Governor Inslee's op-ed for CNBC published July 12, 2016 America's advantage in the knowledge-based economy is our human capital. Well-educated, highly-trained, creative-thinking people are essential to the most innovative companies and successful entrepreneurs in the world today. Skilled people are the currency of economic development for states in the 21st century. Why are nearly 95 percent of all the commercial aircraft in North America built in Washington state? Why is our Puget Sound region the cloud computing capital?

Sea slugs typically slither--a perfectly respectable way to get around--but recently a team of scientists saw additional locomotive potential in the odd-looking invertebrate. Specifically, they took a tiny muscle from the sea slug's mouth and used it to make a robot crawl. "We're building a living machine--a biohybrid robot that's not completely organic--yet," Victoria Webster, the PhD student who is leading the research, said in a statement. A sea slug might seem an unlikely source for robot parts. But according to the researchers, sea slugs are exceptionally tough creatures, and that toughness extends down to the cellular level.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Google's self-driving car right now is that you can't pull up Google Maps, pick a destination and tell the car to go there. That's because to learn new routes, the car has to be "trained" by a human driver at least once or twice first. But now a number of organizations, including Ford Motor Company, Stanford University and an investment firm run by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, have invested 6.6 million into a company that promises to leapfrog that navigation issue by creating cheap, detailed maps that driverless cars will be able to read on the fly. And these maps will be created by regular drivers such as yourself, according to Civil Maps, the company behind the idea. In that respect, the concept is a bit like another Google-owned product, Waze.

The company raised 1B on Jan. 4, including 500 million from General Motors. SAN FRANCISCO -- Lyft continued a flurry of news Monday with the extension of a program that could add hundreds of thousands of drivers to its ride-hailing service. Lyft said it is expanding its short-term, car-rental service for drivers, Express Drive, to the San Francisco Bay Area, Denver and Los Angeles this year. It is currently available in Chicago, Boston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Lyft President John Zimmer and General Motors President Dan Ammann made the announcement in connection with Fortune's Brainstorm tech conference Monday in Aspen, Colo. In January, GM poured 500 million into Lyft to create an on-demand network of self-driving cars.

The company raised 1B on Jan. 4, including 500 million from General Motors. SAN FRANCISCO -- Lyft continued a flurry of news Monday with the extension of a program that could add hundreds of thousands of drivers to its ride-hailing service. Lyft said it is expanding its short-term, car-rental service for drivers, Express Drive, to the San Francisco Bay Area, Denver and Los Angeles this year. It is currently available in Chicago, Boston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Lyft President John Zimmer and General Motors President Dan Ammann made the announcement before they are to discuss it later today at Fortune's Brainstorm tech conference in Aspen, Colo. In January, GM poured 500 million into Lyft to create an on-demand network of self-driving cars.

Episode Summary: If you're in the San Francisco Bay area, it's not all that novel to be trained in or working on some form of AI; however, to be doing so in the 1980s and 1990s was a more rare occurrence. Dr. Lorien Pratt has been working with neural nets and AI applications for many decades, and she does lots of consulting work in implementing these technologies with companies in the Bay area. In this episode, Lorien provides her unique perspective on decades of development and adoption in AI as we ask, where is the traction today in places where it wasn't 5 or 10 years ago? We also discuss where Lorien thinks machine learning applications in business and government seem to be headed in the near term. Recognition in Brief: Lorien Pratt, PhD, is co-founder and chief scientist at Quantellia, a consultant firm for machine learning applications in business and industry.

The move to analogies as teaching methods is a major step in "cognitive computing," which allows computers to learn and even reprogram themselves. Cognitive computing is the big evolutionary step to true artificial intelligence. The new research is being carried out by Northwestern University, using a new approach called the Structure Mapping Engine (SME) which is capable of analogic problem solving, including "moral dilemmas". So far, the results are pretty straightforward -- computers retrieve memories to find analogic situations -- Case A resembles Example C, but not Cases B or D, etc. This type of very basic, very important learning is roughly kindergarten level for humans.

Professor Stephen Hawking says he believes pollution and human "stupidity" remain the biggest threats to mankind, while also expressing his concerns over the use of artificial intelligence in warfare. The world's leading theoretical physicist argued "we have certainly not become less greedy or less stupid" in our treatment of the environment over the past decade, during an interview on Larry King Now, which is hosted on Ora TV. Professor Hawking said: "Six years ago, I was warning about pollution and overcrowding, they have gotten worse since then. The population has grown by half a billion since our last interview, with no end in sight. "At this rate, it will be eleven billion by 2100.

How Brexit may affect artists and the art market. George Lucas abandons plans for a museum in Chicago. Miami models allege that an artist asked them to do intimate things with a rope. The Chicago Tribune says good riddance. Plus, how the referendum may affect artists.

Long ago I lived in Santa Cruz, California. Almost every morning I would throw on a wet suit, grab my surfboard out of the garage, and head to the rocky cliffs just a few blocks from my house. I would descend a well-worn path to the ocean below, paddle out to the break, and spend hours surrounded by kelp beds and barking sea lions, catching waves, feeling exhilarated, and floating on my board, a world away from the troubles on land. I have a family now and have lived for years in the generally wave-less realms of New York City. But a few months ago I suddenly felt that old hunger again. I wanted to race out to the garage and grab a board.