Using historical data to train risk assessment tools could mean that machines are copying the mistakes of the past.

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott believes understanding AI in the future will help people be better citizens. “I think to be a well-informed citizen in the 21st century, you need to know a little bit about this stuff [AI] because you want to be able to participate in the debates. You don’t want to be someone to whom AI is sort of this thing that happens to you. You want to be an active agent in the whole ecosystem,” he said.

IN 2017, A poker bot called Libratus made headlines when it roundly defeated four top human players at no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em. Now, Libratus’ technology is being adapted to take on opponents of a different kind—in service of the US military

Algorithms are increasingly being used to make ethical decisions. Perhaps the best example of this is a high-tech take on the ethical dilemma known as the trolley problem: if a self-driving car cannot stop itself from killing one of two pedestrians, how should the car’s control software choose who live and who dies?

In literature, characters that smoke are often described as haggard and older looking, with facial features that are associated with worn leather. While these depictions arguably carry over into reality, what is for certain is that the association between smoking, cancer, and cardiovascular disease is strong. Unfortunately, however, the connection between smoking and biological aging has been less clear. Yet, a new study from an international team of investigators led by scientists at Insilico Medicine may change how smoking is evaluated at the biochemical level.

The next time you hop on a ferry, take a look at the captain’s bridge. There may not be a human at the helm much longer. Ships around the world are beginning a transformation into autonomous machines, leveraging the same advances in artificial intelligence that are shaking up the automotive world. In 2017, Ugo Vollmer and his friend Clement Renault were working on self-driving cars in Silicon Valley when an article on autonomous shipping caused them to make a sudden change in direction.

Virtual reality technology made Palmer Luckey a multi-millionaire. Now, the Oculus co-founder's new company is using artificial intelligence technology to create a high-tech surveillance system that could be used to build a "virtual wall" on the southern US border. In fact, Anduril Industries, the defense technology start-up Luckey founded in 2017, has already tested its border control tech in Texas and San Diego. In those tests, Anduril's surveillance technology helped US border agents catch dozens of people who were trying to cross the border into the US without authorization, US Customs and Border Protection told Wired in June 2018.

Journalists need to stop parroting the industry line when it comes to artificial intelligence

Advances in artificial intelligence have created new threats to the privacy of health data, a new UC Berkeley study shows. The study, led by professor Anil Aswani of the Industrial Engineering & Operations Research Department (IEOR) in the College of Engineering and his team, suggests current laws and regulations are nowhere near sufficient to keep an individual’s health status private in the face of AI development. The research was released today on JAMA Network Open.

Facial recognition technology has progressed to point where it now interprets emotions in facial expressions. This type of analysis is increasingly used in daily life. For example, companies can use facial recognition software to help with hiring decisions. Other programs scan the faces in crowds to identify threats to public safety.

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence system that can automatically differentiate between different types of cancer cells and their sensitivity to radiotherapy. A team of researchers in Japan have devised an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can identify different types of cancer cells using microscopy images. Their method can also be used to determine whether the cancer cells are sensitive to radiotherapy. The researchers reported their findings in the journal Cancer Research.

Facial recognition software has made huge advancements in accuracy, but it has a long way to go — specifically when it comes to recognizing women and people of color. Commercially available software can tell the gender of a person using a photograph. But according to a new study from Joy Buolamwini, of the MIT Media Lab, that software is correct 99 percent of the time when it’s looking at a white male and less than half as accurate when looking at a darker-skinned female.

Development across the entire information technology landscape certainly didn’t slow down this year. From CRISPR babies, to the rapid decline of the crypto markets, to a new robot on Mars, and discovery of subatomic particles that could change modern physics as we know it, there was no shortage of headline-grabbing breakthroughs and discoveries. As 2018 comes to a close, we can pause and reflect on some of the biggest technology breakthroughs and scientific discoveries that occurred this year.

There could be no more consequential decision than launching atomic weapons and possibly triggering a nuclear holocaust. President John F. Kennedy faced just such a moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and, after envisioning the catastrophic outcome of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear exchange, he came to the conclusion that the atomic powers should impose tough barriers on the precipitous use of such weaponry. Among the measures he and other global leaders adopted were guidelines requiring that senior officials, not just military personnel, have a role in any nuclear-launch decision.

For the past several years, giant tech companies have rapidly ramped up investments in artificial intelligence and machine learning. They’ve competed intensely to hire more AI researchers and used that talent to rush out smarter virtual assistants and more powerful facial recognition. In 2018, some of those companies moved to put some guardrails around AI technology. The most prominent example is Google, which announced constraints on its use of AI after two projects triggered public pushback and an employee revolt.

