When American novelist David Foster Wallace delivered the commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, he urged the graduating class to "exercise some control over how and what you think." If you don't at least try to regulate your thoughts and behaviors, Wallace cautioned, you will go through life "dead, unconscious, a slave to your head." Wallace himself long suffered with unwanted negative thoughts and crippling self-doubt--and took his own life three years after that speech. But can our mind become a "terrible master," as Wallace described? Kessler, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, has considered that question for the past two decades, studying how substances such as food, alcohol and tobacco can hijack our brain chemistry and compel us to act against our own best intentions--bingeing on brownies, booze or cigarettes.

In a match last October, the AlphaGo program developed by Google's "DeepMind" subsidiary beat, 5 games to 0, the French professional player Fan Hui,1 who is ranked 2 dan (on the professional scale from 1 dan to 9 dan) and is today Europe's best player. The story was related by the journal Nature.2 This was the first time that a computer beats a professional player. But in the world of artificial intelligence, the progress demonstrated by the AlphaGo victory wasn't expected for another ten years or so. The moment of truth, however, will take place between March 9-15 in Seoul, where AlphaGo will face the South Korean Lee Se-dol, who is 9 dan, and is considered the best player in the world as well as a Go living legend. This new game, which will be broadcast live on the Web, comes with a 1,000,000 prize for the human champion if he wins.

Experts at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions tackled the issue of artificial intelligence and what it means for humans, concluding that they can and should coexist. The pertinent issue is how humans can leverage artificial intelligence to enhance the outcome of new technologies and improve quality of life, and not focus on the narrative of human vs machine. However, rapid technological advances underline the urgency for policy-makers to redesign educational systems so that younger generations are adequately prepared for a workplace that will see more automated processes. "By some estimates, 47% of existing jobs in the US could be replaced by automation," said Wendell Wallach, Scholar, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University, USA. "When the World Bank used similar methodology, it came up with 69% in India, and 77% in China. If that's truly the case, we are talking about tremendous jobs being lost," he added.

The little striker wearing a crescent moon and star jersey lines up his penalty and kicks right, netting his goal as the keeper dives the wrong way and hits the ground yelping in pain. Both players are teammates practising to represent Pakistan in a major world football tournament. Unlike their low-ranked flesh-and-blood counterparts, however, these are advanced robots whose programmers are set to compete against students from the world's top universities as they look to showcase what their country can do in the world of Artificial Intelligence. Students at Pakistan's National University of Science and Technology (NUST) will this year for the first time send a team to the annual RoboCup, an event featuring 32 universities that will be held in Leipzig, Germany from June 27 to July 4. The six machines are NAO humanoid robots purchased from France's Aldebaran Robotics at a cost of roughly 17,000. It is in fact the third year that NUST, Pakistan's premier engineering institute, has qualified for the prestigious cup.

But this hand-wringing is a distraction from the very real problems with artificial intelligence today, which may already be exacerbating inequality in the workplace, at home and in our legal and judicial systems. Sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination are being built into the machine-learning algorithms that underlie the technology behind many "intelligent" systems that shape how we are categorized and advertised to. Take a small example from last year: Users discovered that Google's photo app, which applies automatic labels to pictures in digital photo albums, was classifying images of black people as gorillas. Google apologized; it was unintentional. This is fundamentally a data problem.

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The little striker wearing a crescent moon and star jersey lines up his penalty and kicks right, netting his goal as the keeper dives the wrong way and hits the ground yelping in pain. Both players are teammates practising to represent Pakistan in a major world football tournament. Unlike their low-ranked flesh-and-blood counterparts, however, these are advanced robots whose programmers are set to compete against students from the world's top universities as they look to showcase what their country can do in the world of Artificial Intelligence. Students at Pakistan's National University of Science and Technology (NUST) will this year for the first time send a team to the annual RoboCup, an event featuring 32 universities that will be held in Leipzig, Germany from June 27 to July 4. The six machines are NAO humanoid robots purchased from France's Aldebaran Robotics at a cost of roughly 17,000. It is in fact the third year that NUST, Pakistan's premier engineering institute, has qualified for the prestigious cup.

TapReason is coming out of stealth today with a unique twist on monetization. The company uses artificial intelligence to determine the "magic moment" to recommend an app or game to friends and colleagues. The word-of-mouth recommendation platform from the Caesarea, Israel-based startup is a response to the problem of the growing ineffectiveness of advertising, either through saturation or ad blocking. The A.I. has been tested over the last 18 months on more than 300 registered apps and 23 million devices. When the technology judges one of these right moments, TapReason sends an in-app message from a friend to another friend via messaging platforms, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Slack, LinkedIn, Skype, WeChat, Line, or one of 20 other services. "With mobile-ad click-through rates spiraling downward as users adopt ad blockers to combat overly aggressive advertising, TapReason delivers an ad-free app growth solution based on advanced A.I., marketing automation, and the most trusted form of advertising -- a recommendation from a trusted friend," said Nimrod Elias, CEO and cofounder of TapReason, in a statement.

It took millennia for Humanity to advance from the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution. The pace of Human development continues to rapidly accelerate. The next Revolution is already overtaking society before many are ready for- or even aware of it. Both diametrically opposed predictions curiously are based on the premise that Humans will blithely give up control to either benevolent or diabolical machine'overlords'. There are arguments for both extremes, and both sides raise enough valid questions provoke meaningful dialogue on AI ethics and control. While History reminds us that extreme people and ideas often provide valid counterweight to over-enthusiasm and even zealotry from opposing people and views, they usually tend to be mere lane markers for History's true road.

Fujita Health University in Toyoake, Aichi Prefecture, is partnering with Toyota Motor Corp. to open a Robotic Smart Home -- a base for nursing robots at the Toyoake apartment complex -- next spring. As the nation approaches a "superaging" society when the baby boomer generation turns 75 years old and above, the project aims to develop small robots that can be easily installed in small Japanese houses, with the cooperation of residents. The Toyoake housing complex opened in 1971 and currently has some 4,500 residents. But 45 years after its completion, the facility's occupants are now predominantly elderly with 26.2 percent aged over 65. In 2014, the university signed a comprehensive agreement on nursing care and medical services with the city of Toyoake and the Urban Renaissance Agency.