the question arises “Are we ready to entrust the Robotic systems to make life-death decisions? Would we be able to program robots that understand the moral values, customs and rules by which we abide? Roboticists are figuring out the way to deal with the moral or behavioral problems that might arise with the robots. And hopefully, it will go great in the end. Read more at: http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/can-we-trust-robots