Truly revolutionary political transformations are naturally of great interest to historians, and the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century is widely regarded as one of the most influential, serving as a model for building other European democracies. A paper published last summer in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers new insight into how the members of the first National Constituent Assembly hammered out the details of this new type of governance.

John Villasenor discusses the sources of bias in artificial intelligence, how to identify instances of bias, and what can be done to mitigate it.

Teaching AI how to combine smaller models to understand complex situations has been a major stumbling block for machine learning research.

Musk talks about his "excruciating" 2018, fighting with journalists on Twitter, why Tesla won’t build an electric scooter and much more.

London’s unpredictable pedestrians are teaching driverless cars to avoid hitting people. Software is being developed by a start-up based at Imperial College to scan and analyse footage of people walking along the capital’s busiest streets. It is then used to help autonomous vehicles better predict human behaviour and decision-making just before they dart across the road.

With the advent of machine learning, computers can think — sort of. Here’s what that means for the future

Chinese authorities have begun deploying a new surveillance tool: "gait recognition" software that uses people's body shapes and how they walk to identify them, even when their faces are hidden from cameras. Already used by police on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai, "gait recognition" is part of a push across China to develop artificial-intelligence and data-driven surveillance that is raising concern about how far the technology will go.

With Chinese tech giants Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent focused on developing sophisticated AI-driven systems in the coming decade, the rest of the world can only watch while China builds the computer systems that will run our world in the decades to come.

Holding the opinion that I do still believe Self-Driving or Autonomous Vehicles are a luxury rather than a necessity; vehicle manufacturers continue to make the argument that AI vehicles are superior to non-autonomous vehicles. Though, consider that is the case — in certain situations, if the driver is handicapped, under the influence, or just plain tired, let AI take the wheel (Pathetic Carrie Underwood Pun intended).

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a new system that could significantly speed up the discovery of new drugs and reduce the need for costly and time-consuming laboratory tests.

As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about when it comes to artificially intelligent machines being able to perform many tasks faster and better than humans can, potentially stealing our jobs in the future, and presenting what some technologists worry is an existential threat to humanity, now it appears AI will soon be able to match humans at being, well, human, too.

The New York Times has somewhere in the realm of five to seven million physical photos in its enormous archive, many of which date back more than a century. The images document vital moments and contain valuable records of our recent history, but the hard copies are vulnerable to deterioration (they fortunately survived flooding in 2015). To protect the photos, the Times is digitizing the archive with Google Cloud.

The traditional hiring process is failing candidates, companies and recruiters. It revolves around human interpretation of complex data that is too susceptible to prejudices and mental shortcuts. A hiring process assisted by machine learning could eliminate systemic biases that put social status over skill. However, in recent news, algorithms have failed at that task. A resume screening algorithm developed at Amazon became biased against female applicants. Another such algorithm favored candidates named Jared who played lacrosse.

We say a lot with our hands. We spread them wide to indicate size, stab the air for emphasis and reach out to draw people in. Waving our hands about when we speak makes us appear less robotic – and that’s true for robots too.

Amazon decided to shut down its experimental artificial intelligence (AI) recruiting tool after discovering it discriminated against women. The company created the tool to trawl the web and spot potential candidates, rating them from one to five stars. But the algorithm learned to systematically downgrade women’s CV’s for technical jobs such as software developer.

In 2016, McKinsey analyzed over 800 professions in the US and discovered machines could automate 45 percent of the activities, while 60 percent could see 30 percent or more of their jobs automated. Such a grim forecast doesn’t add a positive light on the role AI will play in the future, even for writers.

The debate over the effects of artificial intelligence has been dominated by two themes. One is the fear of a singularity, an event in which an AI exceeds human intelligence and escapes human control, with possibly disastrous consequences. The other is the worry that a new industrial revolution will allow machines to disrupt and replace humans in every—or almost every—area of society, from transport to the military to healthcare.

Using an AI design process, engineers at software company Autodesk and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory came up with a new interplanetary lander concept that could explore distant moons like Europa and Enceladus. Its slim design weighs less than most of the landers that NASA has already sent to other planets and moons.

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra sees smart loos in our future and is anxious to sell the chips they will need.

A group of experienced lawyers pitted their skills and knowledge against an algorithm, and the results reveal much about how artificial intelligence is shaking up industries.