Recently, the federal office of Science and Technology Policy issued a request for public feedback on "overarching questions in [Artificial Intelligence], including AI research and the tools, technologies, and training that are needed to answer these questions." OSTP is in the process of co-hosting four public workshops in 2016 on topics in AI in order to spur public dialogue on these topics and to identify challenges and opportunities related to this emerging technology. These topics include the legal and governance issues for AI, AI for public good, safety and control for AI, and the social and economic implications of AI. The Request for Information lists 10 specific topics on which the government would appreciate feedback, including "the use of AI for public good" and "the most pressing, fundamental questions in AI research, common to most or all scientific fields." One of the academics who answered the request for information is Shannon Vallor, who is the William J. Rewak Professor at Santa Clara University, and one of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics' faculty scholars.

Pepper the robot participates in a Japanese ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this year. Its manufacturer, SoftBank Robotics, is opening new offices in San Francisco and releasing a development kit for Android programmers. The proposed 32 billion acquisition of ARM Holdings, a U.K.-based maker of smartphone chips, by Japanese conglomerate Softbank is the second deal in two weeks that highlights the ascendancy of Asian technology investors. It likely won't be the last example this year, given global economic and investing trends. Last week, the Korean firm Naver -- parent of Japan-based messaging service Line (LN) -- sold off part of its ownership stake in the biggest tech IPO so far this year.

A federal judge has ordered a Connecticut father and son to testify under oath at depositions and hand over documents about drones shown in YouTube videos firing a gun and deploying a flame thrower in their backyard. Judge Jeffrey Meyer in New Haven ruled Monday in the case of 19-year-old Austin Haughwout of Clinton and his father, Bret Haughwout, who both have refused to comply with Federal Aviation Administration subpoenas seeking their testimony and documents. The judge ordered them to comply within 30 days. "Because I conclude that the FAA has a legitimate purpose for its subpoenas and that the subpoenas are otherwise appropriate in scope, I will grant the petition," Meyer ruled. One video, viewed nearly 3.8 million times, shows a flying drone equipped with a handgun firing rounds.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Chinese officials have told carmakers to cease testing autonomous cars on the country's highways until legislation is in place. The head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, She Weizhen, said the ministry and police have a preliminary draft of the guidelines, according to Automotive News. However, Weizhen did not divulge a timeline for the implementation of final rules. SEE ALSO: Mercedes' autonomous Future Bus just drove through Amsterdam The move is an intriguing one, because -- until this announcement -- Chinese officials were keen to champion autonomous driving technology and its implementation. Though it's not been specifically articulated, it's not hard to presume the recent crashes, one of which resulted in a fatality, involving Tesla's beta-tested semi-autonomous driving system, Autopilot, could have spurred the move for the moratorium on autonomous car testing.

Last Friday, at NYU's Skirball Center, the White House hosted a symposium on Artificial Intelligence, ethics, health, and machine learning. Led by Kate Crawford, a prinicipal researcher at Microsoft Research, and Meredith Whittaker, lead for Google Open Source Research Group. The day time events (invitation only) consisted of lightening talks from researchers at IBM Watson, Microsoft, policy makers, lawyers, artists and data visualizers such as Jer Thorp (blprnt). It was an incredibly diverse crowd, from careers to gender to race, and was something that the organizers had intended and carefully curated for the event itself. To create and germinate better discussions around AI, and to make better artificial intelligence, the group better be diverse, and AINow beyond succeeded with that.

"We're on a journey here," says Forrester principal analyst Julie Ask. And what a strange, wonderful trip it is turning out to be. Marketers already dazed by the overnight emergence of almost 4,000 marketing technology companies and just starting to really take advantage of the mobile revolution are facing yet another disruption: AI, bots, and messaging platforms. Some of us are eagerly jumping on the bandwagon, as Facebook now has 11,000 bots that can help people order flowers, buy food, or fix an issue with their flight. But many marketers are still wondering how, why, where, and … what's the ROI?

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

Yet most of the concerns about the rise of the robots are centered on distributional concerns. The robots might boost productivity growth and therefore the growth of economic output, but will they displace large swaths of workers? This first fear--that robots will massively displace labor across manufacturing and services industries--is a concern because in the future additional capital investment in all manner of robots may well supplant labor rather than supplement it. If robots can essentially replace a large chunk of labor, then businesses will stop hiring workers and instead replace them with robots. Imagine an economy-wide version of robots on factory floors.

Fenwick & West was founded in 1972 in the heart of Silicon Valley--before "Silicon Valley" existed--by four visionary lawyers who left a top-tier New York law firm to pursue their shared belief that technology would revolutionize the business world and to pioneer the legal work for those technological innovations. In order to be most effective, they decided they needed to move to a location close to primary research and technology development. These four attorneys opened their first office in downtown Palo Alto, and Fenwick became one of the first technology law firms in the world.