One of the big robotics storylines of 2018, at least in the mainstream press, was the arrival of multiple sex robots on the market. Most of these take a female form, anthropomorphic fantasies like Synthea Amatus's Samantha and RealBotix's Harmony, which have raised eyebrows and prompted international coverage, spurred in no small part by boisterous founders and burgeoning rivalries. Also: It's complicated: Love in the age of apps CNET Robot brothels, meanwhile, have popped up in Toronto and Paris, and another was barred from doing business in Houston. Pontificators have pontificated about whether this is a good thing or a sign of a society on the skids, and much of the criticism has (rightly, in my opinion) focused on how these robots represent women, both in appearance and as passive objects of desire. Almost like clockwork, "male" robots with bionic penises are now on their way.

Xaxis, the outcome media company by GroupM and WPP, is opening up a huge space for marketers and advertisers. With a collective approach of advanced technology, machine learning, unique data sets and automation, Xaxis is helping brands to reach their business outcomes in the most efficient and effective ways. In a chat with exchange4media, Arshan Saha, APAC CEO, Xaxis, spoke about the future of AI and data in terms of marketers. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will have a massive effect on the advertising and marketing world, says Saha. "The majority of media channels will be automated in the near future," he said. This will mean consumers will become addressable across different channels as they will be driven by a digital footprint, Saha added.

IBM weighed in Nov 5 on the policy debate over facial recognition technology, arguing against an outright ban but calling for "precision regulation" to protect privacy and civil liberties. In a white paper posted on its website, the US computing giant said policymakers should understand that "not all technology lumped under the umbrella of'facial recognition' is the same". IBM said uneasiness about artificial intelligence technology which can use face scans for identification was reasonable. "However, blanket bans on technology are not the answer to concerns around specific use cases," said the paper by IBM chief privacy officer Christina Montgomery and Ryan Hagemann, co-director the IBM policy lab. "Casting such a wide regulatory net runs the very real risk of cutting us off from the many – and potentially life-saving – benefits these technologies offer."

The first entry in the franchise, Shogun: Total War, balances the combat simulations that strive for realism and authenticity, alongside the political strategy that is aimed to give context and stakes to each conflict. The original Total War is set in 1530, during the Sengoku Jidai period of feudal Japan: a time largely popularised in contemporary fiction by the works of Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa, with films such as Kagemusha, Seven Samurai and Ran proving influential on the design and development of the game - with clips of the latter being used as part of the games cinematics. Both the player and opposing AI assume the role of the'Daimyo': local-lords who control provinces of Japan with a need to conduct both diplomatic strategy alongside military movements. When rival factions are drawn into conflict, players take control of the'Taisho' (General) and move hundreds if not thousands of troops across the battlefield. Sengoku Jidai made for an ideal period of history for the game, given the politics and even the economics of the period was built around the logistics of fielding armies in defence of the Daimyo and his ambitions. Total War deviates from many traditional real-time strategy games in that it removes mechanics such as Fog of War from combat gameplay as well as the need for resource management outside of unit counts from combat decision making.

Pramod, 40, a software engineer with a large IT company, is having a mid-life crisis. Bored of writing hundreds of lines of code every day, he wants to quit the monotonous job and shift to a more challenging role that also gives him a good package. However, he is clueless on the right skill sets he needs to acquire. Pramod is not alone in this predicament. There are thousands of such mid-level software professionals who either want to make a course correction or have been told by their organisation to acquire new skills if they are to remain relevant.

Trained AI agents can adopt human design strategies to solve problems, according to findings published in the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. Big design problems require creative and exploratory decision making, a skill in which humans excel. When engineers use artificial intelligence (AI), they have traditionally applied it to a problem within a defined set of rules rather than having it generally follow human strategies to create something new. This novel research considers an AI framework that learns human design strategies through observation of human data to generate new designs without explicit goal information, bias, or guidance. The study was co-authored by Jonathan Cagan, professor of mechanical engineering and interim dean of Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering, Ayush Raina, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, and Chris McComb, an assistant professor of engineering design at the Pennsylvania State University.

Sir Martyn Lewis and I met back in April to discuss the impact of technology on humanity at The Club at The Ivy in London. It was a well-received debate, so we reconvened to tackle a new subject last month. As education is one of the key industries being disrupted by technology, and a subject both Martyn and I feel passionate about, it felt apt to put it on the agenda for the evening's discussion. The'Fourth Industrial Revolution' will see an increase in workforce automation. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that over the next 10 to 20 years, "14 percent of jobs are at high risk of being fully automated, while another 32 percent at risk of significant change".

Discovery Project: AI Super-Recruiter This project is about using a data science algorithm to emulate a professional recruiter in their job of finding good candidates for executive positions. A small team of students will work with a job recruiting firm in Asia. The firm will have one or more of their top recruiters mark resumes to explain what they look for in a set of 20 or more CVs for executive positions. By understanding what they look for, the team will develop a machine learning algorithm and/or rule based approach to selecting resumes. Results will be shown to the executive job search firm.

Artificial intelligence should respect human rights, diversity and privacy -- while being a far cry from Terminator-style robots -- according to new federal ethics guidelines. Technology Minister Karen Andrews will today release an eight-point guidance she wants companies to adopt in a bid to prevent people from being exploited. The guidelines stipulate all AI should benefit individuals, society and the environment. It should prevent discrimination, respect privacy and only operate in accordance with their intended purpose. The guidelines also recommend human oversight of AI always be enabled and there should be timely processes to allow people to challenge the use or output of information.

Visual 1st, the annual Silicon-Valley imaging conference for industry leaders and upstarts, once again brought together a worldwide audience for a day-and-a-half executive conference. The event, held Oct. 2-3 at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco, addresses topics as far-reaching as artificial intelligence and as every day as printing. As with most conferences, the real meat of the event is the hallway discussions and informal meetings over a beer or wine at the reception. Below are some photos from the conference, courtesy of sponsor, Sweet Escapes. Each year, a panel of high-powered industry experts presented the four Visual 1st Awards to the most outstanding among 30 products competing in this year's show-and-tell demo sessions.