Nearly a decade ago, I had the good fortune of being one of the last people to interview the founder of Commodore International, Jack Tramiel (famous for Commodore computers and the popular C64), before he passed away. At 83 he died from heart failure after pioneering the consumer market for personal computers and home gaming, and working toward changing people's lives for the better through technology. What few people knew, and what I discovered in our interview, was that the foundational concept driving the Commodore 64 was Tramiel's vision for a future in which the Holocaust and its concentration camps (from which Jack survived but his father did not) would never be able to happen again. In our interview Mr. Tramiel told me: I made the market for the computer youth-driven. I went around the world meeting young people in computer clubs and showing them what the computer can do.

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 few 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. Robot soccer is getting really, really good. RoboCup (which just concluded in Montreal) is basically exactly the same as human World Cup, just with fewer writhing around on the ground and clutching of ankles.

The random-forest technique has emerged in recent years as a powerful way to analyze large data sets while avoiding some of the pitfalls of other data-mining methods. It is based on the idea that some future event can be determined by a decision tree in which an outcome is calculated at each branch by reference to a set of training data. However, decision trees suffer from a well-known problem. In the latter stages of the branching process, decisions can become severely distorted by training data that is sparse and prone to huge variation at this kind of resolution, a problem known as overfitting. The random-forest approach is different.

After more than ten years of collaboration in a joint research partnership, Microsoft and Inria (National Institute for Research in Digital Sciences) have launched phase four of their initiative, with one key goal – to accelerate the deployment and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within France's technology ecosystem. This new phase of the partnership between Microsoft and Inria will focus on AI technology to unleash its potential, while putting it at the service of French companies. The launch focuses on two key framework components – research, and the transfer of skills and expertise. In addition to this research, both organizations will also share their knowledge and guidance with the startups of the AI Factory program, developed by Microsoft France, Inria, and Station F. Both partners will intensify the support received by these startups, enabling them to benefit from the expertise, learnings and applications resulting from the work carried out by researchers from Microsoft Research and Inria. The digital transformation projects deployed by Microsoft on behalf of major French companies will also accelerate their implementation and enable the French economy's flagship organizations to stimulate the development of new products and applications.

I found Semblance on the second floor of the Fuego Lounge, squeezed into a booth beside a dance floor and a small stage. It was early afternoon, and waitstaff were restocking the long, rectangular bar in the center of the room as game developers, press and PR handlers flitted from station to station. A cloth tent on the balcony offered psychedelic VR meditation; a geodesic dome on the roof showcased swirling galaxies. And all along the walls inside, indie games waited to be played. Semblance stood out among the row of screens for its energetic, purple-tinged visuals.

Imagine a state-of-the-art driverless car is zipping along a road with a disabled 90-year-old-passenger. The car must make a decision: drive into the mother and child and kill them, or career into a wall and kill the passenger. This is a variation of the trolley problem, which dominates academic and popular thinking about the ethics of driverless cars. The problem is that such debates not only dismiss the complexity of the system in which driverless cars will exist, but are really moral red herrings. The real ethical issues lie in the politics and power concerns with driverless cars.

Kendal Parmar's son went from being a sporty and sociable boy who loved school, to a child who would stay in his room and rarely go outside. The change in his personality was down to a gaming disorder that crept up on him at the age of 12, when he started secondary school. Three years later, Joseph is still struggling with the problem. Parmar says the biggest sign that something was wrong was the amount of arguing that would occur when she asked him to stop playing video games. "Eventually his habits developed and he was gaming all the time. He became too terrified to go to school and he was terrified of people," she says.

Within buildings 10 and 30 of the Siemens complex on the outskirts of Munich, the next generation of German workers are toiling over a range of test projects. The assignments are carefully chosen to impart the skills needed to continue the German miracle in automated manufacturing. In one room, a group of young men train to be automotive mechatronic engineers. They've just spent the past week feverishly programming a diminutive working model of an automated production line--complete with sensors, conveyor belts, and tools that work without human input. They're able to discuss their work in surprisingly good English, but what sets them apart from their peers in the US is that none of them attend a university.

What if we could generate novel molecules to target any disease, overnight, ready for clinical trials? Imagine leveraging machine learning to accomplish with 50 people what the pharmaceutical industry can barely do with an army of 5,000. It's a multibillion-dollar opportunity that can help billions. The worldwide pharmaceutical market, one of the slowest monolithic industries to adapt, surpassed $1.1 trillion in 2016. In 2018, the top 10 pharmaceutical companies alone are projected to generate over $355 billion in revenue.

Sixty-two years ago this summer, Dartmouth professor John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence. Joi Ito, director of MIT's Media Lab, has come to think it's unhelpful. Talk of AI has become hard to avoid due to surging investment from companies hoping to profit from advances in machine learning. Ito believes the term has also become tainted by the assumption that humans and machines must be in opposition--think debates about jobs stolen by robots, or superintelligence threatening humanity. "Instead of thinking about AI as separate or adversarial to humans, it's more helpful and accurate to think about machines augmenting our collective intelligence and society," Ito says.