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Official guidelines to keep humans safe from robots published

Thou shalt not kill: Official guidelines to keep humans safe from robots are published by standards authority…


The science fiction author Isaac Asimov first proposed the ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ in a short story published in 1942 as a way of ensuring the machines would not rise up to overthrow humanity.

But with robots now starting to appear in people’s homes and artificial intelligence developing, a group of experts have drawn up a new list of rules to protect humanity from their creations.

The British Standards Institution, which develops technical and quality guidelines for goods sold in the UK and issues the famous Kitemark certificate, has drawn up a new standard for robots.

D-Wave systems next quantum chip will 1000X faster and will revolutionize machine learning

Dwave’s next quantum chip, due in 2017, will be able to handle 2,000 qubits which is double the usable number in the existing D-Wave 2X system chip. It will be capable of solving certain problems 1,000x faster than its predecessor.

The new processor will also support additional features that allow for more efficient calculations.

“From an internal tests, that looks like that’s a really good thing to do. We’ve got some problems we’ve already sped up by a factor of 1,000 by exploiting that capability,” said Williams at the CW TEC conference in Cambridge.

The AI of Tomorrow: Ameila’s Like Siri, But With A Doctorate in Psychology

The London Borough of Enfield has employed AI Amelia to handle some customer service aspects. The program will guide customers through the site while learning and even picking up on emotions.

The London borough of Enfield has enlisted artificial intelligence Amelia to take on customer service tasks for its residents starting late this year.

Developed by IPSoft, Amelia is a cognitive agent, capable of automating certain tasks as well as learn from its interactions. As to what makes Amelia a competent asset to the council, IPSoft says she is “[c]apable of analysing natural language, she understands context, applies logic, learns, resolves problems and even senses emotions.”

AI can analyse mammogram results 30 times faster than doctors, and with 99% accuracy

Researchers have developed machine learning software that can accurately diagnose a patient’s breast cancer risk 30 times faster than doctors, based on mammogram results and personal medical history.

The system could help doctors give better diagnoses the first time around — which means fewer mammogram callbacks and false positives.

“This software intelligently reviews millions of records in a short amount of time, enabling us to determine breast cancer risk more efficiently using a patient’s mammogram,” said one of the researchers, Stephen Wong, from Houston Methodist Research Institute. “This has the potential to decrease unnecessary biopsies.”

Mind-Controlled Nanobots Used to Release Chemicals in Living Cockroaches

This is wild: a team of Israeli scientists developed a contraption that uses a person’s brain waves to remotely control DNA-based nanorobots — while the nanobots were inside a living cockroach. When prompted by a human thought, the clam shell-like robots opened up, revealing a drug-like molecule that tweaked the physiology of the cockroach’s cells.

Though “merely a demonstration and proof of concept,” the technology represents a new era of brain-nanomachine interfaces that links a person’s mental state to bioactive payloads such as drugs. Future techniques that build upon this prototype could be helpful for schizophrenia, depression or other mental disorders, in that the drugs only activate when a patient’s brain waves show signs of abnormality.

Talk about the power of positive thinking!

Salesforce Einstein delivers artificial intelligence across the Salesforce platform

Among the AI pieces it is including in the platform are advanced machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing and smart data discovery.

Ultimately, it’s not very different from exposing any other parts of the platform to customers, but it’s focused on making a smarter CRM tool, one that surfaces the information that matters. Sometimes this information may seem apparent, signals any reasonably good sales person would be looking for. Salesforce’s goal here is to put this key data front and center, and it believes even the most skilled sales pros will benefit from this approach.

For inside sales teams making cold phone calls all day long, the system can surface the most likely candidate as the next call automatically. For sales people working territories, it can keep them apprised of key information such as when a competitor’s interest shows up in the news. While you could argue that an astute sales person would be tracking this information, the Salesforce Einstein approach is designed to leave nothing to chance.

Elon Musk: These Are the 5 Most Important Problems We Need to Solve

In a new interview, Elon Musk identifies genetics, AI, and brain bandwidth as three areas in which today’s youth can have the biggest impact on the future. However, he doesn’t think an idea needs to be revolutionary to be worthwhile.

While many 2o-something-year-olds are just finding their way in the world, young Elon Musk was already looking for ways to change it way back in 1995 (when he was that age).

In a well-known 2015 discussion with Neil deGrasse Tyson for the physicist’s StarTalk Radio podcast, Musk lists the five things he thought would most affect the future of humanity (the internet, sustainable energy, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and rewriting human genetics).