In his monthly column, Brian Gray from Glasgow-based consultancy Lascivious Marketing offers his thoughts on all things marketing…and perhaps one or two other things. This month he plays Devil's Advocate to the sex robot detractors. Oscar Wilde famously opined that he could resist everything but temptation. Opinion pieces with questionable arguments have the same effect on me. The British newspaper The Guardian published an article on Monday 25th September written by "robotics expert" Jenny Kleeman, titled "Should we ban sex robots while we have the chance?" The sub-heading posits: "AI sex dolls are on their way, with potentially sinister social consequences.

Ziebart's research remains in training settings thus far. He feeds systems messy, varied data and trains them to provide bounding boxes that have at least 70% overlap with people's bounding boxes. And his process has already produced impressive results. On an ImageNet object detection task investigated in collaboration with Sima Behpour (University of Illinois at Chicago) and Kris Kitani (Carnegie Mellon University), for example, Ziebart's adversarial approach "improves performance by over 16% compared to the best performing data augmentation method." Trained to operate amidst uncertain environments, these systems more effectively manage new data points that training didn't explicitly prepare them for.

As we move into another new year there are once again a new set of predictions, hopes and concerns as to the direction of digital marketing over the next twelve months and beyond. There are so many exciting developments set to take place and I'm really looking forward to seeing how these take hold in 2018. One of the interesting areas I've observed across many trends is the recurrence of two themes: artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These two closely related subjects seem to be taking hold across a number of areas, including marketing automation, digital creative, personalization and marketing technology. However, it's the influence of AI and machine learning on the future of search that I'd like to explore in some detail in this article and the potential implications on business and marketing.

Entrusting important decisions to a system that can't explain itself presents obvious dangers. Take the case of Eric Loomis, a Wisconsin man sentenced to six years in prison for eluding police while driving a car that had been used in a drive-by shooting. The judge's sentence was based in part on a risk score for Loomis generated by COMPAS, a commercial risk-assessment tool used, according to one study, "to assess more than 1 million offenders" in the last two decades. Loomis appealed his sentence, based on the court's use of the AI-generated risk score, because it relied on a proprietary algorithm whose exact methodology is unknown. COMPAS is designed to estimate an individual's likelihood of committing another crime in the future, but evidence suggests that it may be no better at predicting risk than untrained observers.

Jeff Bezos has his left foot propped up on a fire pit, his face illuminated by the flames. A drink in his hand, he's feeling relaxed, often bursting out in that signature bellow of a laugh. Joining Bezos at the firepit that night and over the course of three days at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, California are about 200 of the world's smartest and most accomplished people–among them: two astronauts, at least one Nobel Prize winner, the former head of DARPA, NASA's former number two, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich ("BK," he's called here), MythBuster Adam Savage, Segway inventor Dean Kamen, and so on. With cigars and whiskey in their hands, these global power players are talking earnestly about Big Issues: gravitational waves, ground-breaking tools for helping the deaf perceive the world in new ways, cutting-edge robot grasping technology, hyper-efficient 3D-printed rocket engines, and AI, always AI. Welcome to Amazon's MARS Conference–or, as Bezos calls it, "Summer camp for geeks." Amazon's has numerous reasons for hosting the event.

Artificial intelligence and robotics are disrupting every aspect of work and redefining productivity. The old ways of not just working, but also assessing capabilities, hiring and compensation, are undergoing a massive change. In a conversation with Knowledge@Wharton, Srikanth Karra, chief human resource officer at Indian IT services firm Mphasis, discusses what this means for individuals, organizations and countries. Karra said managerial jobs and tasks that are repetitive in nature will be displaced and the ability to learn new skills will be critical for individuals who want to stay relevant. Companies will need to devise new ways of training and assessing the skills of employees while countries must develop a learning ecosystem. "Work will be more contractual in nature and deep technical skills, creativity and learnability will be at a premium," he noted.

What do you think will drive more disruption and the use of AI? Satish Maripuri: Disruption comes from bringing organizations together across industries with a unique combination of capabilities to drive change. In the case of AI, we look for partnerships inside and outside of healthcare that can drive innovation effectively and more quickly create value. Right now, we are focused on some unique AI-related partnerships that allow radiologists to be the technology trailblazers they always have been. Radiologists began trailblazing technology with the introduction of picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) more than 20 years ago. Today, the latest advancements in radiology are highly receptive to the power of AI to improve productivity and accuracy while reducing the repetitive tasks that lead to burnout.

The galaxy of extremely niche dating sites has gained a new star--one that promises to help you find someone who loves you like Kanye loves Kanye. That's right, lonely singles are no longer confined to finding each other based on interests like farming or the goth aesthetic. With the release of Yeezy Dating, fans of Kanye West are one step closer to finding someone to argue with about the proper breakdown of their Kanye madness bracket. Slated to launch sometime later this month, the Yeezy Dating website is pretty sparse at the moment, featuring a brief explainer noting that the site is "for fans of the genius Mr. Kanye West." However the site, created through a crowdfunding campaign launched by 21-year-old Yeezus stan Harry Dry, has a relatively active Instagram presence.

The quest to give machines human-level intelligence has been around for decades, and it has captured imaginations for far longer -- think of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in the 19th century. Artificial intelligence, or AI, was born in the 1950s, with boom cycles leading to busts as scientists failed time and again to make machines act and think like the human brain. But this time could be different because of a major breakthrough -- deep learning, where data structures are set up like the brain's neural network to let computers learn on their own. Together with advances in computing power and scale, AI is making big strides today like never before. Get the entire 10-part series on Timeless Reading in PDF.

Unless you have been living under a rock, you are bound to have heard either how AI will be the end of all humanity (Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk), or the solution to its biggest challenges. After decades of hype, AI (artificial intelligence) has arrived. We've been trying to learn from those who have used or explored AI across a range of policy issues that the UN works on – from cutting down costs and time in public services and providing humanitarian assistance based on real-time movement of people, to capturing consumption patterns at micro-levels. Our explorations of AI are in line with UNDP's new Strategic Plan, which emphasizes that innovation has a central role in fulfilling the organization's mission and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. By applying leading-edge thinking and advances such as AI, we can help countries make faster progress on the Goals.