I had the honor participate in a September 27 panel discussion in NYC organized by Markets & Markets.  See this agenda for the Markets & Markets “AI & Blockchain Fintech Confex” event.   SIIA views blockchain as part of a continuum of technologies that are and will continue to change the world.  Technologies such as the internet of things (IOT), cloud computing, data-driven innovation, and artificial intelligence are all topics SIIA has provided thought leadership on.  This is why  in January this year, we released an Issue Brief on blockchain and hosted an event with the Congressional Blockchain Caucus.   Many of our Member companies are experimenting with blockchain-based products. Dun & Bradstreet, for instance, provides a unique blockchain identifying number that corresponds to the Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number that it offers for companies.   This allows companies that do not know each ot ...

Last week, Google released a blog of seven ethical principles to guide their work in artificial intelligence.  The principles are:

There is broad agreement on the value of open data policies to drive government transparency, public accountability and citizen-centered services, providing valuable data resources to citizens while often enhancing the effectiveness of government.  Open government data is integral to the management of the federal government, leading not only to better decisions, but also to generation of higher quality data as government leaders learn to benefit from data-driven innovation.  As Federal CIO Suzette Kent recently put it, “data drives tomorrow’s innovation.” At the same time, the types of data that governments deal with are increasingly diverse and complex, involving cases where the government collects or licenses private sector data, and sometimes combines this data with data produced by the government.  In many cases, this private sector data is proprietary and comes with intellectual property protections, providing for use by the government but stopp ...

Today, on February 14, 2018, the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Subcommittee on Research and Technology held a very interesting

Yesterday’s event on blockchain, which was framed by SIIA’s Issue Brief, enticed great attendance and sophisticated audience involvement.  You can view the event on Facebook here.  It is worthwhile taking a look even just at the first ten minutes with Congressmen Schweikert’s and Polis’ interventions.  Their commitment and passion for this technology’s potential is palpable.  We are lucky to have this bipartisan approach to reviewing blockchain. We were also lucky to have an all-star cast of panelists: Robert L. Strayer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Cyber and International Communications and Information Policy; Brian Trackman, Attorney Lead, Counsel, LabCFTC and CFTC Office of General Counsel; Thomas Savage, Lead Blockchain Researcher, Centers for Disease Control; David Egts, Chief Technologist, North America Public Sector, Red Hat; Jon West, Head of Platforms, Technology Department, Thomson Reuters; Angela Angelovska-Wil ...

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted yesterday to repeal the Obama Administration’s net neutrality regulations, also known as the “Open Internet Order.”  That order, adopted by the FCC in 2015, reclassified broadband internet access providers as communication service providers for regulation under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, providing the FCC broad authority to regulate “common carriers” and created explicit prohibitions on broadband providers to block or throttle sites or apps or offer paid prioritization of any Internet content. The new rules put in place by the FCC, officially referred to as the “Restoring Internet Freedom Order,” have been touted as “light touch” regulation by Chairman Ajit Pai, whereby broadband providers will still be required to adhere to transparency requirements regarding their treatment of content, which will be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  Earlier thi ...

After honoring our veterans this past Veteran’s Day, it is also important to shed light on various ways to help ensure that Veterans and others with mental illnesses can receive the care that they may need for scars both visible and invisible.  Sadly, one of the most affected groups of suicide are veterans with an average of 20 Veterans passing away each day due to suicide, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. As written in a previous SIIA AI Spotlight, in the United States, suicide is ranked as the third leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 14, second among people ages 15 to 24, fourth among people ages 35-54, and tenth overall according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  One such tool that may aid in the field of suicide prevention is, unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard University developed a machine learning algorithm that, when paired ...

On November 7, 2017 I made a short presentation to the AI Caucus event on AI and ethics, which is summarized in this blog.

One of the biggest cold cases of the 21st Century is the case of who betrayed Anne Frank and her family to the Nazis during World War II.  Anne Frank’s family and another family famously hid in a secret annex for two years before they were given away by an unknown person to the Gestapo.  The Nazis found them and they were sent to concentration camps.  Anne died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and famously wrote a diary documenting her experience hiding from the Nazis.  Her father Otto was the lone survivor of the group of eight hiders.  Otto was able to piece together much of what happened and had Anne’s diary published.  Yet, the Frank family, and many other families who suffered in the holocaust, thought they would never know who betrayed them.  Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be a tool that can help solve this mystery. This case, along with a few others, is strange for a number of reasons.  First, the Nazis were known f ...

According to the National Cancer Institute, in 2016, there were 1,685,210 newly diagnosed cases of cancer in America with 595,690 deaths.  With such staggering numbers, millions of dollars are poured into research into how to fight and treat cancer.  One of the newer innovations in cancer treatment is the increased use of machine learning and precision medicine.  Precision medicine is the act of specifically tailoring a patient’s treatment to his or her own genetic needs.  To do this, machine learning helps doctors provide the best care possible by using predictive analytics to recommend specific treatments.  This week’s AI spotlight will focus on how the Swedish Cancer Institute is partnering with the company GNS Healthcare to use machine learning to better treat cancer patients. Machine learning has serious potential to aid in cancer treatment.  According to the Executive Director of the Swedish Cancer Institute, Thomas Brown, MD, it is ra ...