"When, for God's sake, are we going to confront the gun lobby?", said Joe Biden, saying too he was "sick and tired" of the blockage of part of theUS political class, which refuses to regulate gun sales. I used to talk about artificial intelligence &é the ethics that must be associated with it… AI is created by humans… like weapons… we're on the same subject! We need to obviously regulate AI algorithms so that they are not harmful to us humans… but apparently in the US that doesn't seem to be the case when we replace AI with weapons… catastrophic!! Just some evidence: 1/ Research on the subject across US is clear: the greater the number of firearms in circulation, the greater the increase in firearm violence. States with a large proportion of their population owning firearms have homicide rates that are 114% higher than those with a less armed population. A review of the scientific literature from Harvard University's Violence Prevention Research Center indicates that the availability of access to firearms is a well-established risk factor in numerous studies. Both men and women are at greater risk of being victims of firearm homicide in places where there are more guns.

I sat out Friday's big Tesla AI event. I was actually looking forward to seeing what the company had cooked up after months of teasing, but a combination of rogue stomach virus and the most inconvenient event timing (Friday at 9:15 PM EDT) outside of something held on the other side of the world meant I had to watch the whole thing over the weekend. I'm not sure one can call Optimus "disappointing," exactly. Disappointing implies higher expectations than I think most of us had going into the thing. Elon Musk has largely proven himself to be a great hype man and self-promoter over the years, but in the lead-up to last week's official unveiling, I didn't encounter many serious roboticists who believed we would see much more than what Tesla showed.

'The Six Million Dollar Man' Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors, is an astronaut who is seriously injured when his spaceship crashes. When Austin recovers, his "bionic" parts give him superhuman strength, speed and sight. With these powers, Austin goes to work for the Office of Scientific Information, battling evil for the good of humanity. The popular 1970s television program spun off a second TV series, 'The Bionic Woman' starring Lindsay Wagner. 'The Terminator' series of action films stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cybernetic organism (cyborg), programmed from the future to go back in time and kill the mother of the scientist who leads the fight against Skynet, an artificial intelligence system that will cause a nuclear holocaust.

New data from Tech Nation and Dealroom found that VC investment in UK AI companies hit a record in Q2 2022 and is on track to at least equal last year. Around 2,009 AI companies are based in the UK, the AI capital of Europe. Last year saw a record investment of £6.6 billion flow into UK AI companies. In 2022 so far, £3.2 billion has been invested. Tech Nation notes that investment into AI firms is historically "loaded towards the end of the calendar year" and is on track to "at least equal" last year. A record-setting Q2 was achieved in 2022 with £746.93 million invested, which could be a good sign for the rest of the year.

The Biden administration unveiled a set of far-reaching goals Tuesday aimed at averting harms caused by the rise of artificial intelligence systems, including guidelines for how to protect people's personal data and limit surveillance. Earlier this year, after the publication of an AP review of an algorithmic tool used in a Pennsylvania child welfare system, OSTP staffers reached out to sources quoted in the article to learn more, according to multiple people who participated in the call. "If a tool or an automated system is disproportionately harming a vulnerable community, there should be, one would hope, that there would be levers and opportunities to address that through some of the specific applications and prescriptive suggestions," said Nelson, who also serves as deputy assistant to President Joe Biden. The white paper also did not specifically address AI-powered technologies funded through the Department of Justice, whose civil rights division separately has been examining algorithmic harms, bias and discrimination, Nelson said. Tucked between the calls for greater oversight, the white paper also said when appropriately implemented, AI systems have the power to bring about lasting benefits to society, such as helping farmers grow food more efficiently or identifying diseases.

Robotics company Boston Dynamics is pledging not to support the weaponization of its products and calling for its competitors to do the same. In a new letter, the firm said recent efforts to weaponize their robots - such as a Russian inventor who strapped a submachine gun to a Unitree robot and filmed it shooting targets - had added to the urgency of their declaration. 'We pledge that we will not weaponize our advanced-mobility general-purpose robots or the software we develop that enables advanced robotics and we will not support others to do so,' the letter, which was signed by six other companies, including Unitree, states. The Massachusetts-based tech company has frequently seen videos of its robot dogs Spot or its humanoid robot Atlas go viral for performing various stunts or athletic tasks in public. Anyone who has watched the Black Mirror episode'Metalhead' that features a robotic dog or seen the film Angel Has Fallen, which features an attempted assassination of the president by autonomous, AI-powered drones, is aware of the potential risks these new technologies pose.

I met my husband in 2008 and therefore skipped the whole online dating universe that dominates how we hook up and fall in love in 2022. So I was pretty excited to try out The Right Stuff--the Peter Thiel-backed dating app for conservatives--you know, for journalism, and end my personal streak of dating-app virginity. "Inae falls in love with a patriot and divorces her husband," my esteemed colleague Abigail Weinberg had predicted for me. But after filling out the questionnaires and selecting photos to build my profile, I got stuck on the last step requiring an invite. I had no choice but to hit delete; my status as a dating app virgin remains intact. But it turns out I wasn't the only one disappointed by the system--a bunch of reviewers in the app store, first spotted here, also had complaints.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, 11 percent of 2020 greenhouse gas emissions came from agriculture efforts from livestock such as cows, agricultural soils, and rice production. This means that we have a desperate need to change how we produce our food. Silicon Valley startup IronOx has been busy doing just that by using automation. It has moved crops indoors, used robots to manage them, and put them under the watchful eyes of smart cameras. To grow more and better efficiently and sustainably, according to an article by CNET published on Saturday.

In a historic first, the House of Lords will host its first ever robot speaker next week. Ai-Da, a'realistic' robotic artist created and built in Britain, will speak at the House of Lords at the Palace of Westminster next Tuesday, October 11, at 3:30pm. Ai-Da has cameras in her eyes and is able to converse and answer questions using a specially designed AI language model. Addressing members of the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, she will talk about whether creativity is under attack from AI and technology. She will also give evidence as part of an ongoing inquiry into the future of the creative industries, such as arts, design, fashion and music.

A few weeks ago I demonstrated how an artificial intelligence could now mimic skills and abilities that were once the exclusive purview of humans, like creativity. And while the detective story that an AI wrote alongside me was a little bit on the strange side, it did demonstrate what might one day be possible as the technology continues to evolve. But that also means that we need to be careful, because AIs could very easily evolve into areas that we may not like, or with morals that are counter to our belief systems. The White House has at least tentatively acknowledged this danger, calling for the establishment of an AI Bill of Rights through its Office of Science and Technology Policy. That effort is designed to democratize AI as much as possible, letting the public not only see the state of AI as it develops, but also giving people a voice in how and what AI technology develops.