Learning a second language when you are young has long been known to boost brainpower. Now researchers have found that the brains of babies exposed to two languages benefit from this extra boost even before they can utter a word. Scientists claim that just growing up in a home or environment where they are listening to more than one language being spoken could improve a child's problem solving skills and memory. Researchers have found that the brains of babies exposed to two languages develop better, even before they can utter a word. They claim that just growing up in a home or environment where they are listening to more than one language being spoken could improve a child's problem solving skills and memory Previous studies suggest that speaking two or more languages from a very young age helps a child's development into adults with more highly refined cognitive skills.

You may think your contacts and photos are safely locked away on your iPhone. But a new bug has been discovered that seemingly lets people unlock iPhone 6S and 6S Plus models without inputting a password or using the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Bypassing the security measures is possible because the bug takes advantage of unauthenticated access to Siri, which can then be used to tap into a phone owner's contacts. A new bug has been reported that appears to let people access private data such as photos and contacts on iPhone 6S and 6S Plus models without inputting a password or using the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Spanish tech expert, Jose Rodriguez, claims to have discovered the bug and demonstrated the exploit in a YouTube video punished under the name Videosdebarraquito.

There are five main schools of thought in machine learning, and each has its own master algorithm – a general-purpose learner that can in principle be applied to any domain. The symbolists have inverse deduction, the connectionists have backpropagation, the evolutionaries have genetic programming, the Bayesians have probabilistic inference, and the analogizers have support vector machines. What we really need, however, is a single algorithm combining the key features of all of them. In this webinar I will summarize the five paradigms and describe my work toward unifying them, including in particular Markov logic networks. I will conclude by speculating on the new applications that a universal learner will enable, and how society will change as a result.

Five expert panelists weigh in on the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence in medicine and the issues surrounding, privacy, accuracy, and accountability.

As robotics and 3-D printing technologies become more accessible to home tinkerers, men are (of course) building robots of beautiful women. Anyone who's turned on a TV in the past decade shouldn't be surprised to learn that one of the first--and creepiest--examples of this development involves movie star Scarlett Johansson. News broke on Friday about a Hong Kong designer who made a robot that looks just like the award-winning actress--although Ricky Ma, the robot's creator, wouldn't name the actress he modeled the bot on, choosing instead to call it Mark 1. It took Ma eighteen months and over 50,000 to complete the project, which he constructed on his patio with a 3-D printer and software that he taught himself how to use. The question, however, is one of precedent.

Facebook is rolling out a new feature that will automatically describe the content of photos to blind and visually impaired users. Called automatic alternative text, the feature uses artificial intelligence to identify visual content and provide a description for people using screen readers. While scrolling through Facebook, blind and visually impaired users will hear the name of the person followed by the word "photo" when they scroll past an image post by a user. Automatic alt text will then describe a list of themes of the image, such as "three people, smiling, outdoors" or "two people, smiling, sunglasses, sky, tree, outdoor". According to Facebook, more than two million photos are shared on social media every day, yet as content becomes more visual, many blind and visually impaired users are left feeling excluded.

Microsoft created an artificial intelligence that would learn to be more human by talking to people on Twitter. This went about as well as you'd expect. In other news, Dominos Pizza invents something pointless, and the people of Oregon invent a new way to piss off sea lions.

South Korea's top automaker Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors on Tuesday announced a plan to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-based, Internet-connected car to create a new future lifestyle with a "driving, high-performing computer". The driving computer means a car will become a high-performing computer itself as the car, to be developed by Hyundai and Kia, will self-drive based on AI and connect to electronic devices while driving based on internet connectivity, Xinhua cited a joint statement as saying. The main concept of the project is a "hyper-connected and intelligent car", which means an interaction between cars home as well as home and office in addition to AI-based self-driving. To achieve the goal, the automakers will focus on four major themes, intelligent remote-controlling support service, perfect self-driving, smart traffic and mobility hub. The remote-controlling support service aims to check and examine cars on a real-time basis to detect potential emergency situations in advance.

Artificial intelligence should be used to provide children with one-to-one tutoring to improve their learning and monitor their well-being, academics have argued. One-to-one tutoring has long been thought the most-effective approach to teaching but would be too expensive to provide for all students. However, in a paper, academics from University College London's Knowledge Lab argue that AI systems could simulate human one-to-one tutoring by delivering learning activities tailored to a student's needs and providing targeted and timely feedback, all without an individual teacher present. Instead of being examined in traditional ways, children could be assessed in a more complete manner by collecting data about their performance over a long period, providing employers and educational institutions with a richer picture of their abilities. The report argues that AI could radically transform our education system for the better – but it is being held back by funding.

At Silicon Valley's inaugural Comic Con, we gave a talk called "Superbabies vs. AI." Astro, who is captain of moonshots at Alphabet's X division, argued that genetically engineered babies are going to destroy civilization as we know it. He sees the horror of eugenics, X-Men, and a planet entirely populated by the sort of kids who beat him up in middle school, all rolled into one. Danielle, a physician-scientist and wife of said captain of moonshots, argued that the robot apocalypse is going to annihilate humanity. Super intelligent computers will eventually destroy us all, no matter what sort of Asimovian instructions we try to give them.