New research suggests that computer models could help doctors achieve greater accuracy in the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases. A research team from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system which is able to train computers to analyse pathologic image data [PDF]. The scientists hope that the programme could one day aid in diagnosing disease. 'Our AI method is based on deep learning, a machine-learning algorithm used for a range of applications including speech recognition and image recognition,' explained Andrew Beck, director of bioinformatics at the Cancer Research Institute at BIDMC and associate professor at HMS. He added: 'This approach teaches machines to interpret the complex patterns and structure observed in real-life data by building multi-layer artificial neural networks, in a process which is thought to show similarities with the learning process that occurs in layers of neurons in the brain's neocortex, the region where thinking occurs.'

The future of artificial intelligence is now. After years of steady progress in making computers "smarter," AI prototypes are being incorporated into hundreds of day-to-day actions, such as self-driving cars, intelligent smartphone assistants and several applications in academia, government and industry. As the technology improves, it will be applied in ever more high-impact economic, social, political and cultural areas. Stanford's Russ Altman, left, and Fei-Fei Li will host a June 23 panel on artificial intelligence. In the face of this revolution, Stanford and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will host a panel of AI visionaries from academia, government and industry to discuss how to responsibly integrate the ever-evolving technology into the real world.

Elon Musk has built cars and rockets. OpenAI - the artificial-intelligence research nonprofit cochaired by Tesla Motors CEO Musk and Y Combinator President Sam Altman - wants to build a robot for your home. Building a robot, OpenAI's leadership explains in a blog entry on Monday, is a good way to test and refine a machine's ability to learn how to perform common tasks. By "build," the company means taking a current off-the-shelf robot and customizing it to do housework. "More generally, robotics is a good test bed for many challenges in AI," reads the blog entry.

Note from the Editor, Tricia Wang: Next up in our Co-designing with machines edition is Steven Gustafson (@stevengustafson), founder of the Knowledge Discovery Lab at the General Electric Global Research Center in Niskayuna, New York. In this post, he asked what is the role of humans in the future of intelligent machines. He makes the case that in the foreseeable future, artificially intelligent machines are the result of creative and passionate humans, and as such, we embed our biases, empathy, and desires into the machines making them more "human" that we often think. Steven is a former member of the Machine Learning Lab and Computational Intelligence Lab, where he developed and applied advanced AI and machine learning algorithms for complex problem solving. In 2006, he received the IEEE Intelligent System's "AI's 10 to Watch" award.

If you're lucky enough to get a ticket to this year's Wimbledon tennis championships, be prepared to be scanned by a supercomputer. Cameras linked to IBM's Watson "machine-learning" platform may be monitoring your facial expressions and trying to work out what emotions you are displaying. If Watson learns quickly enough over the fortnight, it will apparently be able to work out which player you are supporting just by reading your face. The All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) and its tech partner IBM are remaining tight-lipped on the details of the new technology - not least because it needs legal approval and raises privacy concerns. But it is another example of how sport is becoming increasingly digital, for fans, players and venues alike. Even if Watson isn't tracking your every cheer and grimace at the championships - which begin on Monday 27 June - it will be digesting millions of conversations on social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and using natural language processing to identify common topics - not necessarily just about tennis.

Twitter on Monday said it would buy Magic Pony Technology, a London-based firm that has developed novel machine learning techniques for visual processing. "Magic Pony's technology --based on research by the team to create algorithms that can understand the features of imagery -- will be used to enhance our strength in live and video and opens up a whole lot of exciting creative possibilities for Twitter," the San Francisco-based firm's co-founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey said in a post on the company' blog. "We are continuing to build strength into our deep learning teams with world-class talent to help Twitter be the best place to see what's happening and why it matters, first." Twitter's acquisition of Magic Pony builds on other investments the firm has made in machine learning, beginning with the acquisitions of Madbits in July 2014 and Whetlab in June 2015, Dorsey said. While Dorsey did not disclose the terms of the deal, sources told TechCrunch that Twitter is paying up to 150 million to buy Magic Pony, which also takes into account retention bonuses for the 11-member staff, including co-founders Zehan Wang and CEO Rob Bishop.

Young people may have their first sexual encounter with robots in the near future, according an expert, which could hinder their ability to form meaningful relationships. Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, professor Noel Sharkey from Sheffield University cautioned that android sex dolls may have damaging reverberations for society. "Sex robots are accessible now and certainly [will be common] within the next 10 years. I think there will be an age limit. Certainly there should be, but if your dad or mum had one, you could sneak in and use it," he said.

The Smart Cities thing is getting big.

Hollywood fantasy: The reality of AI development is a little more nuanced and a lot less advanced than movies might have us believe. It's the theme of so many dystopian sci-fi books and movies: a super intelligent machine in charge of lethal military hardware becomes self-aware and decides to wreak havoc. But could it actually happen? At the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence's annual conference in Texas last month, a workshop was held on the ethics of AI development and a panel discussed whether or not so-called'lethal autonomous weapons' should be banned. "There are many arguments, legal, ethical, political and technical for a ban," Toby Walsh, head of the Optimisation Research Group at Australia's research body NICTA and chair of the proceedings, told Fairfax Media.

Let me end with two thoughts about the future. In their recent book on the future of the professions, Richard and Daniel Susskind predict that, as a result of AI and the Internet, the legal (and indeed other) professions will change more in the next twenty years than they have done over the last two centuries. We are all familiar with routine work being increasingly automated as a result of electronic developments. But the book suggests that professional work which appears to involve the very human qualities of expertise, creativity and interpersonal skills will be capable of being done by robots or AI. The recent electronic victories over the human world champions in in chess, quiz games and Go seem to me to support the view that this is not at least an outlandish suggestion.