Businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban turned to Twitter to warn about robots' threat to unemployment. "Automation is going to cause unemployment and we need to prepare for it," Cuban said Sunday. The tweet also included a link to warnings about artificial intelligence from tech leaders, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking. Cuban didn't elaborate on the subject, but in a recent interview with CNBC he said President Donald Trump and his administration don't understand technology advancements in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Cuban is a strong critic of Trump and had endorsed his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during the presidential campaign.

Jonathan Lazar (jlazar@towson.edu) is a professor of computer and information sciences and director of the Undergraduate Program in Information Systems at Towson University, Towson, MD, and recipient of the SIGCHI 2016 Social Impact Award. Elizabeth Churchill (churchill@acm.org) is a director of user experience at Google, San Francisco, CA, and Secretary/Treasurer of ACM. Tovi Grossman (tovi.grossman@autodesk.com) is a distinguished research scientist in the User Interface Research Group at Autodesk Research, Toronto, Canada. Gerrit C. van der Veer (gerrit@acm.org) is an emeritus professor of multimedia and culture at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, guest professor of human-media interaction at Twente University, Twente, the Netherlands, of human-computer and society at the Dutch Open University, Heerlen, Netherlands, of interaction design at the Dalian Maritime University, Dalian, China, and of animation and multimedia at the Lushun Academy of Fine Arts, Shenyang, China. Philippe Palanque (palanque@irit.fr) is a professor of computer science at Université Paul Sabatier Paul Sabatier – Toulouse III, France, and head of the Interactive Critical Systems research group of the IRIT laboratory, Toulouse, France. John "Scooter" Morris (scooter@cgl.ucsf.edu) is an adjunct professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the University of California San Francisco and executive director of the Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization and Informatics, a U.S. National Institutes of Health Biomedical Technology Research Resource at the University of California San Francisco. Jennifer Mankoff (mankoff@cs.cmu.edu) is a professor in the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.

The viewpoints by Alan Bundy "Smart Machines Are Not a Threat to Humanity" and Devdatt Dubhashi and Shalom Lappin "AI Dangers: Imagined and Real" (both Feb. 2017) argued against the possibility of a near-term singularity wherein super-intelligent AIs exceed human capabilities and control. Both relied heavily on the lack of direct relevance of Moore's Law, noting raw computing power does not by itself lead to human-like intelligence. Bundy also emphasized the difference between a computer's efficiency in working an algorithm to solve a narrow, well-defined problem and human-like generalized problem-solving ability. Dubhashi and Lappin noted incremental progress in machine learning or better knowledge of a biological brain's wiring do not automatically lead to the "unanticipated spurts" of progress that characterize scientific breakthroughs. These points are valid, but a more accurate characterization of the situation is that computer science may well be just one conceptual breakthrough away from being able to build an artificial general intelligence.

Data Science and machine learning have generated a lot of discussion surrounding them in the past few years. Between them, they are poised to take over and transform the ways that we do many things in our everyday lives: how we drive our cars, manage our money, and make smart decisions. If we asked you to define them and how they work together however, could you? Data Science is the field of gathering, storing, cleaning, predicting on, and visualizing data. Machine learning is the practice of making models and algorithms, frequently referred to as "machines" by practitioners, to learn and predict based on new information.

Jay Rogers is the founder and CEO of Local Motors, a company focused on low-volume manufacturing of open source motor vehicles designed using micro-factories. Local Motors produces its own vehicles, including the Strati, the world's first 3-D printed electric car, and the Olli, and autonomous, electric powered bus. Rogers has entrepreneurship in his DNA. His grandfather was an entrepreneur from whom Rogers drew inspiration. He headed down an academic and professional route that seemed appropriate for a future entrepreneur, having graduated from Princeton and Harvard Business School, and having spent time in consulting and in banking.

Machine learning coupled with the explosion of data offers the very real possibility of addressing the most intractable problems in healthcare. For the first time, data is helping to answer healthcare's toughest questions. Like Google's Research Director Peter Norvig, I too believe it's not better algorithms that are fueling our advancement. Instead, it's the surge in data sources and the innate ability of machine learning to automatically apply complex calculations to vast stores of data and derive rules that help us to understand the correlations, patterns and predictions within the data. In 2015, our country spent $3.2 trillion a year on healthcare, or $9,990 per person, and the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services project the total to rise to nearly $5.6 trillion in 2025.

Data is the new natural resource that can empower every citizen in a country like India, Microsoft's India-born CEO Satya Nadella said on Monday during a discussion on the digital world, cloud computing and artificial intelligence. There is need for "recognising that data is the new natural resource instead of looking at it as being unevenly spread" for empowering every citizen of India, Nadella said in a dialogue with Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani. In India, several state governments are using data resources and computing power for governance, Nadella said. The government of Andhra Pradesh is using cloud services to track high school dropouts in order to build interventions while ICRISAT is using machine learning to improve the yield of farmers, he said. "I was looking at the big consumers of the public cloud (computing) and one thing that came up was the Election Commission in Tamil Nadu,'' Nadella said with reference to the usage of CCTV cameras in Tamil Nadu at election booths in 2016. Nadella said that the broad technology areas that he is currently excited about is cloud computing, artificial intelligence and augmented reality. Much of the entrepreneurial energy in India is around cloud computing, he said. What has been seen so far in terms of artificial intelligence is statistical machine learning by using the power of data and real AI is still in the future, Nadella said. "In Punjab, I believe we took all the call centre data … We analysed the speech so that the government can get a better handle on what are the issues that can be automated and what needs human services.

Brevan Jorgenson's grandma kept her cool when he took her for a nighttime spin in the Honda Civic he's modified to drive itself on the highway. A homemade device in place of the rear-view mirror can control the brakes, accelerator, and steering, and it uses a camera to identify road markings and other cars. "She wasn't really flabbergasted--I think because she's seen so much from technology by now," says Jorgenson, a senior at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Others are more wary of the system, which he built using plans and software downloaded from the Internet, plus about $700 in parts. Jorgenson says the fact that he closely supervises his homebrew autopilot hasn't convinced his girlfriend to trust the gadget's driving.

The Microsoft chief's comments come in the wake of Bill Gates' call for levying taxes on robots that take away jobs from people, reports Ayan Pramanik Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has warned that embracing Artificial Intelligence without reskilling people will have an impact on jobs, even as it has displayed efficiency in delivery of government services. "I think it is an exciting future, but at the same time, you have to be very mindful of the impact of AI on jobs. That's why I want to make sure some of the skilling work we are doing in India is going to help people," said Nadella at an interaction with the architect of Aadhaar, Nandan Nilekani. Nadella's comments come in the wake of Microsoft founder Bill Gates' call for levying taxes on robots that take away jobs from people. Nadella pointed out that Microsoft had been able to use AI to improve efficiency in government services in Punjab and Andhra Pradesh.

BENGALURU: Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella said "an enlightened immigration policy" has enabled him to live the American dream, even as he emphasised that governments had the right to determine immigration and trade policies. "American values have always been about inclusion and diversity. It's a land of immigrants," said Nadella, who was born in Hyderabad and completed his bachelor's degree in engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology, before moving to the US in 1988. "American technology reaching me in India is what made it even possible to dream the dream. And then, the enlightened American immigration policy is what led me to live the dream. And I think those are things we will always advocate for... the American dream and the American enlightened immigration policy, especially for high-skilled workers, is something that I'm optimistic about," Nadella told ETin an interview.