Students mostly couldn't tell'Jill Watson' wasn't human; 'Yep!' One day in January, Eric Wilson dashed off a message to the teaching assistants for an online course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "I really feel like I missed the mark in giving the correct amount of feedback," he wrote, pleading to revise an assignment. Thirteen minutes later, the TA responded. "Unfortunately, there is not a way to edit submitted feedback," wrote Jill Watson, one of nine assistants for the 300-plus students. Last week, Mr. Wilson found out he had been seeking guidance from a computer.

Robots are like dogs because, according to some experts, a badly-trained robot could end up misbehaving just like a badly-trained dog. This warning came at a meeting discussing the future of robot and human interactions, held in London this week. But the panel, who emphasised the importance of regulations controlling AI, agreed a doomsday situation in which robots take over is unlikely to happen soon. Robots are like dogs because, according to some experts, a badly-trained robot could end up misbehaving just like a badly-trained dog. Organised by the EPSRC UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems Network (UK-RAS Network), UK Robotics Week included a series of events across the country, aiming to get the public engaged with the developments and debate in and around robotics.

Lux Research recently attended the EmTech Digital Conference in San Francisco. At the event, Deep Genomics CEO Brendan Frey described how the company wants to use a form of artificial intelligence (AI) called neural networks to connect genotype to phenotype – in other words, to see how the genetic code of an individual determines the traits (hair color, disease, persona) the individual presents. To illustrate the gap, he surveyed the audience by show of hands, how many believed that understanding genomics would change our lives (some 80%); how many had actually had a genetic test done (perhaps 25%), and how many of those had found the results to be valuable (about 5%). "That's the gap," he explained, since so many conditions lack genetic correlation, and so many genetic traits are not actually expressed. The goal of Deep Genomics is to complement genomic data with other biologically-relevant data, including personal history, behavior, environment, and nutrition; and use machine learning to connect genes with traits.

It was intended to speed up how people respond to emails while on the move, but it seems Google's intelligent reply bot may have more of an insight into users' personal lives than they do themselves. Google's Smart Reply, which uses artificial intelligence to suggest responses to emails, offered some surprising sentences when one man recently went through a break up with his girlfriend. At the bottom of an email from his ex-girlfriend explaining why they were breaking up, Ben Crair found the computer generated response that summed up all his feelings into one. Google's smart reply system offered one journalist advice on how to respond to an email from his ex-girlfriend as they went through the final stages of a break up (stock picture). He described the technology as'eerily perceptive' Writing in the New Yorker Magazine, journalist Mr Crair describes the feature, which was introduced by Google's Inbox App last year, as'eerily perceptive'.

The Model S tells drivers to keep their hands on the wheel; if they release their grip it alerts drivers and eventually slows down. Of course, a driver who's distracted for even an instant can cause deadly harm on the road. "The system also makes frequent checks to ensure that the driver's hands remain on the wheel and provides visual and audible alerts if hands-on is not detected," Tesla wrote in a blog post announcing the federal probe. "It then gradually slows down the car until hands-on is detected again. We do this to ensure that every time the feature is used, it is used as safely as possible."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is expected to disclose as early as Friday the number of civilians killed in U.S. military and CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Africa since he took office and will issue an executive order that makes protecting civilians a more integral part of planning U.S. military operations, according to activists and other individuals familiar with the report. The White House is to disclose the casualties with a range of numbers indicating that an estimated 100 civilians have been inadvertently killed by 500 drone strikes since 2009. The estimate is said to cover drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and Somalia. It does not cover ones in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria where U.S. forces have conducted thousands of air attacks. The individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to disclose the information.

"Orange is the New Black," is probably most Americans only peek into what life is like behind bars. The Netflix show offers a complicated look at a women's prison, showcasing how relationships develop between inmates, guards interact with prisoners and the often difficult living conditions behind bars. But is everything the action-packed show depicts accurate? Here is a fact-check of eight of Season 4's biggest storylines: In "Orange is the New Black" Season 4, celeb-chef Judy King, played by Blair Brown, gets a private room when she shows up to Litchfield Penitentiary for tax evasion. However, Martha Stewart, the celebrity chef and television personality that inspired King, did not have it so easy. While serving five months for insider trading, Stewart mopped floors and cleaned toilets.

Drones in national parks are a safety hazard and nuisance to visitors and wildlife, said Jonathan Jarvis, the park service's director. With drones flying overhead, apps tracking our every move, and more personal data flowing into cyberspace every second, there is widespread concern about sensitive data and images ending up in the wrong hands. In response, states this year enacted dozens of laws intended to give people greater control over who has access to their private activity and information, and where and how it is collected, stored, shared and used. Many of the laws enacted this year focus on shielding the massive amounts of data that the government and private businesses are collecting -- everything from a Medicaid user's health information to information about a child's reading level. Many new laws are focused on restricting government's use of electronic surveillance.

The U.S. announced Thursday the first fatality in a wreck involving a car in self-driving mode. The government said it is investigating the design and performance of the system aboard the Tesla Model S sedan. Model S with Autopilot engaged. The Ohio man who died while using the "Autopilot" feature on his Tesla electric car posted video of the same feature helping him avoid another accident a month before his death. Joshua Brown, 40, of Canton, Ohio, died from injuries he sustained when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of his 2015 Tesla on a highway near Williston, Fla., in May.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA–(Marketwired – July 01, 2016) – H2O.ai, the company bringing AI to business, today announced the availability of Sparkling Water 2.0. Sparkling Water 2.0 builds off the enormous popularity of Sparkling Water, H2O.ai's API for Apache Spark, with additional features and functionality. New features include the ability to interface with Apache Spark, Scala and MLlib via H2O.ai's Flow UI, build ensembles using algorithms from both H2O and MLlib and give Spark users the power of H2O's visual intelligence capabilities. Sparkling Water was designed to allow users to get the best of Apache Spark -- its elegant APIs, RDDs and multi-tenant Context -- along with H2O's speed, columnar-compression and fully-featured machine learning algorithms.