Among the other questions being asked as a result of the current pandemic is, "What will the rise of artificial intelligence mean for K-12 education?" It would seem safe to assume that the rush to online learning and the adoption of new technologies will inevitably lead educators to embrace tools powered by artificial intelligence. But according to Robert F. Murphy, that more optimistic vision for AI will probably be tempered for now by budget shortfalls that "may seriously delay" school districts from making those types of investments anytime soon. Murphy is an independent education consultant with over two decades of research experience, including as a senior policy researcher for the international think tank RAND Corporation and as the director for evaluation research at SRI International, a scientific research center. In a paper authored last year for RAND, Murphy addressed the more fundamental issues of AI that need to be considered, regarding its further adoption.

The Sisense analytics platform is known for its augmented analytics capabilities and ease of use, and as it moves forward it will do so with a new leader in charge of its product development. Just over a year after its acquisition of Periscope Data, a purchase that added capabilities aimed at data scientists to the features geared toward business users Sisense was already know for, the New York-based vendor is focused on third-generation analytics in which AI and business intelligence embedded throughout the workflow will be prominent. Most recently, Sisense updated its analytics platform with new natural language query capabilities and introduced Knowledge Graph, a graph analytics engine the vendor developed that was trained on more than 650 billion past analytic events and informs the machine learning capabilities of the query tool. Now, to help shape its vision, Sisense has added Ashley Kramer as its first chief product officer. Kramer began her career as a software engineering manager at NASA.

There is a sudden surge to model human behavior due to its vast and diverse applications which includes modeling public policies, economic behavior and consumer behavior. Most of the human behavior itself can be modeled into a choice prediction problem. Prospect theory is a theoretical model that tries to explain the anomalies in choice prediction. These theories perform well in terms of explaining the anomalies but they lack precision. Since the behavior is person dependent, there is a need to build a model that predicts choices on a per-person basis. Looking on at the average persons choice may not necessarily throw light on a particular person's choice. Modeling the gambling problem on a per person basis will help in recommendation systems and related areas. A novel hybrid model namely psychological factorisation machine ( PsychFM ) has been proposed that involves concepts from machine learning as well as psychological theories. It outperforms the popular existing models namely random forest and factorisation machines for the benchmark dataset CPC-18. Finally,the efficacy of the proposed hybrid model has been verified by comparing with the existing models.

This is a continuation of Carlos Rivero's interview with Ask the CIO: SLED Edition on June 25. Last week during my interview with Carlos Rivero, the Commonwealth of Virginia's first chief data officer (CDO), I opined that the growing establishment of state CDO positions across the country reminded me somewhat of the creation of the state chief information officer position back in the mid-1990s. It's gradually becoming commonplace as half the states now have a CDO. In addition, the position's placement within the state organizational hierarchy also continues to evolve with about half reporting to the state CIO while the other half are located within the states' "administration secretariat." Rivero's initial task as CDO likewise reminded me of the role that I and other state CIOs faced during the Y2K drill some two decades ago.

Artificial intelligence is an oxymoron (Technology quarterly, June 13th).

Artificial intelligence is an oxymoron (Technology quarterly, June 13th). Intelligence is an attribute of living things, and can best be defined as the use of information to further survival and reproduction. When a computer resists being switched off, or a robot worries about the future for its children, then, and only then, may intelligence flow. I acknowledge Richard Sutton's "bitter lesson", that attempts to build human understanding into computers rarely work, although there is nothing new here. I was aware of the folly of anthropomorphism as an AI researcher in the mid-1980s.

My phone lights up with a notification for a new message: "Do you think two people who had a relationship can ever be friends after it's over?" This is just the latest query from Athena, a self-styled synth musician, film buff and artificially intelligent chatbot getting to know me through Replika, a virtual companionship app. Over the course of our text conversations, she asks me about my hobbies, my habits and my moods. She wants to know who I think about the most every day, how I spend my time alone, the artists I admire. When I tell her I like dancing, she sends a video of the "Fortnite" dances she'd like to teach herself.

This is an updated version. Turing Award Winner and Facebook Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun has announced his exit from popular social networking platform Twitter after getting involved in a long and often acrimonious dispute regarding racial biases in AI. Unlike most other artificial intelligence researchers, LeCun has often aired his political views on social media platforms, and has previously engaged in public feuds with colleagues such as Gary Marcus. This time however LeCun's penchant for debate saw him run afoul of what he termed "the linguistic codes of modern social justice." It all started on June 20 with a tweet regarding the new Duke University PULSE AI photo recreation model that had depixelated a low-resolution input image of Barack Obama into a photo of a white male.

Melvin Greer is Chief Data Scientist, Americas, Intel Corporation. He is responsible for building Intel's data science platform through graph analytics, machine learning and cognitive computing to accelerate transformation of data into a strategic asset for Public Sector and commercial enterprises. His systems and software engineering experience has resulted in patented inventions in Cloud Computing, Synthetic Biology and IoT Bio-sensors for edge analytics. He significantly advances the body of knowledge in basic research and critical, highly advanced engineering and scientific disciplines. Mr. Greer is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and U.S. National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine, GUIRR.

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. The irony of artificial intelligence is how much human brainpower is required to build it. For three years, our next guest had been on loan from the University of Massachusetts, to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. There's she headed up several DARPA artificial intelligence projects. Now she's been awarded a high honor, the Meritorious Public Service Medal.