Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the new spectre of digital cultures. By filtering information out of existing data, it determines the way we see the world and how the world sees us. Yet the vision algorithms have of our future is built on our past. What we teach these algorithms ultimately reflects back on us and it is therefore no surprise when artificial intelligence starts to classify on the basis of race, class and gender. This odd'hauntology'1Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx, Paris, Galilée, 1993. is at the core of what is currently discussed under the labels of algorithmic bias or pattern discrimination.2For

A delegation of members of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) visited three Finnish technological hubs to assess the potential benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence for our society. They stressed that all future developments must encompass three pillars: product safety, consumer trust, and solidarity in health and social care. Artificial intelligence applications can increase people's wellbeing, but the potential risks need to be taken seriously. The products that are emerging as a result of new technologies and the digital revolution are in general extremely helpful and can have a wide range of uses in all areas of our lives, from dispensing medicines to curing loneliness. However, they need to be handled with care, as they are not always as straightforward as they may seem.

Sci-fi is a large and interesting genre for anyone who gets curious about what the future may hold. From flying cars to dystopian corporations, nothing is outside its range. RELATED: 10 2000s Sci-Fi Masterpieces You've Probably Never Seen There are tons of robot movies, B-grade schlock-fests like Chopping Mall, and big budget productions like Blade Runner: 2049. There's no such thing as an objective film rating, but IMDb is great for getting a consensus from the public. Let's see what they have to tell us about robots!

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Thursday ordered government agencies to remove two ranks of public servants in 2020 and replace their roles with artificial intelligence, in a bid to cut red tape hampering investment. Widodo made the remarks in a room full of leaders of big companies as he laid out a second-term agenda aimed at changing the structure of Southeast Asia's largest economy by reducing its reliance on natural resources. The president, whose new five-year term began last month after winning an election in April, said Indonesia should transition to higher-end manufacturing, such as electric vehicles and use raw materials like coal and bauxite in such industries, not just exports. Such transformation would require foreign investment and Widodo said he would improve the business climate by fixing dozens of overlapping rules and cutting red tape. To reduce bureaucracy, Widodo said the current top four tiers in government agencies would be flattened to two next year.

Instead, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have turned to the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence to dramatically accelerate the process of battery discovery. As described in two new papers, Argonne researchers first created a highly accurate database of roughly 133,000 small organic molecules that could form the basis of battery electrolytes. To do so, they used a computationally intensive model called G4MP2. This collection of molecules, however, represented only a small subset of 166 billion larger molecules that scientists wanted to probe for electrolyte candidates. Because using G4MP2 to resolve each of the 166 billion molecules would have required an impossible amount of computing time and power, the research team used a machine learning algorithm to relate the precisely known structures from the smaller data set to much more coarsely modeled structures from the larger data set.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. is reviewing a test flight plan for the SpaceJet small passenger jet under development, the firm's president said Wednesday. The review, partly to see whether the first delivery of the aircraft should be moved back further, reflects delays in the production of test models for obtaining a type certificate, according to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries President Seiji Izumisawa. So far, the planned first delivery of the SpaceJet has been delayed five times, from 2013 to the middle of 2020. "We have not changed" the current schedule, Izumisawa said in an interview with media organizations. The SpaceJet, previously known as the Mitsubishi Regional Jet, is the first Japanese-made small passenger jet developed by Mitsubishi Aircraft Corp., a unit of Mitsubishi Heavy.

Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.

Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has opened to the public its source code for an in-house machine-learning platform that it used to drive product recommendations during this year's Singles Day shopping festival. Why it matters: Alibaba has sharpened its focus on open-source software since 2011. The company's cloud division is a member of the Linux Foundation and is active in a number of open-source communities including the Apache Software Foundation. Details: Dubbed Alink, the platform offers a range of algorithm libraries that allow for processing live data as well as batched datasets, Alibaba Cloud said in a statement on Thursday. "The difference between Alink and the pure AI platforms like Tensorflow and PyTorch is that those focus more on the algorithms and the design of the models. But today, for machine learning models to train effectively, we need to have a high-quality connection to the big data. Alink provides us with a seamless connection between the AI algorithms and the big data distributed systems."

It feels like this man needs no introduction, but for anyone who doesn't know who Demis Hassabis is, here's the lowdown. He's the cofounder and chief executive of the London-headquartered DeepMind AI lab, which was acquired by Google in 2014 for £400m. Prior to DeepMind, Hassabis had his own computer games company called Elixir Studios, but his passion for games goes way back. He was a chess master at the age of 13 and the second-highest-rated under 14 player in the world at one time. Catherine Breslin is a machine learning scientist and consultant based in Cambridge.