"Because AI is not a single technology, but rather a collection of technologies that are applied to specific tasks, the effects of AI will be felt unevenly through the economy. Some tasks will be more easily automated than others, and some jobs will be affected more than others--both negatively and positively," the White House report said. "Some jobs may be automated away, while for others, AI-driven automation will make many workers more productive and increase demand for certain skills. Finally, new jobs are likely to be directly created in areas such as the development and supervision of AI as well as indirectly created in a range of areas throughout the economy as higher incomes lead to expanded demand." Researchers across the world have given varying estimates about the size of job losses.

I expected to feel a little out of place at the swanky university event for bioethics. My wife, a professor with expertise in the field, had invited me. But when I introduced myself as a software engineer to the attendees, many wanted to talk about one thing -- artificial intelligence (AI). How would it affect society? What are the goods and the bads?

The growing popularity of artificial intelligence technology will likely lead to millions of lost jobs, especially among less-educated workers, and could exacerbate the economic divide between socioeconomic classes in the United States, according to a newly released White House report. But that same technology is also essential to improving the country's productivity growth, a key measure of how efficiently the economy produces goods. That could ultimately lead to higher average wages and fewer work hours. For that reason, the report concludes, our economy actually needs more artificial intelligence, not less. To reconcile the benefits of the technology with its expected toll, the report states that the federal government should expand access to education in technical fields and increase the scope of unemployment benefits.

Artificial intelligence-driven automation will be a crucial driver of economic growth in the U.S., but if not handled properly, it can also lead to a massive disruption in the current livelihoods of millions of Americans and could -- at least in the short term -- even increase societal inequality. This is the crux of a new report on the economic impact of AI released Tuesday by the White House. The report -- a follow-up to a previous one released by the White House in October -- urges policymakers to be prepared to face "a range of potential outcomes," as an accurate assessment of the AI's impact on the economy is dauntingly hard to make. "It is possible that AI will not have large, new effects on the economy, such that the coming years are subject to the same basic workforce trends seen in recent decades -- some of which are positive, and others which are worrisome and may require policy changes," the White House said in its report. "Because the effects of AI-driven automation will be felt across the whole economy, and the areas of greatest impact may be difficult to predict, policy responses must be targeted to the whole economy."

Artificial intelligence will be essential to the future economic growth of the United States, but if education and social services aren't improved, American workers could lose millions of jobs. The report, released by the White House Tuesday, details the enormous potential benefits as well as the enormous potential job loss that could occur as a result of the rise of artificial intelligence. The solution, according to the report, is to invest more in improving education and the "social safety net" to help prepare American workers for the changes. Emphasizing the upside to artificial intelligence, the report first notes the importance of artificial intelligence technology to growing the economy. "Advances in AI technology hold incredible potential to help the United States stay on the cutting edge of innovation," the report says.

The White House has issued a sequel to its October report on how the U.S. should approach artificial intelligence and its effects on various groups and institutions. Today's report focuses on the potential economic effects of AI, and while it's far from a dark outlook, it does warn that with improper handling, automation could drive further inequality in this already deeply divided country. "You look at the last couple decades, we have seen an increase in inequality," said Jason Furman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, on a press call discussing the paper. "In part that increase has been because of a technological fact: that technological innovation, more recently, has helped complement people with higher skills. So we now have a few decades of experience with technology helping to contribute to inequality."

Today, in order to ready the United States for a future in which artificial intelligence (AI) plays a growing role, the White House released a report on Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the Economy. This report follows up on the Administration's previous report, Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence, which was released in October 2016, and which recommended that the White House publish a report on the economic impacts of artificial intelligence by the end of 2016. Accelerating AI capabilities will enable automation of some tasks that have long required human labor. These transformations will open up new opportunities for individuals, the economy, and society, but they will also disrupt the current livelihoods of millions of Americans. The new report examines the expected impact of AI-driven automation on the economy, and describes broad strategies that could increase the benefits of AI and mitigate its costs.

We present a novel method for hierarchical topic detection where topics are obtained by clustering documents in multiple ways. Specifically, we model document collections using a class of graphical models called hierarchical latent tree models (HLTMs). The variables at the bottom level of an HLTM are observed binary variables that represent the presence/absence of words in a document. The variables at other levels are binary latent variables, with those at the lowest latent level representing word co-occurrence patterns and those at higher levels representing co-occurrence of patterns at the level below. Each latent variable gives a soft partition of the documents, and document clusters in the partitions are interpreted as topics. Latent variables at high levels of the hierarchy capture long-range word co-occurrence patterns and hence give thematically more general topics, while those at low levels of the hierarchy capture short-range word co-occurrence patterns and give thematically more specific topics. Unlike LDA-based topic models, HLTMs do not refer to a document generation process and use word variables instead of token variables. They use a tree structure to model the relationships between topics and words, which is conducive to the discovery of meaningful topics and topic hierarchies.

Stunning composite image was created from ten frames Shows ISS transiting the sun at five miles per second on Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016 Shows ISS transiting the sun at five miles per second on Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016 Taken from California, it shows the International Space Station, with a crew of six onboard, in silhouette as it transits the sun at roughly five miles per second on Saturday, Dec. 17, 2016. Struggle to find the right emoji already? Facebook adds... Now robots can have KIDS: Researchers create machines that... Want to make yourself appear more masculine? Wear deodorant,... Giant space factories and orbiting solar panels could... Struggle to find the right emoji already? Facebook adds... Now robots can have KIDS: Researchers create machines that... Want to make yourself appear more masculine?

There are lots of economic opportunities coming thanks to gains in artificial intelligence, the White House said in a report today, but that same report warns that millions of jobs could be displaced while the technology improves. Artificial intelligence, the report notes, accelerates trends seen since the industrial revolution, as people lose jobs to automation and are forced to learn new skills to find new career paths. How fast we'll see those impacts is the question. The report notes that researchers' estimates about jobs threatened ranges widely from 9 to 47 percent, and notes that because "AI is not a single technology, but rather a collection of technologies that are applied to specific tasks, the effects of AI will be unevenly felt throughout the economy." That said, the general assessment is that the jobs hardest hit are those that are more easily automated, which disproportionately impacts people with less educational attainment.