At $2,900, Sony's robot dog Aibo sits at the fringe of technology, but it might not stay there. Whether you find it cute or creepy, the tech that makes Aibo tick is continuing to evolve, and it isn't hard to imagine a whole litter of less expensive Aibo competitors aimed at consumers -- and even at children -- in the not-so-distant future. To be clear, Aibo's tech already includes artificial intelligence, sensors and microphones that help it interact with people, and cameras that can recognize faces and help it navigate your home like a Roomba. A reasonable consumer might rightly wonder just how much data this dog gathers as it wanders their home scanning faces and learning about its owners. Perhaps more important -- what exactly does Sony do with that data?

Adding cognitive abilities to a machine may appear to many as the background plot of every science-fiction movie, however, the debate around the future and limitations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has unquestionably existed for decades in the world of computer automation systems, especially with AI being a rapidly growing trend in emergent technologies. AI algorithms are already in use in modern society and making human life easier; technologies such as voice recognition, car navigation systems, chatbots, social networking, purchase suggestions, robotics in healthcare, and many more, rely on these algorithms to perform the task they were specifically designed to accomplish. So far, these technologies are considered positive by various smart tech enthusiasts who believe that AI can be even further developed for the greater good. However, the question many of the wary poses is: will researchers and scientists proceed in developing artificial intelligence technologies to the point where humans lose the ability to understand and control the functioning of a super-intelligent machine? Although we are still too far from creating an AI technology that surpasses the capacity of the human brain, the current discussion mostly focuses on ethics, morality, and limitations.

It is commonly understood that AI is one of the most disruptive technologies being developed. It may affect almost every aspect of society – from knowledge sharing to economic interactions, from making art crafts to finding cures for our diseases – and of personal life – from making friends, to finding a partner, from dealing with the pain for the loss of beloved people, to helping us managing our households through smart objects. Understanding the relationship between AI and society is a complex endeavour, since its shape and its evolution are not an immutable technological law, but instead the consequence of specific choices, both private and public, that could very well change over time and may of course influence its sustainability. Some powerful politicians like Vladimir Putin have declared that who will lead the researches in the field of AI, will lead the world, and of course many funds are coming from the armies (Harari, 2015) and from governments that seem to be working for monitoring and controlling us (Greenwald, 2015; Zuboff, 2018). Many others come from the finance world and are meant to increase the incomes of a few rich persons, regardless the risks ran by the rest of the population (O'Neil, 2016).

College students lead stressful lives. They've got assignments to complete and extracurriculars to attend, not to mention tests to prepare for and job applications to submit. Unfortunately for them, the negative health effects of stress are well-documented. If left untreated, it can cause cardiovascular diseases, affect memory and cognition, and even suppress the immune system. To help suss out the outsized contributors to social and academic pressure, researchers at the College of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts turned to AI, which they used to predict stress levels -- below median, median, or above median -- from questionnaire and smartphone sensor data.

While artificial intelligence has tremendous potential for revolutionizing healthcare delivery, there are many possible pitfalls and ill-intended uses of this powerful technology. "With the great promise of AI comes an even greater responsibility," Tourassi testified on Wednesday before a House committee hearing on AI's societal and ethical implications. "There are many ethical questions when applying AI in medicine." With respect to ethics, she observed that the massive volumes of health data being leveraged by AI must be carefully protected to preserve privacy. "The sheer volume, variability and sensitive nature of the personal data being collected require newer, extensive, secure and sustainable computational infrastructure and algorithms," according to Tourassi's testimony.

If you've ever attended an AI conference, I bet you passed under the placid gaze of a chrome-plated humanoid, lovingly selected from an ocean of creepy robot stock images that marketing teams can't resist pasting on every billboard these days. Clearly, I'm personally guilty of using octarine-blue sci-fi art to lure weary travelers to my blog. It certainly works, which is why it's a pity that those images have next to nothing to do with AI. You'd think we'd all be more ashamed of ourselves, but don't worry, AI is too useful to go away, no matter how much we all cry wolf. Marketing folk run around trying to get your attention with sci-fi gimmicks, but the reason you'll stick around long enough to buy into AI is entirely different.

Researchers at Columbia University have created artificial intelligence (AI) software that can broadcast aloud, in a computerized voice, what the human brain is'hearing.' "Our ultimate goal is to develop technologies that can decode the internal voice of a patient who is unable to speak, such that it can be understood by any listener," says neuroengineer Nima Mesgarani, senior author of the research study and a principal investigator at Columbia University. "In this study, we combined the state of the art in artificial intelligence with advanced speech processing algorithms to reconstruct sounds from the brain that were much more intelligible compared to previous research," says Columbia's Mesgarani. "This is a huge milestone." The Columbia researchers used experimental AI software trained to recognize digital representations of spoken sentences.

Rapid advances in computing and robotics have led to calls for government controls. Before acting, we need to distinguish among the many meanings and applications of the technology. New technologies often spur public anxiety, but the intensity of concern about the implications of advances in artificial intelligence (AI) is particularly noteworthy. Several respected scholars and technology leaders warn that AI is on the path to turning robots into a master class that will subjugate humanity, if not destroy it. Others fear that AI is enabling governments to mass produce autonomous weapons--"killing machines"--that will choose their own targets, including innocent civilians. Renowned economists point out that AI, unlike previous technologies, is destroying many more jobs than it creates, leading to major economic disruptions. There seems to be widespread agreement that AI growth is accelerating.

Worldwide, about 44 million people are living with Alzheimer's disease or a related form of dementia. Although 82 percent of seniors in the United States say it's important to have their thinking or memory checked, only 16 percent say they receive regular cognitive assessments. Many traditional memory assessment tools are widely available to health professionals, though deficiencies in screening and detection accuracy and reliability remain prevalent. But even with increasingly available tools like MemTrax, an online memory test based on image recognition, the clinical efficacy of this approach as a memory function screening tool has not been sufficiently demonstrated or validated. In practice, there are numerous integrated and complex factors to consider in interpreting memory evaluation test results, which presents a real challenge for clinicians.

This is the first method that can convincingly translate between visual and touch signals