"What do judges know that we cannot teach a computer?" There is a substantial public sentiment that distrusts legal rules and state structures and looks to technology for solutions. After all, many trust their smartphones more than they trust their government. But what may seem as a fairly modern libertarian opinion, voiced in pitch decks and technology conferences, and buoyed by the success of the information economy, has much deeper roots. Such ambitions of a technology centric society were voiced more than forty years ago by John McCarthy, an influential computer scientist and professor at Stanford who coined the term, "artificial intelligence", and nurtured it into a formal field of research.

As the capabilities of robots and AI continues to grow, a leading scientist has warned that the machine takeover will lead mankind into a'hellish dystopia'. Dr Subhash Kak, a computing expert at Oklahoma University, says employment provides people with a sense of self-worth and value. He believes this self-worth will be lost as robots take control, leading humans into a life of'meaningless' misery. He claims the US opioid addiction and the rise of extremist groups are an early omen of a dystopian future. As our world becomes more and more technology-driven, robots could replace workers in a huge number of jobs, which could lead to a dystopian future where human life in'meaningless, a leading scientist says (stock image) A report in November suggested that physical jobs in predictable environments – including machine-operators and fast-food worker – are the most likely to be replaced by robots.

Scientists at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Labs in Japan have created an AI-based system that's capable of performing deep image reconstruction from human brain activity. Now, what that means is the AI system can't see inside our brain or the things we're picturing. It takes help of the brain waves (MRI data) to guess what we are thinking and draws an image out of it. To train their AI, the researchers fed it with recorded brainwaves of human subjects after showing them images. Over the course of 10 weeks, they collected brain activity data in real-time and also by making the human subjects visualize what they had seen in the past. There is still scope for improvement for the AI which lacks perfection when it comes to reading our minds.

Artificial intelligence programs built by Alibaba (BABA) and Microsoft (MSFT) have beaten humans on a Stanford University reading comprehension test. "This is the first time that a machine has outperformed humans on such a test," Alibaba said in a statement Monday. The test was devised by artificial intelligence experts at Stanford to measure computers' growing reading abilities. Alibaba's software was the first to beat the human score. Luo Si, the chief scientist of natural language processing at the Chinese company's AI research group, called the milestone "a great honor," but also acknowledged that it is likely lead to a significant number of workers losing their jobs to machines.

SOME of the biggest players in the banking world are catching up with the artificial intelligence rush by launching chatbots to serve their tech-savvy customers. HSBC Holdings is among the most recent of these players, implementing a virtual assistant named'Amy', which uses AI technologies such as natural language processing to answer customer queries. The launch of the chatbots come after the city's banking regulator, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), released measures over the past two years to encourage local lenders to develop fintech. The aim is for banks to develop innovative products or technology to both cut down costs and offer better, speedier service to its customers. According to a report by Juniper Research, chatbots are expected to help save global banks over US$8 billion per year by 2022.

The pace of technological change can seem exciting and daunting in equal measure. From Amazon to Uber, tech giants saw their practices and business models scrutinised more deeply than ever before, while regulators sought to get their arms around a rapidly evolving "new economy", driven by disruptive technology. While we can only guess at what's around the corner, here are five things to watch out for this year. Machine learning comprises a key component of artificial intelligence whose use is set to grow. Many businesses, especially consumer-facing ones that analyse data (think Google Translate), will start to deploy it, with high-end smartphones being a good example of where we can expect continued early adoption. Machine learning is likely to make data analysis easier and improve efficiencies, thus empowering rather than replacing humans – at least for now.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already fundamentally changing information technology and stands poised to permeate and transform technology both online and off ranging from manufacturing and transportation to medicine and military applications. The US, Russia and China have all noted that dominance in this field of technology will be an essential ingredient to holding global primacy in the near future. What resembles a sort of arms race has emerged between prominent nations around the globe. Perhaps in an effort to provide the US with an edge, or perhaps in an effort to mitigate the impact of such an arms race, Google has opened an AI center in China. CNN in its article, "Google is opening an artificial intelligence center in China," would announce: Despite many of its services being blocked in China, Google has chosen Beijing as the location for its first artificial intelligence research center in Asia.

Artificial intelligence (AI) software developed by Alibaba Group has performed better than humans in a global reading comprehension test, the first time that machines have outperformed people. The AI research arm of China's biggest online commerce company developed a machine-learning model that scored higher on the Stanford Question Answering Dataset, a large-scale reading comprehension test with more than 100,000 questions, according to a release by the company. On January 11, Alibaba's machine-learning models scored 82.44 on the test, compared with 82.304 by humans. While computers have beaten humans at complex games like chess, where raw computing power and an infallible memory have given bots an advantage, languages are generally seen as harder for machines to master. AlphaGo's China showdown: why it's time to embrace artificial intelligence The win has broader implications for how companies deploy machine learning to replace customer service jobs that have so far relied on armies of call-centre employees to handle inquiries.

By Naoki Ogawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff WrtiterChina is rapidly coming to the fore as a major player in the field of artificial intelligence (see below). Utilizing three strengths -- abundant research and development budgets, competent people in the field and massive accessible data, or big data -- the opportunity is nearing for the country to overtake the United States. Will China become the dominant power of the AI era? On Nov. 15, 2017, the Chinese government fully kicked off a gigantic project aimed at the development of the AI industry. According to Chinese media, a new organization created to lead the initiative is joined by multiple government institutions, including the Science and Technology Ministry as well as IT giants such as search engine company Baidu Inc., e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and social networking giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., in an "all-China" effort involving both the public and private sectors.

Summary: Where do we look to see the most advanced chatbots and the most complete application of AI? Chatbots designed as'artificially intelligent psychological counseling chatbots', 'therapeutic assistants' for short. Perhaps a better title for this would be "how far have we come?" About two months ago when we wrote the three part series on chatbots the most striking thing was just how fast and explosive this growth has been. And that's saying a lot in an industry that is characterized by exactly that, fast explosive growth. The fact that originally caught my eye was this.