Robots are becoming a more and more important part of our home and work lives and as we come to rely on them, trust is of paramount importance. Successful teams are founded on trust, and the same is true for human-robot teams. But what does it mean to trust a robot? I'll be chatting to three roboticists working on various aspects of trustworthiness in robotics: Anouk van Maris (University of the West of England), Faye McCabe (University of Birmingham), Daniel Omeiza (University of Oxford). Anouk van Maris is a research fellow in responsible robotics.

This year's ACM Prize in Computing is going toward a machine learning specialist whose work, even if you haven't heard of him, is likely to be familiar. Pieter Abbeel, UC Berkeley professor and co-founder of AI robotics company Covariant, was awarded the prize and its $250,000 bounty, which is given to those in the machine learning field "whose research contributions have fundamental impact and broad implications." Abbeel is a professor of computer science and electrical engineering whose work has already received some recognition. Along with this new award, he was named a top young innovator under 25 by the MIT Technology Review and won a prize given out to the best US PhD thesis in robotics and automation. ACM said Abbeel was a trailblazer in apprenticeship and reinforcement learning, and highlighted a clothes-folding robot he designed that was better able to manipulate deformable objects.

Reinforcement learning is an area of machine learning where an agent (e.g., a computer program) seeks to progress towards a reward (e.g., winning a …

Howie Choset is a Professor of Robotics where he serves as the co-director, along with Matt Travers, of the Biorobotics Lab. Choset's research program has made contributions to strategically significant problems in surgery, manufacturing, on-orbit maintenance, recycling and search and rescue. His work is most famous for its snake robots and other biologically inspired systems and recently his group has been contributing to robotic modularity, multi-agent planning, information-based search, and skill learning. Currently, Choset's projects include: medical support in the field, expeditionary robotics, on-orbit maintenance and construction of structures in space, rapidly carrying heavy objects up several flights of stairs, recycling of E-waste, food preparation, "edge"-sensing, and aerospace painting. Choset has led multi-PI projects centered on manufacturing: (1) automating the programming of robots for auto-body painting; (2) the development of mobile manipulators for agile and flexible fixture-free manufacturing of large structures in aerospace, and (3) the creation of a data-robot ecosystem for rapid manufacturing in the commercial electronics industry.

AI is not only about Alexa and Siri; it also is used in facial recognition technology, Deepfakes, YouTube recommendations, autonomous cars, weapons and more. Consequently, AI has serious effects on privacy, surveillance, our access to information, and how we the people might be steered in regards to elections and governance. Thus, the effects of AI on the First, Fourth, Ninth and 10th amendments are worthy of reasoned and thoughtful conversations, conversations that even academics at Harvard, Duke and elsewhere indicate are unresolved.

Recent developments in AI and deep learning have the potential to transform the way that banks and financial services firms do business, including but not limited to customer service, portfolio management, and fraud detection. But will 2022 be the year that advanced AI and machine learning techniques take off in the world of financial services? As we approach RE•WORK's upcoming London AI Finance Summit on 17-18 March, we asked some of our expert speakers what they predict for AI and deep learning in Finance, Insurance and RegTech in the coming year. Question: Which trend associated with deep learning and AI are you most interested in or passionate about? Why do you think this is so relevant today?

Directed energy is "the ability to create a high amount of energy in a controlled volume at a given distance in order to trigger physical reactions to study the interaction between the energy and the matter," says Dr. Chaouki Kasmi, who is the Chief Researcher at DERC, which is part of the Abu Dhabi government's Advanced Technology Research Council. The research at DERC reflects the multitude of applications that are possible using directed energy, but the research projects have at least one thing in common: the goal of solving real-world scientific or technical challenges. For example, one of DERC's recent developments is a landmine detection system – the ground-penetrating radar - designed to help developing or previously war-torn countries detect and neutralize unexploded landmines. They have their sights set much higher and further with projects focused on using lasers for communications on land, to the moon, and even underwater--truly making the entire world a better place with directed energy technology. "The disruptive innovation that we are bringing today is how we can make it affordable for developing countries. The idea is to create a technology that could really help solve a worldwide problem at low cost. And this is very important for us as we would like to have the system deployed at scale," says Dr. Kasmi.

For the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Dan Huttenlocher, bringing disciplines together is the best way to address challenges and opportunities posed by rapid advancements in computing. What does it mean to be human in an age where artificial intelligence agents make decisions that shape human actions? That's a deep question with no easy answers, and it's been on the mind of Dan Huttenlocher SM '84, PhD '88, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, for the past few years. "Advances in AI are going to happen, but the destination that we get to with those advances is up to us, and it is far from certain," says Huttenlocher, who is also the Henry Ellis Warren Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Along with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and elder statesman Henry Kissinger, Huttenlocher recently explored some of the quandaries posed by the rise of AI, in the book, "The Age of AI: And Our Human Future."

The core members of CLRU researchers were not more than ten people. Three of its alumni Martin Kay, Spärck Jones, and Wilks would receive the Annual Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Association for Computational Linguistics in the US.

'The Five' panel weighs in on Disney's protest over the new Florida law. This is a rush transcript of "The Five" on March 30, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated. It's five o'clock in New York City, and this is THE FIVE. WATTERS: Yet another big American company going woke. Disney caving to the liberal mob and pledging to help repeal the new parental rights bill that just signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Which Democrats and the media have completely lied about and called them bigoted? RON DESANTIS (R-FL): For a company like Disney to say that the bill should have never passed, first of all, Tucker, they weren't saying anything when this is going through the House. They only started doing this because the mob, the woke mob came after them. But put that aside, for them to say that them as a California-based company are going to work to take those California values and overturned a law that was duly enacted, and as you said, supported by a strong majority of Floridians, they don't run the state. We have done a bill that prohibited talking about the abuse of Uyghurs in China, Disney would support that legislation. Now they know it's hello, everyone, or hello friends. When we brought the fireworks back to the magic kingdom, we no longer say ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, we say dreamers of all ages. PIERS MORGAN, FOX NEWS CO-HOST: By the way, sorry, but when you can't even say ladies and gentlemen anymore or boys and girls. What in the world is happening in the world? WATTERS: Would you like to go ahead. I was going to ask Greg. WATTERS: Piers, with your, you know, very, very rude habits. GUTFELD: I think I just had a stroke. MORGAN: You deserve a pretty outburst of rage. My heart -- (CROSSTALK) MORGAN: Honestly, it is so pathetic, isn't it? You can't go to a theme park and you can't hear the word ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.