It was a worrying refusal that does not bode well for the future of humanity. In New York to help Mastercard launch its rebrand and a new mobile payment service, the machine answered several questions - but refused to reveal its ultimate ambitions, simply flashing its eyes. 'I was named Pepper as I'm here to spice up your life, and my nickname is Pepperoni,' the robot then told us. Pepper also revealed it knows the three laws of robots, which include not harming humans, adding'I think robots should love humans.' However, it also refused to answer whether is was looking to take our reporter's job, simply waving and saying goodbye at that point, cutting the interview short. Betty DeVita of Mastercard reveal the Pepper unit normally works in a Pizza restaurant.

Are (All) Players Worth the Trouble?

LONDON: Understanding the hierarchical structure of biological networks like human brain -- a network of neurons -- could be useful in creating more complex, intelligent computational brains in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics, says a study. Like large businesses, many biological networks are hierarchically organised, such as gene, protein, neural, and metabolic networks. This means they have separate units that can each be repeatedly divided into smaller and smaller subunits. Apple to sell solar energy now Apple is now planning to sell excess solar energy produced at its solar farms in Cupertino and Nevada. To understand as to why biological networks evolve to be hierarchical, researchers from the University of Wyoming and the French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (INRIA) simulated the evolution of computational brain models, known as artificial neural networks, both with and without a cost for network connections.

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Jul 5, 2016) - Jibo Inc., creator of the world's first social robot for the home, is pleased to announce the addition of Professor Michael I. Jordan to the company's advisory board. Jordan is renowned in the scientific community as an expert and leading researcher in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. "Jibo is breaking new ground by bringing a human element to the robot experience -- something I believe the world needs and will benefit from embracing," said Michael I. Jordan, advisory board member of Jibo Inc. "My background and research in AI is uniquely suited to help in advancing Jibo's learning capabilities and developing his role and relationships within the home environment." Currently the Pehong Chen distinguished professor in electrical engineering, computer science and statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, Jordan has developed a wide range of novel methods in machine learning, natural language processing and signal processing. Jibo Inc. will apply artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to the field of social rapport and relationships.

If robots that mimic animal or human behavior are your nightmare fuel, turn away now. Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology went one step further with a skeleton robot, giving it human-like muscles to help with movement. The microfilament muscle "tissues" connect to joints and expand/contract just like the real thing. In fact, the robot has the same number of muscles in its legs as we do. At this point, they're not very strong and though the strands help with smoother movements, the skeleton still requires assistance to walk.

For the past year, Tara Hutchinson has been trying to figure out what will happen to a tall building made from thin steel beams when "the big one" hits. To do that, she has erected a six-story tower that rises like a lime-green finger from atop a shrub-covered hill on the outskirts of San Diego, California. Hundreds of strain gauges and accelerometers fill the building, so sensitive they can detect wind gusts pressing against the walls. Now, Hutchinson just needs an earthquake. In most of the world, this would be a problem.

A team of scientists has developed a model that can predict bat species most likely to transmit Ebola and other filoviruses. Findings highlight new potential hosts and geographic hotspots worthy of surveillance. So reports a new paper in the journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Filoviruses have devastating effects on people and primates, as evidenced by the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For nearly 40 years, preventing spillover events has been hampered by an inability to pinpoint which wildlife species harbor and spread the viruses.

Cisco is just wrapping up its annual CiscoLive customer event. This year's proceedings took over Las Vegas, occupying the Bellagio, Luxor, Mandalay Bay, and MGM Grand hotel. At least for this week, Cisco was bigger in Vegas than Wayne Newton, Steve Wynn and even Carrot Top. While digital transformation served as the main theme at CiscoLive, cybersecurity had a strong supporting role throughout the event. For example, of all of the technology and business initiatives at Cisco, CEO Chuck Robbins highlighted cybersecurity in his keynote presentation by bringing the GM of Cisco's cybersecurity business unit (David Goeckeler) on stage to describe his division's progress.

In the last 15 years, eBay grew from a simple website for online auctions to a full-scale e-commerce enterprise that processes petabytes of data to create a better shopping experience. When the user searches for a product, how do we find the best results for the user? One factor used in product ranking is user click-through rates or Product sell-through rate. In addition, user behavioural data gives the link from a query, to a product page view, and all the way to the purchase event. Through large-scale data analysis of query logs, we can create graphs between queries and products, and between different products.

The challenge asks computers to make sense out of specific sentences with grammar that humans can understand, but that may be obtuse to machines. For instance, in the sentence "The city councilmen refused the demonstrators a permit because they feared violence," computers aren't able to parse who the word "they" is actually talking about. In contrast, human readers can understand it because of context clues. That's exactly the type of thinking researchers are looking to improve, namely with deep learning. The contest featured a grand prize of 25,000 for entrants who could achive 90 percent accuracy with similar sentences, and the best came from Quan Liu, a researcher from the University of Science and Technology of China as well as Nicos Issak, a researcher from the Open University of Cypress.