Five for Friday: Mr. Open Source Goes to Washington

The White House gets a new incoming Director of Technology, and AI gets ready for the new challenges of the new year. Catch up on the latest quick reads about the technology you need to keep up on. (Yikes! They say to never end a sentence with a preposition, and that last one ends with two of ‘em. So much for that New Year's Resolution.)

1. This week, all eyes have been on Washington. Beyond the headline-making turbulence, you could easily have missed some significant news for anybody who works with technology: the naming of open-source, infrastructure, and security expert David Recordon as the incoming White House Director of Technology.
2. With an experienced technology veteran advising the White House on a wide range of topics, don’t be surprised if AI winds up in the spotlight as a tactical tool for more government applications.
3. But to sustain its momentum, machine learning needs datasets with more diversity.
4. Machine learning and AI also need more power. Lots and lots of power.
5. This week in the Dept. of Just Because You Know How to Do Something Doesn’t Mean It’s Necessarily a Good Idea: Microsoft has a new patent for a technique to build a chatbot based on a specific person. This has led some to speculate about a future filled with digital assistants impersonating the dearly departed. (Makes you wonder if maybe someone in Redmond had a beloved uncle named Clippy?)

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