So far in 2017, cyberattacks like WannaCry and Petya have left the world wondering what can be done to prevent such attacks in the future before people lose millions of dollars to ransomware, or worse.  While no digital system is ever completely secure, finding and patching vulnerabilities before they can be exploited is the best defense, but continues to be a challenge.  One tool that can help detect vulnerabilities is artificial intelligence (AI).  AI technology can look for bugs that need to be patched in a faster, more in-depth way that produces more results than humans can.  In this vein, this week’s AI spotlight is about using AI in data science competitions like those held by Kaggle, which is part of Google’s cloud platform, or those held by the U.S. Department of Defense.  Typically, Hackathons pit human versus human or human versus system in competitions which also show how particular systems can be vulnerable and need to be fixed, like ...