Amazon is raising eyebrows with a patent filing that suggests putting human employees in cages to navigate areas populated by automated robots. The internet giant was granted the patent in 2016, but it's dissected in a new study looking at the history and implications of Amazon's Echo. The patent, titled'System and method for transporting personnel within an active workspace,' envisions a system that would allow humans to safely enter areas where robots are zipping to and fro, delivering items. It's described as a'human transport device' wherein an employee stands atop a robotic trolley, encased by a metal cage. A robotic arm would be attached to the cage and operated from inside the enclosure, allowing the employee to reach for items, among other uses. '...U.S. patent number 9,280,157 represents an extraordinary illustration of worker alienation, a stark moment in the relationship between humans and machines,' the study, titled'Anatomy of an AI System,' explained.

Let the computers do the legal busy work so attorneys can focus on complex problem solving for their clients. That's the lucrative idea behind Atrium LTS, Twitch co-founder Justin Kan's machine learning startup that digitizes legal documents and builds applications on top to speed up fundraising, commercial contracts, equity distribution and employment issues. For example, one of its apps automatically turns startup funding documents into Excel cap tables. Automating expensive legal labor has led to a rapid rise to 110 employees and 250 clients for Atrium, including startups like Bird and MessageBird. Atrium only came of stealth a year ago with a $10.5 million party round before going into Y Combinator last winter.

Tech went to Washington this week, and their biggest problems followed them. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg faced Congress, and though Google CEO Larry Paige was invited, he declined to make the trip--a move that didn't ingratiate him with Congressional watchdog Mark Warner. One uninvited guest did make an appearance at the hearings, however: Alex Jones. He heckled Dorsey and a CNN reporter, and was captured by a photographer's lens for what is one of the most perfect (and surreal) photos of 2018. Though Jones' DC antics were mild compared with his past bad behavior, being that physically close to his trolling seems to have finally woken up Dorsey; Twitter permanently banned Jones the next day.

A key opponent of high-tech, automated weapons known as'killer robots' is blaming countries like the U.S. and Russia for blocking consensus at a U.N.-backed conference, where most countries wanted to ensure that humans stay at the controls of lethal machines. Coordinator Mary Wareham of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots spoke Monday after experts from dozens of countries agreed before dawn Saturday at the U.N. in Geneva on 10 'possible guiding principles' about such'Lethal Automated Weapons Systems.' Point 2 said: 'Human responsibility for decisions on the use of weapons systems must be retained since accountability cannot be transferred to machines.' Killer robots must be banned to prevent unlawful killings, injuries and other violations of human rights'before it's too late', according to Amnesty International. Wareham said such language wasn't binding, adding that'it's time to start laying down some rules now.' Members of the LAWS conference will meet again in November. Last week Amnesty International said killer robots must be banned to prevent unlawful killings, injuries and other violations of human rights'before it's too late', as the talks kicked off.

Google has developed an AI tool to help flag child sex abuse content online. The free tool uses image recognition to help human moderators spot and remove child sexual abuse material (CSAM) more quickly. It will reduce moderators' exposure to content that can be traumatic, while hopefully catching greater quantities of child sex abuse content. The move comes as UK officials have called on Google and other Silicon Valley giants to take greater action against online child sexual abuse. Google has developed an AI tool to help flag child sex abuse content online.

Robots could teach themselves to treat other forms of life – including humans – as less valuable than themselves, new research claims. Experts say prejudice towards others does not require a high level of cognitive ability and could easily be exhibited by artificially intelligent machines. These machines could teach each other the value of excluding others from outside their immediate group. The latest findings are based on computer simulations of how AIs, or virtual agents, form a group and interact with each other. Robot could teach themselves to be treat other forms of life - including humans - as less valuable than themselves, new research suggests.

It must be hard for Joseph Stiglitz to remain an optimist in the face of the grim future he fears may be coming. The Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank has thought carefully about how artificial intelligence will affect our lives. On the back of the technology, we could build ourselves a richer society and perhaps enjoy a shorter working week, he says. But there are countless pitfalls to avoid on the way. The ones Stiglitz has in mind are hardly trivial.

Xbox's latest release, the Adaptive Controller, allows compatibility external joysticks, pedals, switches and buttons. Microsoft's Seeing AI for the iPhone tries to identify a person's gender, approximate age and mood. Retiree Douglas Wakefield is a tech enthusiast. The 76-year-old begins a typical day by donning his Apple Watch and listening to its synthesized voice deliver the weather. Over coffee, the Arlington, Virginia, resident catches up on overnight news on his iPhone X and consumes books read out loud on topics like coding – his goal is to write apps for the iPhone.

FAKE videos created by artificial intelligence, known as deepfakes, are becoming incredibly convincing. They show people saying or doing things they never said or did, and recent technological leaps have made producing realistic ones easier than ever (see "AI can make high-definition fake videos from just a simple sketch"). Although having fakes masquerade as the genuine article is a risk, it may not be the main problem. Instead it could be that with such convincing fakes around, it is easier for someone to falsely dispute the authenticity of the real deal. A stark illustration of this can be found in the US, where possession of computer-generated images of child sexual abuse is treated more leniently by the courts than the real thing.

Case Law has a significant impact on the proceedings of legal cases. Therefore, the information that can be obtained from previous court cases is valuable to lawyers and other legal officials when performing their duties. This paper describes a methodology of applying discourse relations between sentences when processing text documents related to the legal domain. In this study, we developed a mechanism to classify the relationships that can be observed among sentences in transcripts of United States court cases. First, we defined relationship types that can be observed between sentences in court case transcripts. Then we classified pairs of sentences according to the relationship type by combining a machine learning model and a rule-based approach. The results obtained through our system were evaluated using human judges. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study where discourse relationships between sentences have been used to determine relationships among sentences in legal court case transcripts.