June was kind to macro hedge funds. They were up more than 3 per cent, in what was their best month since 2010, according to data from Hedge Fund Research, buoyed by long positions on the yen and -- for the most fortunate -- long on both the yen and the dollar, and short sterling. Currencies and currency-related trades have been among the few bright spots for hedge funds recently (along with gold, which has risen more than 30 per cent since the end of 2015, according to Credit Suisse). Riding the yen and dollar up and taking on derivative trades, such as shorting Chinese companies that have lots of US dollar debt and dollar costs, have been among the few clear trends to follow. But generally, these are challenging times for the industry both in the short and longer term.

Ed Felten, the deputy U.S. chief technology officer for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, says humans have two major responsibilities when it comes to the development and advancement of artificial intelligence. The first, he says, is "to make the benefits of A.I. a reality." The second: "to address the risks of A.I." Felten was speaking to a roomful of people at New York University's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at AI Now -- a summer lecture series co-sponsored by the White House that sought to examine and discuss key issues related to the future of A.I. technology. A.I. is at a crossroads, AI Now co-chairs Kate Crawford (a researcher at Microsoft Research) and Meredith Whittaker (the founder and lead for Google Open Research), pointed out. Private and public sectors need to work together to create some sort of feasible A.I. policy.

When you consider all the amazing things artificial intelligence can be used for, making beer probably isn't one of them. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I thought the whole point of beer was to let us worry less about intelligence. But while many of the things artificial intelligence can be used for are far more boring than beer – I can only watch people lose to a robot at Jeopardy so many times – so maybe IntelligentX is actually on to something: The company has claimed to produce the world's first AI brewed beer. "AI is about making decisions," said IntelligentX co-founder Dr. Rob McInerney in a promotional video, "and when you're brewing beer, there's a lot of decisions that need to be made." For the products his brand makes, those decisions are run through a complex machine learning algorithm that is able to use customer feedback to "brew new versions which are more finely tuned to people's tastes," according to the company.

Microsoft has made some interesting moves in the education space as far as Minecraft is concerned. Notably, the company acquired Mojang for 2.5 billion in September 2015 and then later purchased MinecraftEdu in January this year with an announcement that Minecraft Education Edition would be available in summer. Leading on from these acquisitions, a team within Microsoft developed Project AIX to simulate a world where an AI can be tested out without posing a risk to humans. Originally designed as an internal tool, the company announced that it would be made fully available under an open-source license. Now, with a new name, the company has publicly unveiled Project Malmo, which has been described as "a platform that uses the world of Minecraft as a testing ground for advanced artificial intelligence research."

A designer's guide to AI. Leveraging user centered design principles, the author rightly states that AI will enable designers to create bespoke experiences right out of the box for each user. Importantly, these experiences need to a) create emotionally-aware relationships with the user, b) respond to needs that haven't yet been explicitly expressed, c) prevent negative emotional responses when a user is upset with an AI-caused result and d) be sensitive to sociology. A list of further reading resources is included. There's been a resurgence of neuroscience-inspired AI architectures in the past few years, with Numenta being one of the leaders. Their VP of Research, Subutai Ahmad, argues that environmental sensory inference and behavior generation are intricately tied together, and critical for learning really general purpose representations.

In this June 22, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures as she speaks during a rally in Raleigh, N.C. Here's the tech news you need to know to start your week. The company just brought out Pokémon Go, an augmented reality smartphone app, and it is proving wildly popular. A major scheduled change means that "miners" -- people who create new bitcoins -- will only get half as many rewards for their efforts. Its Live Video feature is trying to dominate live events, and was used last week to broadcast the aftermath of a US police shooting.

Pretty much every cinematic portrayal of artificial intelligence has been less than encouraging. HAL 9000 kills the crew members on the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey, making us all a little bit afraid of handing the reins over to computers. Sonny kills his creator in I, Robot, increasing worldwide scepticism about the integration of humans and their smart robots. Even real life AI has given us pause. For example, when an IBM computer defeated Russian chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the 1990s, it was definitely a cause for concern.

Artificial intelligence is making miracles happen. A group of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently developed an AI that predicts social interactions. The core algorithm of their research is able to predict whether a person will go for a hug, handshake, high-five, or kiss. Like every AI, this algorithm also needs some data to train itself. The researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) used television shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "The Office" to train the algorithm.

Popular search engines are great at finding answers for point-of-fact questions like the elevation of Mount Everest or current movies running at local theaters. They are not, however, very good at answering what-if or predictive questions--questions that depend on multiple variables, such as "What influences the stock market?" In many cases that shortcoming is not for lack of relevant data. Rather, what's missing are empirical models of complex processes that influence the behavior and impact of those data elements. In a world in which scientists, policymakers and others are awash in data, the inability to construct reliable models that can deliver insights from that raw information has become an acute limitation for planners.

"Humans" has been renewed for Season 2. Find out what is coming to the Hawkins family and their newly acquired artificial intelligence companion or synth (synthetic human), Anita (Gemma Chan), in the upcoming season of the anticipated sci-fi series. According to AMC, the upcoming season of "Humans" will premiere in the U.K. later this year and in the U.S. by the first half of 2017. No exact premiere date has been announced as of this writing. Lead star, Gemma Chan, is expected to reprise her role as conscious synth, Anita, in Season 2. Joining her are Katherine Parkinson (Laura Hawkins), Tom Goodman-Hill (Joe Hawkins) and Lucy Carless (Mattie Hawkins). Niska (Emily Berrington), a synth, will also return and with what looks like a larger role in the upcoming season.