FILE - In this Monday, April 25, 2016, file photo, a man sits behind the steering wheel of a Tesla Model S electric car on display at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition in Beijing. Federal officials say the driver of a Tesla S sports car using the vehicle's "autopilot" automated driving system has been killed in a collision with a truck, the first U.S. self-driving car fatality. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said preliminary reports indicate the crash occurred when a tractor-trailer made a left turn in front of the Tesla at a highway intersection. NHTSA said the Tesla driver died due to injuries sustained in the crash, which took place on May 7 in Williston, Fla. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) The Associated Press

U.S. auto-safety regulators are investigating Tesla Motors Inc.'s autopilot feature after a motorist using the system died in Florida, ratcheting up scrutiny of the Silicon Valley electric-vehicle company's highly-touted technology and driverless cars more broadly. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a so-called preliminary evaluation into the design and performance of automated driving systems in Tesla's Model S, the agency said Thursday. A preliminary evaluation is an initial official probe by the...

TOKYO--Sony Corp.'s return to robotics, a step announced this week along with a bullish profit outlook, reflects a commitment to its roots as a consumer-electronics giant, Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai said. Mr. Hirai, who spent much of his early tenure streamlining the company's troubled portfolio, said on Thursday that it was time to start taking steps toward a more-ambitious future, and robotics will be part of that journey.

Sony has announced plans to develop a robot "capable of forming an emotional bond with customers." At the company's corporate strategy meeting this morning in Tokyo, CEO Kaz Hirai said that a new robot-focused organization within Sony was established in April and is working towards a business launch. "Sony will seek to propose new business models that integrate hardware and services to provide emotionally compelling experiences," the company says in notes from the presentation; no further details on the robot are available. Japanese telecoms company SoftBank makes similar "emotional" claims about its Pepper robot, while Sony arguably achieved the goal to some extent with its AIBO dogs, which some users have gone as far as to hold funerals for. Elsewhere in the presentation, Hirai highlighted VR as another future area of growth for Sony.

Computer vision has been having a moment. No more does an image recognition algorithm make dumb mistakes when looking at the world: these days, it can accurately tell you that an image contains a cat. But how it pulls off the party trick may not be as familiar to humans as we thought. Most computer vision systems identify features in images using neural networks, which are inspired by our own biology and are very similar in their architecture--only here, the biological sensing and neurons are swapped out for mathematical functions. Now a study by researchers at Facebook and Virginia Tech says that despite those similarities, we should be careful in assuming that both work in the same way.

When Facebook announced a tweak to its news feed algorithm Wednesday, dating apps were put in a bind. The change that would soon prioritize friends' posts over those from publishers quickly led media industry types to declare it, once again, the end of media. But Facebook's decision doesn't solely affect news outlets. More than 50 million businesses use Facebook Pages -- from big brands like McDonald's and Nike to small shop owners to startups building the next top smartphone app. The downgrade could encourage more page owners to pay Facebook to boost their posts into the news feeds of users.

Over the course of our 12 week intensive program, Metis data science students build five projects using machine learning and statistical modeling techniques in Python, industry-level visualizations in D3, and real-world data in cloud-based SQL, no-SQL, and Hadoop databases. Their 5th and final project, built from scratch, is the project you'll see at Career Day. People come to Metis with a variety of backgrounds: about 75% come from industry, and about 50% hold advanced degrees. After successful completion of our 12 week bootcamp, our graduates have accepted data science jobs with companies such as Tesla, IBM Watson, Spotify, Capital One Labs, Target, GrubHub, Booz Allen Hamilton, WeWork, Buzzfeed, Beachbody, and more.

When you need an answer to a problem, what do you do? If it's urgent enough, we always pick up a phone to call or text. Not many of us will use Google to find out what to do about a bunch of bees invading the house. Before you can finish typing, you'll get stung. And if you get stuck in an airport, there's often no time to start an Expedia search and weigh all of the options.

Investors backed more AI companies in the first quarter of 2016 (Q1'16) than in any other quarter, according to research from venture capital analysis firm CB Insights, which supports the idea that AI is the next major revolution in computing. In Q1'16, there were over 140 deals to startups focused on AI, CB Insights data wrote on its blog on Tuesday. Data startup Trifacta, DNA testing startup Pathway Genomics, and cognitive computing business Digital Reasoning Systems were among the AI-powered companies that raised equity funding rounds in Q1 from investors including Goldman Sachs, Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, and the IBM Watson Group. So far in 2016, more than 200 AI-focused companies have collectively raised nearly 1.5 billion ( 1 billion). The pick up in AI funding activity comes as businesses look to make their platforms and systems more human-like.

Ahead of today's historic "in/out" vote for Britain, it has emerged the EU wants to introduce laws specific to robots that could give them civil rights regulations of they own, and see limits on how many jobs they could replace from humans. In scenes that could have come from the sic-fi novels of Isaac Asimov nearly 70 years ago, a recommendation of the European Parliament to the EU Commission has suggested in the future sentient AI robots could need their own rights and responsibilities, and strict laws banning them from taking over too many jobs across the Continent may become necessary. In the 1950s Asimov predicted robots would eventually have to adhere to laws, because the potential of what could develop from a combination of sophisticated mechanism, androids with human features, and artificial intelligence (AI) was too dangerous. But, it appears Brussels bureaucrats fear this fiction will become a reality and the report has even considered including a "new robot category next to natural and lawful people: the electronic person". The report suggests AI could "surpass human intelligence within a few decades". Some members of European Parliament fear that without the controls humans may no longer be in charge of their own fate.