Geoffrey Hinton is one of the creators of Deep Learning, a 2019 winner of the Turing Award, and an engineering fellow at Google. Last week, at the company's I/O developer conference, we discussed his early fascination with the brain, and the possibility that computers could be modeled after its neural structure--an idea long dismissed by other scholars as foolhardy. We also discussed consciousness, his future plans, and whether computers should be taught to dream. The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Nicholas Thompson: Let's start when you write some of your early, very influential papers. Everybody says, "This is a smart idea, but we're not actually going to be able to design computers this way." Explain why you persisted and why you were so confident that you had found something important. Geoffrey Hinton: It seemed to me there's no other way the brain could work. It has to work by learning the strength of connections. And if you want to make a device do something intelligent, you've got two options: You can program it, or it can learn. And people certainly weren't programmed, so we had to learn. This had to be the right way to go. NT: Explain what neural networks are. GH: You have relatively simple processing elements that are very loosely models of neurons. They have connections coming in, each connection has a weight on it, and that weight can be changed through learning. And what a neuron does is take the activities on the connections times the weights, adds them all up, and then decides whether to send an output.

The Special Operations Command plans to apply artificial intelligence into its operations to help the U.S. stay ahead of Russia, China and other …

Beginning as early as next year, many people are expected to have more conversations with digital voice assistants than with their spouse. Presently, the vast majority of these assistants--from Amazon's Alexa to Microsoft's Cortana--are projected as female, in name, sound of voice and'personality'. 'I'd blush if I could', a new UNESCO publication produced in collaboration with Germany and the EQUALS Skills Coalition holds a critical lens to this growing and global practice, explaining how it: The title of the publication borrows its name from the response Siri, Apple's female-gendered voice assistant used by nearly half a billion people, would give when a human user told'her', "Hey Siri, you're a bi***." Siri's submissiveness in the face of gender abuse – and the servility expressed by so many other digital assistants projected as young women – provides a powerful illustration of gender biases coded into technology products, pervasive in the technology sector and apparent in digital skills education. According to Saniye Gülser Corat, UNESCO's Director for Gender Equality, "The world needs to pay much closer attention to how, when and whether AI technologies are gendered and, crucially, who is gendering them."

Walmart has opened a store in Levittown, N.Y. that is intended to showcase the power of artificial intelligence. The store, announced last week, is packed with video cameras, digital screens, and over 100 servers, making it appear more like a corporate data center than a discount retailer. All that machinery helps Walmart automatically track inventory so that it knows when toilet paper is running low or that milk needs restocking. The company's goal is to create "a glimpse into the future of retail," when computers rather than humans are expected to do a lot of retail's grunt work. Walmart's push into artificial intelligence highlights how retailers are increasingly adding data crunching to their brick and mortar stores.

University of Missouri assistant professor SCOTT CHRISTIANSON puts an app designed to assist those with visual impairments to the test using yours truly, our floor director and some wrinkled up dollar bills. Self-driving cars is becoming a reality, and while it may sound like a cool idea, PROF. SCOTT CHRISTIANSON points out a not-so-obvious morality dilemma when it comes to programming machines that are designed to make decisions that a human normally would, saying "hopefully the car will be able to avoid the accident, but there may be situations where it may not be able to, so how do we want those cars programmed?" Never mind tomorrow, machine-learning artificial intelligence is happening now! University of Missouri professor SCOTT CHRISTIANSON tells us just how much it's "creeping into our lives."

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development unveiled the first intergovernmental standard for artificial intelligence policies Wednesday--and the organization's 36 member countries including America have initially signed on along with Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru and Romania. OECD, an international forum that unites stakeholders from many nations to work together to address challenges of globalization, released "Recommendations of the Council on Artificial Intelligence" to help foster a global policy ecosystem that leverages the evolving technology's benefits, while also protecting human rights and democratic values. OECD's Director of the Science, Technology and Innovation Directorate Andrew Wyckoff told reporters that the principles' creators hope they'll help shape a stable regulatory environment that promotes the tech's positive uses, while withstanding unethical abuses. "AI is what we would call a'general purpose technology.' It's going to change the way we do things in nearly every single sector of the economy--that's part of the reason we give so much importance to its development," he said.

A nimble robot inspired by bush babies can now bounce three times its own height in a single leap. SALTO (saltatorial locomotion terrain obstacles) was fist designed to jump at 4mph (1.75 m/s) but a host of new features have now been added to the nifty machine. A single leg, inspired by those of the galago, or Senegalese bush baby, propels the robot across a range of terrain and over various obstacles. Video footage of it in action reveals how it effortlessly navigates obstacle courses and bounces through the streets. Creators of SALTO hope the technology will one day aid the development of other robots which can assist in rescue missions by jumping over rubble.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding research that could give a future generation of soldiers the power to control machines and weapons with their minds. The agency said it will fund six organizations through the Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program who will work to design and build interfaces for application in the U.S. military, that could be worn be soldiers and translate their brain signals into instructions. Those instructions could be used to control swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles, wield cyber defense systems, or facilitate military communications. Soldiers may be able to control vehicles and more by using only their minds under a new initiative from the U.S. Department of Defense. While the feat may sound firmly in the realm of science fiction, according to DARPA it is setting a completion date within four years.

East Japan Railway Co. on Wednesday showed the media a test trial of two artificial intelligence robots designed to guide passengers at Tokyo Station. The robots -- Pepper of SoftBank Robotics Corp. and SEMMI of German railway company Deutsche Bahn AG -- were deployed at an information desk in a shopping and dining center called Gransta on the basement floor of the station. Visitors can ask for directions to stores and restaurants in the facility in languages including Japanese, English and Chinese, JR East said. The trial, which began Monday and will last through May 31, comes as part of a technological exchange between JR East and Deutsche Bahn that began in 1992. They will look at the machines' capabilities and visitors' reactions to their appearance.

Foreign Minister Taro Kono plans to ask overseas media outlets to write the names of Japanese people with the family name first, as is customary in the Japanese language. If realized, the new policy would mark a major shift in the country's long-running practice for handling Japanese names in foreign languages -- which began in the 19th to early 20th centuries amid the growing influence of Western culture. At a news conference Tuesday, Kono said that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's name should be written as "Abe Shinzo," in line with other Asian leaders such as Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Now is the right time to make the change, given that the Reiwa Era has just begun and several major events -- including next month's Group of 20 summit and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics -- are approaching, Kono said. "I plan to ask international media organizations to do this. Domestic media outlets that have English services should consider it, too," he said, citing a report released in 2000 by the education ministry's National Language Council that said it was desirable to write Japanese names with the family name first in all instances.