Machines are eating humans' jobs talents. And it's not just about jobs that are repetitive and low-skill. Automation, robotics, algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) in recent times have shown they can do equal or sometimes even better work than humans who are dermatologists, insurance claims adjusters, lawyers, seismic testers in oil fields, sports journalists and financial reporters, crew members on guided-missile destroyers, hiring managers, psychological testers, retail salespeople, and border patrol agents. Moreover, there is growing anxiety that technology developments on the near horizon will crush the jobs of the millions who drive cars and trucks, analyze medical tests and data, perform middle management chores, dispense medicine, trade stocks and evaluate markets, fight on battlefields, perform government functions, and even replace those who program software – that is, the creators of algorithms. People will create the jobs of the future, not simply train for them, ...

Today on In Case You Missed It: While we're all focused on cars becoming autonomous and electric, automakers have also been making important advancements in safety. No where is that more apparent than in a collision between a 1998 Toyota Corolla and its 2015 counterpart conducted by New Zealand's ANCAP. The safety advisory slammed the two vehicles into each other head first. It's impressive to see the difference between 2015 model with its mostly intact cab and the car built in 1998 which is so mangled there's a good chance the person behind the wheel would not have survived. Meanwhile, while you usually associate search and rescue with people in yellow vests and dogs, researchers at UC San Diego have created a tiny robot that walks by inflating and deflating the bladders in its legs.

A future driven by AI technology has just been outlined by the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, during his keynote address at Google IO 2017. Pichai stated "the more we democratise access to AI, the sooner everyone will benefit". This vision was backed up by announcing a number of AI driven technologies including improvements to Google Home, Google Assistant and the all new Google Lens -- an object recognition system that uses a smartphone camera and machine learning to interpret the world around you. This is another major step toward a machine driven future -- a movement that has garnered a lot of attention in recent years. AI isn't a new technology and has been applied to plenty of digital systems for decades.

For the past few days I've been working on how to implement recursive neural networks in TensorFlow. Recursive neural networks (which I'll call TreeNets from now on to avoid confusion with recurrent neural nets) can be used for learning tree-like structures (more generally, directed acyclic graph structures). They are highly useful for parsing natural scenes and language; see the work of Richard Socher (2011) for examples. More recently, in 2014, Ozan İrsoy used a deep variant of TreeNets to obtain some interesting NLP results. In RNNs, at each time step the network takes as input its previous state s(t-1) and its current input x(t) and produces an output y(t) and a new hidden state s(t).

More and more people are using the phrase "Ok Google" to start a conversation to find information or perform actions using the Google Assistant. Launched last fall, the new assistant is already available on over 100 million devices and is rapidly evolving. Today at Google I/O, its creator took the stage to discuss how Google Assistant is expanding its capabilities and reach on smartphones and Google Home. Google Home, a standalone voice activated smart-appliance and speaker, is getting the most attention, with a number of significant improvements on the way. In a few months, Google Home will be able to make hands-free VOIP calls to any phone in the U.S. or Canada for free.

The future is looking bright for New Zealand businesses when they begin integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and new technologies into products, NZTech chief executive Graeme Muller says. A recent United States survey found 80 percent of consumers are excited about the way AI and machine learning will change their lives. US consumers are optimistic about technology developments in smart machines, AI, and robotics. The report from global creative consultancy firm Lippincott surveyed 2000 leading edge US consumers to determine their emotional state around technology, and draw conclusions about what the customer of the future will be looking for from businesses. A number of events are being held this week, as part of NZTech's national Techweek, to discuss AI and its implications.

The automotive industry may have turned its sights to self-driving cars and smart technology, but what really sets today's cars apart from their predecessors is something far more important – they're much, much safer. Cars built in the year 2000 or earlier account for more than a third of fatal crashes, according to a new analysis from the Australasian New Car Assessment Program. As shocking footage from recent crash tests reveals the dramatic difference between older cars and those made in the last few years, experts warn that these at-risk vehicles also tend to be operated by the most at-risk drivers. In the tests, cars were driven toward a head-on collision at 64 kilometers per hour. While newer cars were found to perform'very well,' older vehicles did not hold up well at all, with severe consequences for the dummy driver inside In the tests, cars were driven toward a head-on collision at 64 kilometers per hour.

A heavy maintenance superintendent for a surface coal mine in Elgin, Texas, Evans was responsible for figuring out how to patch or replace outdated parts of a field delivery system that ferried coal from the mine to a plant. Each minute of downtime could cost the company as much as $170. Now the third-generation coal miner gets her adrenaline rush sitting indoors on a soft swivel chair, fixing code on a computer screen. The 33-year-old is a data scientist currently doing a paid residency at Galvanize in Austin. "I was an adrenaline junkie," sad Evans of her past career.

Adding more ammunition to the grand AI alliance, Intel, Salesforce, eBay, Sony, SAP, McKinsey & Company, Zalando and Cogitai are joining the Partnership on AI, a collection of companies and non-profits that have committed to share best practices and communicating openly about the prospects and challenges of artificial intelligence research. The group also announced a slew of non-profit partners including the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the AI Forum of New Zealand, the Centre for Democracy & Technology, the Centre for Internet and Society (India), Data & Society Research Institute among others. The new members expand a group that already counts heavyweights like Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Apple. The platform will be hosting a series of AI Grand Challenges to encourage and incentivize researchers working on AI. It has also announced an award for best paper on the topic of "AI, People, and Society" to aid in addressing a similar goal.

Google Home is barely six months old, and Google is piling on new features. On Wednesday at its I/O developer conference in Mountain View, the company announced upgrades focused on personalizing your interactions and making them hands-free. Presented by Rishi Chandra, Google's Vice President for Home Products, the new features leapfrog Amazon's popular Echo assistant in some ways, while in other ways Google is just catching up. "A phone call is still the easiest way" to communicate with others, Chandra said, as he announced the availability of hands-free calling for Google Home. "Just ask the Google assistant to make the call and we can connect you to any land or cell line in the U.S. or Canada completely free," he said.