Have you ever asked Siri its opinion on the film Inception? Or whether it knows a good place to hide a dead body? 'Inception is about dreaming about dreaming about dreaming about dreaming about something or other. I fell asleep', is one of your answers. The answers are pre-programmed, rather than genuine reactions capable of passing the Turing test, but hint at one of the ultimate aims of artificial intelligence – creating machines we can chat with and which understand levels of irony.

While deep learning racks up the likes among the big data crowd, a potentially bigger phenomenon is the emergence of extremely simple machine learning models that do not require sophisticated technical and mathematical skills, or what machine learning expert Ted Dunning calls "cheesy and cheap machine learning," or simply "cheap learning." "Deep learning is all the rage, all the fashion, and of course everybody has to like it because of that, because we're all so fashionable in the tech industry," Dunning, who is MapR Technologies' chief application architect, tells Datanami in a recent interview. "But what also is happening is cheap learning, which are very simple models to solve very simple problems, but which in aggregate give a very large value." In the new cheap learning age, developers will avail themselves to the powerful and easy to use machine learning frameworks -- and do so without having to understand all the complex mathematics driving the predictions and recommendations and optimizations under the covers, Dunning says. "They can use machine learning without even realizing it's machine learning, and without having to become mathematical sophisticates," says says Dunning, who co-authored with Ellen Friedman two machine learning books, including "Practical Machine Learning: Innovations in Recommendation" and "Practical Machine Learning: A New Look at Anomaly Detection."

Walt Disney World in Florida appears poised to launch the highest-profile commercial deployment of driverless passenger vehicles to date, testing a fleet of driverless shuttles that could cart passengers through parking lots and around its theme parks. According to sources with direct knowledge of Disney's plans, the company is in late-stage negotiation with at least two manufacturers of autonomous shuttles – Local Motors, based in Phoenix, and Navya, based in Paris. It's unclear whether contracts would go to both or just one of the companies. The sources, who asked not be identified to avoid offending Disney, said the company plans a pilot program later this year to transport employees in the electric-drive robot vehicles. If that goes well, they said, the shuttles would begin transporting park visitors sometime next year.

It's a pet obsession that both physicist Stephen Hawking and entrepreneur Elon Musk -- two people credited with pushing the boundaries of technology and science in pioneering ways -- have in common: Rampaging intelligence, borne within machines, could end the human race if utilized dangerously. AI has become one of the great, meaningless buzzwords of our time. In this video, the Chief Data Scientist of Dun and Bradstreet explains AI in clear business terms. "I believe there is no real difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer," said Hawking in a video appearance at the 2017 Global Mobile Internet Conference Beijing. "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and could be superseded by AI," he added.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. This is Walt, Audi's new collaborative robot. As part of a Flemish research project lead by prof.

Robots are likely to replace 50 percent of all jobs in the next decade, according to Kai-Fu Lee, founder of venture capital firm Sinovation Ventures and a top voice on tech in China. Artificial intelligence (AI) is the wave of the future, the influential technologist told CNBC, calling it the "singular thing that will be larger than all of human tech revolutions added together, including electricity, [the] industrial revolution, internet, mobile internet -- because AI is pervasive." "It is the decision engine that will replace people," Lee said, adding that AI capabilities far exceed those of humanity.

Harvesting Washington state's vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, and many of them work illegally in the United States. That system eventually could change dramatically as at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market. The robotic pickers don't get tired and can work 24 hours a day. "Human pickers are getting scarce," said Gad Kober, a co-founder of Israel-based FFRobotics. "Young people do not want to work in farms, and elderly pickers are slowly retiring."

If you're looking for a good movie, I suggest that you try "It's No Game." If you've never heard of it, that's okay. The film, just released this week, is a bit less than eight minutes long. It tells the story of a pair of Hollywood writers who learn that they are going to be replaced by an artificially intelligent algorithm that generates screenplays. By now I'm sure you've guessed the kicker: "It's No Game" was itself written by an artificially intelligent algorithm that generates screenplays.

Walt Disney World in Florida appears poised to launch the highest-profile commercial deployment of driverless passenger vehicles to date, testing a fleet of driverless shuttles that could cart passengers through parking lots and around its theme parks. According to sources with direct knowledge of Disney's plans, the company is in late-stage negotiation with at least two manufacturers of autonomous shuttles – Local Motors, based in Phoenix, and Navya, based in Paris. It's unclear whether contracts would go to both or just one of the companies. The sources, who asked not be identified to avoid offending Disney, said the company plans a pilot program later this year to transport employees in the electric-drive robot vehicles. If that goes well, they said, the shuttles would begin transporting park visitors sometime next year.

A key leader of the terror group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Yemen on Sunday, the Pentagon said. Abu Ahmed Al Awlaqi had led operations for the group in the Shabwa province. He also planned external attacks and coordinated the group's movement of weapons and explosives, authorities said. The death of the leader, according to Navy Captain Jeff Davis, was the result of a monthslong campaign designed to kill leaders of the group and other Yemeni operatives. Seven other members of the group were also killed in Sunday's strike, Davis said.