Increasingly, AI is adopted by our banks and our bosses, by our cars and our courts. Across the board, implicit bias remains a significant and complex problem. Several examples have become emblematic of the ways in which implicit bias can channel AI in a prejudiced direction. The Nikon camera that kept asking whether Taiwanese American blogger Joz Wang and her family members were "blinking" while they were taking photographs, for instance, or the time when Google Photos tagged two black friends as "gorillas." Or take the example of Google search results.

Find all our Student Opinion questions here. Last week, a robotic hand successfully solved a Rubik's Cube. While that feat might seem like a fun parlor trick, it's a sign that robots are being programmed to learn and not just memorize. Robots are already playing important roles inside retail giants like Amazon and manufacturing companies like Foxconn by completing very specific, repetitive tasks. But many believe that machine learning will ultimately allow robots to master a much wider array of more complex functions.

Human augmentation conjures up visions of futuristic cyborgs, but humans have been augmenting parts of the body for hundreds of years. Glasses, hearing aids and prosthetics evolved into cochlear implants and wearables. Even laser eye surgery has become commonplace. But what if scientists could augment the brain to increase memory storage, or implant a chip to decode neural patterns? What if exoskeletons became a standard uniform for autoworkers, enabling them to lift superhuman weights?

Trained on nearly 1 million screening mammography images, researchers from New York University found their algorithm could push radiologists' ability to accurately identify breast cancer to nearly 90%. The researchers published their findings earlier this month in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

Google is taking packages into the air to customers' homes. The first drone home deliveries of packages from Walgreens have started from Wing, the Alphabet subsidiary. Wing recently received an expanded Air Carrier Certificate from the Federal Aviation Administration allowing the first commercial air delivery service by drone directly to homes in the U.S. The FAA permissions are the first allowing multiple pilots to oversee multiple unmanned aircraft making commercial deliveries to the general public simultaneously. Collaborating with Federal Express and Virginia retailer Sugar Magnolia, Wing began delivering over-the-counter medication, gifts and snacks to residents of Christiansburg, Virginia. FedEx completed the first scheduled ecommerce drone delivery on Friday, essentially beginning the connection of retailers to last-mile drone delivery services.

Our favorite'bot is back down to one of its lowest prices. If you make a purchase by clicking one of our links, we may earn a small share of the revenue. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA Today's newsroom and any business incentives. The holidays are coming--and it's going to be stressful. While you're running around cooking Thanksgiving dinner, getting gifts, baking cookies, and attending parties, your floors might not get the attention they deserve.

A "smart-automation" approach can give a typical HR organization a measurable lift when it comes to improving customer experience and efficiency, according to new research from the Hackett Group. The Hackett Group's new Digital World Class analysis found that those typical HR organizations can reduce costs by 17% and operate with 26% fewer staff hours--while also improving effectiveness and internal customer experience. The Hackett Group research advises that, by following a smart-automation strategy, typical HR functions can boost efficiency levels close to those seen by world-class HR organizations (defined as those that achieve top-quartile performance in both efficiency and effectiveness across an array of weighted metrics in the Hackett Group's comprehensive HR benchmark). For instance, world-class HR organizations currently operate at 20% lower cost and with 31% fewer employees than typical HR organizations, the research found. Smart automation--defined as approaches including robotic-process automation, cognitive automation, intelligent data capture and other leading-edge technologies--can enable world-class HR organizations to cut costs and reduce the number of staff hours needed to perform existing administrative/transactional work.

A recent estimation put 40% of the world's jobs at risk of automation over the next 15 years. That's a major shift, but it's nothing new -- throughout history, advances in technology have replaced human jobs time and again. Between 1947 and 2014, for example, the number of U.S. workers employed by the railroad industry dropped by 86% as a result of new technology and automation. At the same time, this tech dramatically increased productivity, allowing the amount of freight being moved to increase by 182%. Today it's the field of robotics -- or rather, "cobotics" -- that's changing the way we work.

"AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on." This statement from Google CEO has become quite relevant in the Indian banking industry, especially after demonetisation. With an average Indian consumer getting at ease with online banking, making internal operations efficient and the customer experience more effective has certainly become a challenge. Poor data quality and customer segmentation are one among the many challenges banks face today. Further, with the rise of technology-oriented payments banks like Airtel Payments Bank, Paytm Payments Bank, etc; entry of neo banks and neo banking platforms, as well as rise of NBFCs, has also made it impossible for banks to survive with the traditional mode on. As they say, 'necessity is the mother of invention', banks are now finding solace in new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and more.