Artificial intelligence (AI) is a transformative technology that holds promise for tremendous societal and economic benefit. AI has the potential to revolutionize how we live, work, learn, discover, and communicate. AI research can further our national priorities, including increased economic prosperity, improved educational opportunities and quality of life, and enhanced national and homeland security. Because of these potential benefits, the U.S. government has invested in AI research for many years. Yet, as with any significant technology in which the Federal government has interest, there are not only tremendous opportunities but also a number of considerations that must be taken into account in guiding the overall direction of Federally-funded R&D in AI. On May 3, 2016, the Administration announced the formation of a new NSTC Subcommittee on Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence, to help coordinate Federal activity in AI.1 This Subcommittee, on June 15, 2016, directed the Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) to create a National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan. A NITRD Task Force on Artificial Intelligence was then formed to define the Federal strategic priorities for AI R&D, with particular attention on areas that industry is unlikely to address. This National Artificial Intelligence R&D Strategic Plan establishes a set of objectives for Federally-funded AI research, both research occurring within the government as well as Federally-funded research occurring outside of government, such as in academia. The ultimate goal of this research is to produce new AI knowledge and technologies that provide a range of positive benefits to society, while minimizing the negative impacts.

A great many socio-economic events of the utmost importance have taken place in rapid succession in the historically short period of hardly more than three decades. After the Second World War the pace of socio-economic progress has experienced an unprecedented acceleration. This is nothing new in itself. Social formations and the corresponding productive forces prior w socialism had also followed each other at a rapidly increasing rate. Acceleration can also be witnessed in the accumulation of human knowledge, in the fielc;ls of science and technology. Parallel with the development of the productive forces, the growth of population has been exponential. More than one and a half thousand years were needed for the world population to double since the beginning of our era, whereas it takes now less than 40 years. The emergence of capitalism, the appearance of mechanized mass production brought about a radical change in the general progress of human civilization. It opened up the machine age. The classics of Marxism highly appreciated the new power and labour machines and the resulting growth in production, and stated that the productive forces created under capitalism had far surpassed those brought about by all earlier societies taken together. This is true even though the technology of that time looked upon in hindsight had produced hardly more than primitive steam engines and simple labour machines which have by now become, for the most part, relics of technical history.

The Novartis Foundation Series is a popular collection of the proceedings from Novartis Foundation Symposia, in which groups of leading scientists from a range of topics across biology, chemistry and medicine assembled to present papers and discuss results. The Novartis Foundation, originally known as the Ciba Foundation, is well known to scientists and clinicians around the world.

Catalog of reports, decisions and opinions, testimonies and speeches.