These days, it’s tough to avoid newspaper headlines warning that artificial intelligence is coming for your job. The problem is that, often, the only thing these oversimplifications get right is that there is in fact an important connection between automation and work. What’s surprising is how many examples there are of AI acting as the catalyst for new hiring, higher wages, and happier employees. But of course AI success stories aren’t as exciting as the “job-stealing robots” narrative. The reality is that the impact of AI on the workforce is complex, nuanced, and still very much in transition.

The robot was perched over a bin filled with random objects, from a box of instant oatmeal to a small toy shark. This two-armed automaton did not recognize any of this stuff, but that did not matter. It reached into the pile and started picking things up, one after another after another. "It figures out the best way to grab each object, right from the middle of the clutter," said Jeff Mahler, one of the researchers developing the robot inside a lab at the University of California, Berkeley. For the typical human, that is an easy task.

Whether a business requires linear, departmentalized chatbot support for basic user interactions, such as customer service or tech support, or more complex AI bots equipped with natural language processing capabilities, bots will boost your business. From improved key performance indicators like customer conversion to better results in user-behavior-based metrics such as engagement rates, both chatbots and AI bots provide a foundation for sustainable business growth through improved user experiences, scalability, and low overhead, high return efficiency. As a leader in innovative marketing technologies, I have been involved in the enterprise application of bots to assist in various business objectives. I'm also a keynote speaker on bot technology and the impact bots can have on a multitude of revenue streams. Regardless of whether a business uses focalized chatbot technology or more advanced AI bots, businesses can advance the user experience with bots while managing expenses.

A drone is flown during a property inspection following Hurricane Harvey in Houston. The mass destruction brought on by Harvey has been a seminal moment for drone operators, proving that they can effectively map flooding, locate people in need of rescue and verify damage to speed insurance claims. A drone is flown during a property inspection following Hurricane Harvey in Houston. The mass destruction brought on by Harvey has been a seminal moment for drone operators, proving that they can effectively map flooding, locate people in need of rescue and verify damage to speed insurance claims. Tropical Storm Harvey disrupted at least 17 emergency call centers and 320 cellular sites, and it caused outages for more than 148,000 Internet, TV, and phone customers, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Researchers at Oxford University in the U.K. and Google have developed an algorithm that has outperformed professional human lip readers, a breakthrough they say could lead to surveillance video systems that can show the content of speech in addition to the actions of an individual. The researchers developed the algorithm by training Google's Deep Mind neural network on thousands of hours of subtitled BBC TV videos, showing a wide range of people speaking in a variety of poses, activities, and lighting. By translating mouth movements into individual characters, WLAS was able to spell out words. The Oxford researchers found a professional lip reader could correctly decipher less than 25% of the spoken words, while the neural network was able to decipher 50% of the spoken words.

A new $240 million center at MIT may help advance the field of artificial intelligence by developing novel devices and materials to power the latest machine-learning algorithms. It could, perhaps, also help IBM reclaim its reputation for doing cutting-edge AI. The project, announced by IBM and MIT today, will research new approaches in deep learning, a technique in AI that has led to big advances in areas such as machine vision and voice recognition. But it will also explore completely new computing devices, materials, and physical phenomena, including efforts to harness quantum computers--exotic but potentially very powerful new machines--to make AI even more capable. "It's an area no one is touching, and it has the potential for orders-of-magnitude improvements."

You might not have, but Alexa did. Voice assistants have been successfully hijacked using sounds above the range of human hearing. Once in, hackers were able to make phone calls, post on social media and disconnect wireless services, among other things. Assistants falling for the ploy included Amazon Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google Now, Samsung S Voice, Microsoft Cortana and Huawei HiVoice, as well as some voice control systems used in cars. The hack was created by Guoming Zhang, Chen Yan and their team at Zhejiang University in China.

Having extra robotic limbs sure sounds cool, in theory. With an extra arm, you could do all kinds of stuff! Seriously though, if we're going to get real about supernumerary robotic limbs, we have to know what people really want them for. Guy Hoffman's lab at Cornell has some experience with sticking bits of robots onto people, and in a paper presented at RO-MAN 2017, grad student Vighnesh Vatsal figures out the kinds of tasks for which a third arm might actually be useful. The robotic arm that the Cornell researchers are experimenting with is a new design that's a compromise between an extra arm mounted on the torso and extra fingers (or an extra thumb) mounted on the hand.

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives did something that's woefully uncommon these days: It passed a bill with bipartisan support. The bill, called the SELF DRIVE Act, lays out a basic federal framework for autonomous vehicle regulation, signaling that federal lawmakers are finally ready to think seriously about self-driving cars and what they mean for the future of the country. "With this legislation, innovation can flourish without the heavy hand of government," said Representative Bob Latta, the Ohio Republican who heads up the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, in a floor speech just before the SELF DRIVE Act passed by a two-thirds majority. This seems like a good time for Congress to step in, and the famously regulation-averse tech industry has actually welcomed the legislative clarification. Self-driving vehicles have been testing on public roads since 2010, when Google hit the streets near Mountain View, California.