There will be dozens of new job titles emerging in the next few years that In a world where inequality seems to be on an inexorable rise, will the proliferation of AI be the solution that closes the gap between the privileged and underprivileged? If it's used ethically, then all the potential is there. Even though quality of life around the world has improved by almost all metrics over the last 50 years, from literacy to life expectancy, the divide between the'haves' and'have-nots' tends to dominate the news headlines, and it would be wrong to pretend that there are not endemic issues which need to be addressed if as a society we want to strive for true equality. It's most likely a fool's errand to try and'fix' the system from the top down. But to try and make sure that everyone gets access to the quality of life most of us are already lucky enough to enjoy, there's plenty that can be done from the bottom up. Primary amongst these is the potential of artificial intelligence to continue improving the quality of life for the minority who still suffer through living in poverty, without access to proper healthcare, or those who struggle to access the services society can and should provide.

Up to 30 additional Alexander von Humboldt Professorships in the field of Artificial Intelligence are to be filled in the years up to 2024. Through these professorships, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation intends to contribute to the German government's Artificial Intelligence Strategy which targets the establishment of new AI chairs in Germany. Alexander von Humboldt Professorships are financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The award comes with €5 million in funding for individuals conducting experimental research and €3.5 million for researchers working in theoretical fields. The award brings top international researchers from abroad to German universities and offers them long-term prospects for conducting research in Germany.

DeepMind, the U.K.-based AI research subsidiary acquired by Alphabet in 2014 for $500 million, today detailed ecological research its science team is conducting to develop AI systems that'll help study the behavior of animal species in Tanzania's Serengeti National Park. It hopes to expedite the analysis of data from hundreds of motion-detecting field cameras, which have captured millions of images since they were deployed by the Serengeti Lion Research program over nine years ago. "The Serengeti is one of the last remaining sites in the world that hosts an intact community of large mammals … As human encroachment around the park becomes more intense, these species are forced to alter their behaviours in order to survive," wrote DeepMind in a blog post. "Increasing agriculture, poaching, and climate abnormalities contribute to changes in animal behaviors and population dynamics, but these changes have occurred at spatial and temporal scales which are difficult to monitor using traditional research methods." For nearly a decade, conservationists have tapped the aforementioned cameras to keep tabs on animals within the park's core, enabling them to study their distribution and demography.

In 1953, US senators grilled General Motors CEO Charles "Engine Charlie" Wilson about his large GM shareholdings: Would they cloud his decision making if he became the US secretary of defense and the interests of General Motors and the United States diverged? Wilson said that he would always put US interests first but that he could not imagine such a divergence taking place, because, "for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." Although Wilson was confirmed, his remarks raised eyebrows due to widespread skepticism about the alignment of corporate and societal interests. The skepticism of the 1950s looks quaint when compared with today's concerns about whether business leaders will harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and workplace automation to pad their own pockets and those of shareholders--not to mention hurting society by causing unemployment, infringing upon privacy, creating safety and security risks, or worse. But is it possible that what is good for society can also be good for business--and vice versa?

Deep learning techniques do a good job at building models by correlating data points. But many AI researchers believe that more work needs to be done to understand causation and not just correlation. The field of causal deep learning -- useful in determining why something happened -- is still in its infancy, and it is much more difficult to automate than neural networks. Much of AI is about finding hidden patterns in large amounts of data. Soumendra Mohanty, executive vice president and chief data analytics officer at L&T Infotech, a global IT service company, said, "Obviously, this aspect drives us to the'what,' but rarely do we go down the path of understanding the'why.'"

Hundreds of schoolchildren have been drafted in to make Amazon's Alexa devices in China as part of a controversial and often illegal attempt to meet production targets, documents seen by the Guardian reveal. Interviews with workers and leaked documents from Amazon's supplier Foxconn show that many of the children have been required to work nights and overtime to produce the smart-speaker devices, in breach of Chinese labour laws. According to the documents, the teenagers – drafted in from schools and technical colleges in and around the central southern city of Hengyang – are classified as "interns", and their teachers are paid by the factory to accompany them. Teachers are asked to encourage uncooperative pupils to accept overtime work on top of regular shifts. Some of the pupils making Amazon's Alexa-enabled Echo and Echo Dot devices along with Kindles have been required to work for more than two months to supplement staffing levels at the factory during peak production periods, researchers found.

A US federal appeals court has rejected Facebook's effort to undo a class action lawsuit alleging it illegally collected and stored biometric data for millions of users without their consent using facial recognition technology. The 3-0 decision from the ninth US circuit court of appeals in San Francisco exposes the company to billions of dollars in potential damages paid out to the Illinois users who brought the case. The decision came as the social media company faces broad criticism from American politicians, lawmakers and regulators over its privacy practices. Last month, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5bn (£4bn) fine to settle a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data privacy investigation. "This biometric data is so sensitive that if it is compromised, there is simply no recourse," Shawn Williams, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the class action, said in an interview.

A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. LOUISVILLE – The culture surrounding video games is often shrouded in stereotypes and negative connotations. How often have we heard the narrative, especially following mass shootings in America, that video games are linked to violent behavior. Or that people who play video games are "basement dwellers" with no life. Or even the idea that all video game developers are Silicon Valley tech bros and it's a "man's world."

What is it exactly that makes humans so smart? In his seminal 1950 paper, "Computer Machinery and Intelligence," Alan Turing argued human intelligence was the result of complex symbolic reasoning. Philosopher Marvin Minsky, cofounder of the artificial intelligence lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also maintained that reasoning--the ability to think in a multiplicity of ways that are hierarchical--was what made humans human. Patrick Henry Winston begged to differ. "I think Turing and Minsky were wrong," he told me in 2017. "We forgive them because they were smart and mathematicians, but like most mathematicians, they thought reasoning is the key, not the byproduct." Winston, a professor of computer science at MIT, and a former director of its AI lab, was convinced the key to human intelligence was storytelling. "My belief is the distinguishing characteristic of humanity is this keystone ability to have descriptions with which we construct stories. I think stories are what make us different from chimpanzees and Neanderthals. And if story-understanding is really where it's at, we can't understand our intelligence until we understand that aspect of it."

Don't look at the clock! Now tell me: How much time has passed since you first logged on to your computer...READ MORE An efficient pattern recognition of a lion makes perfect evolutionary sense. If you see a large feline shape moving in some nearby brush, it is unwise to wait until you see the yellows of the lion's eyes before starting to run up the nearest tree. You need a brain that quickly detects entire shapes from fragments of the total picture and provides you with a powerful sense of the accuracy of this recognition. One need only think of the recognition of a new pattern that is so profound that it triggers an involuntary "a-ha!" to understand the degree of pleasure that can be associated with learning.