An NBER conference on Economics of Artificial Intelligence took place in Toronto on September 13-14, 2018. Research Associates Ajay K. Agrawal, Joshua S. Gans and Avi Goldfarb of University of Toronto and Catherine Tucker of MIT organized the meeting, sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, CIFAR, and the Creative Destruction Lab. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed: Emilio Calvano, Vencenzo Denicolò, and Sergio Pastorello, University of Bologna, and Giacomo Calzolari, European University Institute Q-Learning to Cooperate AI algorithms are increasingly replacing human decision making in real marketplaces. To inform the debate on potential consequences, Calvano, Calzolari, Denicolò, and Pastorello run experiments with AI agents powered by reinforcement learning in controlled environments (computer simulations). In particular, the researchers study multi-agent interaction in the context of a workhorse oligopoly model: price competition with Logit demand and constant marginal costs.

I've long been both paranoid and optimistic about the promise and potential of artificial intelligence to disrupt -- well, almost everything. Last year, I was struck by how fast machine learning was developing and I was concerned that both Nokia and I had been a little slow on the uptake. What could I do to educate myself and help the company along? As chairman of Nokia, I was fortunate to be able to worm my way onto the calendars of several of the world's top AI researchers. But I only understood bits and pieces of what they told me, and I became frustrated when some of my discussion partners seemed more intent on showing off their own advanced understanding of the topic than truly wanting me to get a handle on "how does it really work."

Launched more than sixty years ago, AI or artificial intelligenceis now being recruited to improve manufacturing productivity and efficiency. AI does so easily and seamlessly through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) engineering systems. Although there are still some hindrances that need to be ironed out, I feel the real benefits will eventually be realized. ERP is the integrated management of core business processes, often in real-time and mediated by software and technology. As a result, it is a perfect target for AI employment.

Jumping in a taxi, we often have our own idea of the quickest route for the driver to take. Soon, all we may need to say is'up' – after the Business Secretary announced a £10million cash injection that will help pave the way to flying cabs. Greg Clark said the money would go towards a series of projects that focus on how to regulate 15 plausible technologies of the future. They range from airborne taxis to'robolawyers' that use artificial intelligence to help streamline the legal services market. A flying taxi concept previously unveiled by engine maker Rolls-Royce.

Trained machine learning models are increasingly used to perform high-impact tasks in areas such as law enforcement, medicine, education, and employment. In order to clarify the intended use cases of machine learning models and minimize their usage in contexts for which they are not well suited, we recommend that released models be accompanied by documentation detailing their performance characteristics. In this paper, we propose a framework that we call model cards, to encourage such transparent model reporting. Model cards are short documents accompanying trained machine learning models that provide benchmarked evaluation in a variety of conditions, such as across different cultural, demographic, or phenotypic groups (e.g., race, geographic location, sex, Fitzpatrick skin type) and intersectional groups (e.g., age and race, or sex and Fitzpatrick skin type) that are relevant to the intended application domains. Model cards also disclose the context in which models are intended to be used, details of the performance evaluation procedures, and other relevant information. While we focus primarily on human-centered machine learning models in the application fields of computer vision and natural language processing, this framework can be used to document any trained machine learning model. To solidify the concept, we provide cards for two supervised models: One trained to detect smiling faces in images, and one trained to detect toxic comments in text. We propose model cards as a step towards the responsible democratization of machine learning and related AI technology, increasing transparency into how well AI technology works. We hope this work encourages those releasing trained machine learning models to accompany model releases with similar detailed evaluation numbers and other relevant documentation.

The Department of Transportation is getting a little more creative about how it defines "driver," Secretary Elaine Chao announced Thursday. In the third version of the department's official stance on self-driving, the department said it would "adapt the definitions of'driver' and'operator' to recognize that such terms to not refer exclusively to a human, but may in fact include an automated system." The computers have a ticket to drive now--at least where federal regulations are concerned. And while this is good news for everyone working on building, and eventually deploying, self-driving vehicles, it's especially welcome for the automated trucking crowd. Waymo, Daimler, Volvo, Embark Trucks, Kache.ai,

This is the last article in a three part series on AI law. Previously in parts one and two, I discussed the AI as tortfeasor and how traditional tort theories may apply to semi-autonomous AI, and I discussed how state and foreign regulators are taking AI bias and the protection of consumers seriously. Federal regulators are beginning to grapple with these issues also. Our discussion of AI Law turns now to the topic of robo-advisors, AI speech and AI legislations before Congress. Chat bots and voice bots are AIs that interact with people using spoken and the written word.

WIRE)--Oct 4, 2018--Esri, the global leader in location intelligence, has announced that it is partnering with BuildingFootprintUSA to provide unprecedented, accurate geocoding and address matching to users of Esri's ArcGIS platform in the United States and Canada, as well as a comprehensive training dataset used to improve Esri's machine learning and artificial intelligence. Users in any industry--including government, telecom, insurance, utilities, real estate, and retail--can benefit from the increased geocoding accuracy that comes from using building footprints. Building footprints for the United States and Canada will be available for use by ArcGIS users by the end of the year, closely followed by data for the United Kingdom and Brazil. Esri will also provide the data for advanced geocoding needs through ArcGIS World Geocoding Service, StreetMap Premium for ArcGIS North America, and ArcGIS World Geocoder. This press release features multimedia.

The usual people are teaming up with the usual people to try to harness artificial intelligence (AI). That is, Google, Amazon and Microsoft are tying up with the UN, the World Bank and the Red Cross to try to use algorithms to predict famine. Every conference this year contains a dead human genius reincarnated as software system or a robot. Yes, there is a lot of hype, but there is real worth in AI and Machine Learning. Read our counseling on how to avoid adopting "black box" approach.

An alternative search engine is seeing growth as Google faces questions about its practices and alleged bias against conservatives. Google dominates search with only few viable alternatives in the field. But in the last few years, Paoli, Pa.-based DuckDuckGo has been gaining as a search engine, one that is built around anonymity, according to Search Engine Watch. "We provide you with everything you expect from Google without collecting your search history, or using it for targeted advertising," Gabriel Weinberg, CEO & Founder, DuckDuckGo, told Fox News in an email. "DuckDuckGo is a good search engine if you value privacy," Paul Bischoff, a privacy advocate at Comparitech, a company that reviews and compares consumer tech products, told Fox News.