Twenty-eight-year-old Matthew Nicholson of Ceres was arrested Thursday night on suspicion of murder. It's unclear whether he has an attorney. Police called to Nicholson's home found his 68-year-old mother with a head wound. She died at a hospital. Police said Lydia Nicholson went to check on her son in his bedroom after she heard him shouting because grew enraged as he played a video game.

LinkedIn's new report surveyed 8,800 recruiters and hiring managers on how these trends would impact hiring in 2018. Those polled indicated that AI is gaining steam because it's a timesaver (67%), removes human bias (43%), and delivers the best candidate matches (31%). More than half of survey respondents also found AI to be most effective for sourcing candidates (58%), screening (56%), and nurturing candidates (55%). Case studies outlined in the report show how companies like U.K.-based Vodaphone are tapping that power for interviewing over 50,000 candidates for its call center and customer service roles, which start with video interviews. Once candidates record themselves answering standardized questions, "robots (aka computers programmed with advanced algorithms) analyze the interviews" across 15,000 different factors including body language and facial cues to vocal tone.

Let's talk about how Synapse AI was made. Synapse actually started out -- let's not talk about confirmation bias of being a programmer, growing up in the hacking and phreaking scene, learning networking, network security, understanding systems, having a background in electrical engineering and computation chemistry -- let's start out with: We first threw a hackathon called "Hackendo," and I was running Techendo at the time, and the San Francisco Hacker News Meetup. Techendo was our news outlet. We wanted Techendo to capture entrepreneurs and tech developers blogging about what was happening. We did that because there was a real monopoly on the pipeline of launching a product and getting media engaged to talk about a product. That was mainly owned by incubators and accelerators, and it still is -- so there still is opportunity there.

If there are only 10 people in the room, they will mutually monitor and trust each other. However, imagine trusting 10 billion people each with the ability to destroy everyone -- such a scenario is beyond our ability to comprehend. Of course, technological development will advance not only offensive power but also defensive power, but it is not easy to have defensive power to contain attacking power at the same time. If scientific and technological development are promoted using artificial intelligence technology, for example, many countries will easily hold intercontinental ballistic fleets, and artificial intelligence can be extremely dangerous to living organisms by using nanotechnology. It could comprise a scenario to extinguish mankind by the development or use of dangerous substances.

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. Frank Chen, a partner specializing in AI at top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, makes a case that AI could be entering a golden age.

To stay in front of the opposition, to stay relevant and useful for searchers and advertisers, Google and Microsoft invest heavily in machine learning technologies. It helps to analyze annd understand searcher intent. Artificial intelligence is not something that most web content writers concern themselves with, but they need to start. As people are more familiar with Google Search algorithm updates, mostly because Google announces them with a fanfare while others just go about their business, let's talk about them. It should be noted however that the finer points also apply to Microsoft and Bing.

This week, a video surfaced of a Harvard professor, Steven Pinker, which appeared to show him lauding members of a racist movement. The clip, which was pulled from a November event at Harvard put on by Spiked magazine, showed Mr. Pinker referring to "the often highly literate, highly intelligent people who gravitate to the alt-right" and calling them "internet savvy" and "media savvy." The neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website ran an article headlined, in part, "Harvard Jew Professor Admits the Alt-Right Is Right About Everything." A tweet of the video published by the self-described "Right-Wing Rabble-Rouser" Alex Witoslawski got hundreds of retweets, including one from the white-nationalist leader Richard Spencer. "Steven Pinker has long been a darling of the white supremacist'alt-right,'" noted the lefty journalist Ben Norton.

In May of last year, Misty Robotics raised US $11.5 million and spun itself out of parent company Sphero. From the sound of things, Sphero cofounder Ian Bernstein had been working on an idea for a new kind of robot inside Sphero for a while, and Misty is the manifestation of that. Misty Robotics' vision is to put a personal robot in every home and office. These robots will be seen and treated as our friends, our teammates, and a part of our families--performing helpful tasks, providing safety, and interacting with humans in entertaining and friendly ways that have only been seen before in science fiction. Misty will begin its mission with the release of its first robot and a collaborative ecosystem for robotic development. That's quite a vision, especially in the context of the sky-high expectations that Jibo isn't (yet) living up to, and that Kuri may struggle to meet.

Gary Marcus has recently published a detailed, rather extensive critique of Deep Learning. While many of Dr. Marcus's points are well-known among those deeply familiar with the field and have been somewhat well-publicized for years, these discussions haven't yet reached many who are newly involved in decision-making in this space. Overall, the discussion the critique has generated seems clarifying and useful. I have decided to write up my thoughts because, while I think Dr. Marcus' critique is thoughtful, necessary and often justified, I disagree with some of the conclusions. To start, Dr. Marcus' assessment that Deep Learning, as originally defined, is merely a statistical technique for classifying patterns is spot on in my opinion.

Our editors have been on the ground for the better part of this week scouring every nook and cranny in Las Vegas to bring you the latest and greatest from CES 2018. And now we're ready to announce our finalists for the official Best of CES awards. Below you'll find our selections for all 16 categories, which range from best wearables to the most innovative tech we've seen at the show. We'll announce our category winners tomorrow, which is also when we'll reveal our Best of the Best award recipient, the most coveted prize of all. That special award is selected from our pool of category winners. If you want your voice heard too, no worries! There's an additional category for the People's Choice, where you can vote for your favorite entry from our compilation of finalists. Just head on over to our poll right here to vote and the one with the most votes will win our special People's Choice award. All award winners will be announced at a special ceremony tomorrow at our CES stage, so be sure to come back right here on Engadget around 5PM PST Thursday afternoon to watch it all unfold.