This is my first blog here; my name is Fen. I was with MathWorks for almost 15 years. MathWorks is the creator of MATLAB andI built some of the modules in MATLAB. In the past 5 years, I led a team of consulting engineer to build data analytics solution for customers in APAC. In recent years, commercial banks and asset management companies in China started to build more quantitative models to measure credit risk. With our help, some of them chose to use MATLAB statistics and machine learning modules to build credit risk models; I would like to share a common approach I used on credit risk projects.

Bill Gates speaks during the Forbes' 2015 Philanthropy Summit Awards Dinner on June 3, 2015 in New York City. Many are still wary about the effects of future artificial intelligence in humanity. But Microsoft cofounder and the world's richest man Bill Gates says AI won't be a threat, instead it will be "extremely helpful" in managing human lives. The actively evolving field of artificial intelligence has revolutionized the healthcare, business and education sectors around the world. AI also continues to prove its ubiquity by making great advances in technology and robotics but many warn about the existential risks of artificial intelligence.

The U.S. Air Force is looking to fund the development of a system that allows it to easily convert any of its manned aircraft into robot-piloted planes, potentially making huge portions of its existing fleet fully autonomous. According to a public solicitation notice, the "drop-in" system would "rapidly convert a variety of traditionally manned aircraft" to be autonomously controlled without any modifications to the aircraft itself. That means that unlike the Navy's fully autonomous X47-B drone, the robot would use vision-based recognition systems to "manually" read gauges and operate the yoke, throttle and other controls just like a human pilot as soon as it's dropped into the cockpit. "Non-invasive approaches to robotically piloted aircraft using existing commercial technology and components offer the benefits of unmanned operations without the complexity and upfront cost associated with the development of new unmanned vehicles," the Air Force's posting reads. "Such a system will have the ability to automatically pilot an aircraft using only the gauges and cockpit controls available to a human pilot thus eliminating custom design and integration costs."

Right on cue, this past week heralded in an announcement of OpenAI, a new non-profit started by a number of tech luminaries to spearhead AI research that is publicly accessible. The motivation is that apparently these scions of capitalism lose faith in Adam Smith's invisible hand when it comes to AI R&D. Musk continues to promote the idea that AI will be humanity's largest existential threat. Challenging this view, the HBR asks if "OpenAI [is] Solving the Wrong Problem", pointing to the implied lack of trust in capitalism. This is similar to my own parry: that the biggest existential threat to humanity is humanity.

Last week scientists at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC, announced a pretty important breakthrough – they've developed a robot that can operate by itself on soft tissue. The robot is called the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot. Not just because it's another step towards even more precise and safe surgery, which is good for everyone, but because the robot can do this with a level of independence not previously seen. In 1985, doctors used the Puma 560 to assist them in delicate operations, and that's how robotic surgery has developed – as a way of assisting human doctors. It's not hard to see why: a robot may be able to make more precise movements than a person, and it won't get tired or feel the strain of a long operation in the way a surgeon might.

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.

Most major technology companies are knee-deep in machine learning these days. Alphabet's (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google, Amazon, and Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) are just a few. Machine learning allows the tech companies' computers to learn information on their own that they weren't programmed to know. For example, Google uses its own TensorFlow machine learning systems for its Google Translate speech recognition app, Google Photos, Gmail, and its Web searches. And as these companies dive further into machine learning, they're building their own complex computers using graphics processing units (GPUs) to power them -- and that could be particularly beneficial for NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA).

In the recent movie "Ex Machina," a young programmer falls in love with a robot. An artificial-intelligence mastermind had engineered his robot so that "she" appears to think, feel and love in a way that was uncannily human. He had also mined and analyzed the young man's online history deeply enough to create the woman of his dreams. Long before anybody actually meets the perfect robot mate, however, intelligent, "learning" machines capable of advanced data analytics will be ever more precise in matching one human to another--and in predicting the success of computer-assisted matchups, which will improve the odds that our real-world romantic relationships will last. Leaps in digital technology have already made drastic changes to 21st century romance.

The experimental Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) recently sewed a piglet's gut together using a computer program and camera-based guidance, overseen by a team of doctors and computer scientists from the Children's National Health System in Washington DC and Johns Hopkins University. The procedure took 50 minutes, as opposed to 8 minutes when performed by a surgeon, but (unfortunately for doctors) resulted in more evenly spaced sutures and less leakage from the gut. And with iterative improvements, it's likely that the time difference can be shrunk. Meanwhile, FDA-approved robotic surgery on humans is making strides as well, though it requires a surgeon to operate the mechanical arm. The potential treatment paradigm, highlighted by The Economist this month, raises questions about whether patients will trust robots with their lives, and who is liable if something goes wrong. Another question robots pose: Are doctors in line for a string of layoffs?

Robots can keep their parts and still change their gender, according to Penn State researchers, who noted that the arrival of robots with screens has made it easier to assign distinct personalities. In a study, people found that feminine cues on the robot's screen were enough to convince them that a robot was female, said Eun Hwa Jung, a doctoral student in mass communications. The findings may help robot developers economically customize robots for certain roles and to serve certain populations. "We changed the gender cues -- male or female -- on two different locations: the robot body and the robot's screen," said Jung. "The screen, by itself, helped participants perceive whether the robot was male or female." Robot makers may not need to alter the robot's shape or features to meet users' expectations and preferences, said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, who worked with Jung.