When the Montour School District launched America's first Artificial Intelligence Middle School program in the fall of 2018, many questions arose. How? (Just to name a few). But, as a student-centered and future-focused district, the thought process was not if we should teach AI, but what if we don't teach AI? Also, why isn't everyone teaching AI? Through a series of courses developed and implemented by Montour team members and partners, the AI program officially launched in October 2018. To date, hundreds of classes have already been taught to students in areas of AI Ethics, AI Autonomous Robotics, AI Computer Science, and AI Music. The goal for the program is to make an all-inclusive AI program for all middle school students that is relevant and meaningful in a world where children live and prepare them for a future where they will thrive.

As we see artificial intelligence impacting the real world, it's no longer a niche computer science, technical field. Policymakers, business leaders, educators, social scientists--they all need to take part and guide the future of A.I. Also, as a technical field, A.I. thoroughly lacks diversity. It lacks women and underrepresented minorities. We're committed to diversity, especially starting with high school students. It's unthinkable that such an important technology that will influence humanity has such an imbalance in terms of the representation of people taking part. A.I. doesn't belong to a niche group of people.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a term that is now widely used (and abused), loosely defined and mostly misunderstood. Much the same might be said of, say, quantum physics. But there is one important difference, for whereas quantum phenomena are not likely to have much of a direct impact on the lives of most people, one particular manifestation of AI – machine-learning – is already having a measurable impact on most of us. The tech giants that own and control the technology have plans to exponentially increase that impact and to that end have crafted a distinctive narrative. Crudely summarised, it goes like this: "While there may be odd glitches and the occasional regrettable downside on the way to a glorious future, on balance AI will be good for humanity. Oh – and by the way – its progress is unstoppable, so don't worry your silly little heads fretting about it because we take ethics very seriously."

Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel is known for his'incompleteness' theorems.Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt/ LIFE Picture Coll./Getty A team of researchers has stumbled on a question that is mathematically unanswerable because it is linked to logical paradoxes discovered by Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel in the 1930s that can't be solved using standard mathematics. The mathematicians, who were working on a machine-learning problem, show that the question of'learnability' -- whether an algorithm can extract a pattern from limited data -- is linked to a paradox known as the continuum hypothesis. Gödel showed that the statement cannot be proved either true or false using standard mathematical language. The latest result appeared on 7 January in Nature Machine Intelligence1.

GANs, or generative adversarial networks, are the social-media starlet of AI algorithms. They are responsible for creating the first AI painting ever sold at an art auction and for superimposing celebrity faces on the bodies of porn stars.

In 2018, several high-profile controversies involving AI served as a wake-up call for technologists, policymakers, and the public. The technology may have brought us welcome advances in many fields, but it can also fail catastrophically when built shoddily or applied carelessly. It's hardly a surprise, then, that Americans have mixed support for the continued development of AI and overwhelmingly agree that it should be regulated, according to a new study from the Center for the Governance of AI and Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute. These are important lessons for policymakers and technologists to consider in the discussion on how best to advance and regulate AI, says Allan Dafoe, director of the center and coauthor of the report. "There isn't currently a consensus in favor of developing advanced AI, or that it's going to be good for humanity," he says.

All major UK airports now have or will soon have military grade anti-drone equipment, the government says. It comes after the military were called in to help when drone sightings caused delays for around an hour at Heathrow on Tuesday. And drone sightings at Gatwick caused major disruption affecting 140,000 passengers before Christmas. Earlier, the defence secretary said it would "not be right" to ask the RAF to respond to similar incidents in future. Gavin Williamson said all commercial airports needed to invest in anti-drone technology.

Toyota today revealed some of the inner workings of an automation package meant to help drivers rather than replace them. The company also said that if that package had been in operation, it could have prevented or mitigated a recent three-car accident in California. The announcement came at CES 2019, which takes place this week in Las Vegas. Toyota has often spoken of its two-stage research project for self-driving cars. In the long run, it plans to offer a truly driverless technology called Chauffeur.

This week at CES 2019, UBTECH Robotics (which was valued at $5 billion as of mid-2018) is announcing a major update to a walking robot first demonstrated at CES 2018. UBTECH's Walker has gained a torso, arms, hands, and a head, and is now as humanoid as bipedal robots get. UBTECH has posted a couple of new videos, and answered some questions about Walker's capabilities and where our expectations should be. "Walker is your agile smart companion--an intelligent, bipedal humanoid robot that aims to one day be an indispensable part of your family. Standing 4.75 feet (1.45 m) tall and weighing 170 lbs (77 kg), the new version of Walker is more advanced than ever, including arms and hands with the ability to grasp and manipulate objects, a refined torso with improved self-balancing, smooth and stable walking in difficult environments, and multi-modal interaction including voice, vision, and touch. Walker has 36 high-performance actuators and a full range of sensing systems that work together to insure smooth and fast walking."

Usually, CES robots are a little sad, but Temi is different. Instead of pretending their robot can do a bunch of things it can't, like hold a conversation, the team at Temi focused on the things it can. The Temi Robot has 16 sensors (including LiDAR) that help it recognize people and map out your home. With the tap of a button it can follow you, or go anywhere you ask it. When it gets there, it can play music or media, wirelessly charge devices, act as an Alexa device, and work as a video chat or telepresence bot, among other things.