Six years ago, I drove from my crummy little apartment in the part of Berkeley that's too close to Oakland to somewhere in the south bay that I don't really remember to pick up, in person, what I'm pretty sure was a development prototype of the Neato XV-11 robotic vacuum. I was instructed to return it in 24 hours, or they'd send a robotic hit squad after me. I wrote a blazing fast review of the XV-11, taped a butter knife to it and let it duel my iRobot Roomba 560, and then brought it back to Neato, having inflicted a bare minimum of physical (and emotional) scarring. Since then, Neato Robotics has established itself as a solid and capable competitor to iRobot's Roombas in the autonomous vacuum space. The XV-11 series has been incrementally upgraded, with a much more significant redesign in 2014 in the form of the BotVac series. Late last year, Neato announced the BotVac Connected, which adds WiFi connectivity and an app that lets you control your robot from anywhere in the world. This is Neato's top of the line model and currently sells for US 700. We took a look at it at CES, and then Neato promised to send us one to check out at home. Neato's robots, starting with the XV-11 and continuing with the BotVac Connected, are notable because of their ability to rapidly generate accurate maps of the spaces that they're in, and then localize and navigate to efficiently clean those spaces in nice straight lines.

As technology continues to permeate society more and more, companies are exploring how advancements in tech can improve the legal profession. Many of these institutions are researching ways to make the legal system more efficient for all stakeholders through information technology. Where can lawyers who are interested in this growth industry learn about the progress being made from thought leaders in the field? In this episode of Law Technology Now, host Monica Bay speaks with Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology Executive Director Roland Vogl about the upcoming 2016 CodeX FutureLaw Conference. Roland reflects on his time as a student in The Stanford Program in International Legal Studies (SPILS) and how that path led him to work as an intellectual property lawyer and ultimately a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School.

New ships, new destinations, unusual activities and some extraordinary bargains are part of the cruising buzz for summer and fall. New thrill attractions: Thrills have become a cruise ship staple, and on the world's newest, largest ship, Royal Caribbean's 5,500-passenger Harmony of the Seas, the rush comes courtesy of the Ultimate Abyss. Beginning later this month, daring riders can zoom on mats from the top of the ship to the Boardwalk neighborhood about 100 feet below. Posh gets posher: Regent Seven Seas Cruises is billing its 750-passenger Seven Seas Explorer, launching in July, as the "world's most luxurious cruise ship." The top digs are a 3,785-square-foot suite, with a first-at-sea private spa (serviced by the ship's Canyon Ranch SpaClub) and a price tag of 5,000 per person per night, based on double occupancy.

Greece is making a renewed move for the Parthenon Marbles. The Museum of Modern Art is offering buyouts. A board member for L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art is going to work for Donald "Build the Wall" Trump. Plus, a gun sculpture is censored at a Texas university, gender in museums, Moscow's terrible art, a history of female robots and the historic photography of L.A. forefather Charles Lummis. There's a ton to read in today's Roundup: Related: The Metropolitan Museum of Art's chief digital officer, Sree Sreenivasan, says he will not participate in all-male panels.

We are continuing to announce the speakers for Data Day Seattle 2016. We have 20 more speakers yet to announce. Check back regularly for updates. If you wish to speak at Data Day Seattle, there is still time to submit a proposal. John Akred is the Founder and CTO of Silicon Valley Data Science. In the business world, John Akred likes to help organizations become more data driven. He has over 15 years of experience in machine learning, predictive modeling, and analytical system architecture. His focus is on the intersection of data science tools and techniques; data transport, processing and storage technologies; and the data management strategy and practices that can unlock data driven capabilities for an organization. A frequent speaker at the O'Reilly Strata Conferences, John is host of the perennially popular workshop: Building A Data Platform.

This post is a discussion of Nick Bostrom's book "Superintelligence". The book has had an effect on the thinking of many of the world's thought leaders. In that light, and given this series of blog posts is about the "Future of AI", it seemed important to read the book and discuss his ideas. In an ideal world, this post would certainly have contained more summaries of the books arguments and perhaps a later update will improve on that aspect. For the moment the review focuses on counter-arguments and perceived omissions (the post already got too long with just covering those). Bostrom considers various routes we have to forming intelligent machines and what the possible outcomes might be from developing such technologies. He is a professor of philosophy but has an impressive array of background degrees in areas such as mathematics, logic, philosophy and computational neuroscience. So let's start at the beginning and put the book in context by trying to understand what is meant by the term "superintelligence" In common with many contributions to the debate on artificial intelligence, Bostrom never defines what he means by intelligence. Obviously, this can be problematic. On the other hand, superintelligence is defined as outperforming humans in every intelligent capability that they express. Personally, I've developed the following definition of intelligence: "Use of information to take decisions which save energy". Here by information I might mean data or facts or rules, and by saving energy I mean saving'free' energy.1 However, accepting Bostrom's lack of definition of intelligence (and perhaps taking note of my own), we can still consider the routes to superintelligence Bostrom proposes.

Natural language question understanding has been one of the most important challenges in artificial intelligence. Indeed, eminent AI benchmarks such as the Turing test require an AI system to understand natural language questions, with various topics and complexity, and then respond appropriately. During the past few years, we have witnessed rapid progress in question answering technology, with virtual assistants like Siri, Google Now, and Cortana answering daily life questions, and IBM Watson winning over humans in Jeopardy!. Many questions the systems encounter are simple lookup questions (e.g., "Where is Chichen Itza?" or "Who's the manager of Man Utd?"). The answers can be found by searching the surface forms.

Question: I recently had surgery on my hand and am quite certain that the handprint will no longer match that on the Global Entry database. I have two international trips coming up and I'd really like my Global Entry to be up to date. Answer: Brown doesn't have to do anything to use his Global Entry privileges, which include expedited re-entry into the United States and screening at domestic airport security, all for 100 for five years. Customs and Border Protection, which administers Global Entry, said it is fingerprints, not handprints, that are used for identification. The re-entry kiosks at immigration, a spokesman said, use four fingerprints from one hand to validate who you are.

LONDON – Reliable economic statistics are a vital public good. They are essential to effective policymaking, business planning, and the electorate's ability to hold decision-makers to account. And yet the methods we use to measure our economies are becoming increasingly out of date. The statistical conventions on which we base our estimates were adopted a half-century ago, at a time when the economy was producing relatively similar physical goods. Today's economy is radically different and changing rapidly – the result of technological innovation, the rising value of intangible, knowledge-based assets, and the internationalization of economic activity.

As a masters student exploring artificial intelligence at Stanford University almost 30 years ago, Reed Hastings no doubt had an eye on where the future might take him. But of all the scenarios he imagined for his career, it's highly unlikely that any of them included the one that unfolded this past week: strolling the red carpet in the south of France, rubbing shoulders with some of the country's most glamorous actors and actresses, and fielding questions about his role as a global media kingpin. It's a future the CEO of Netflix says he couldn't even have predicted five years ago, when the company was still primarily shipping DVDs to customers in the U.S. while grappling with its emerging video streaming service. Even now, the Internet continues to scramble the game so fast that Hastings said his company is racing to keep up with all the changes. When asked, he didn't even want to hazard a guess as to where Netflix might be five years from now. "We don't really know," Hastings said.