It is predicted that robots will surpass human intelligence within the next fifty years. The ever increasing speed of advances in technology and neuroscience, coupled with the creation of super computers and enhanced body parts and artificial limbs, is paving the way for a merger of both human and machine. Devices which were once worn on the body are now being implanted into the body, and as a result, a class of true cyborgs, who are displaying a range of skills beyond those of normal humans-beings, are being created. There are cyborgs which can see colour by hearing sound, others have the ability to detect magnetic fields, some are equipped with telephoto lenses to aid their vision or implanted computers to monitor their heart, and some use thought to communicate with a computer or to manipulate a robotic arm. This is not science-fiction, these are developments that are really happening now, and will continue to develop in the future.

A quick note: I'm going to take a brief newsletter break, but will resume publishing the week of July 9. At that time, or shortly thereafter, I will likely begin publishing 4 times per week (Monday-Thursday). You'll receive twice as many emails, but each issue will be significantly less dense. This issue is particularly dense. There's a lot to talk about this week, but I want to begin with the topic of bias in artificial intelligence models. It's an issue that gets an awful lot of attention -- including in this feature from Fortune -- but that I think the general public misunderstands.

Even amid the majority concerns, only 32 percent of Americans support the creation of a Federal Robotics Commission to regulate development and usage of robots. However, 39 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 34 were in favor of the robotics agency, compared to only 25 percent of older people (55 and over). That's the result that West found most interesting, suggesting that support for the idea may continue to increase. "If young people hold on to those views as they age, that would suggest we're headed towards more government regulation," West said. The Trump administration does have a major reorganization of federal agencies on its agenda, including a proposed combination of the Department of Education and Labor.

James A. Hendler was recognized with the AAAI Distinguished Service Award at AAAI-17 for his contributions to the field of artificial intelligence through sustained service to AAAI, other professional societies and government activities promoting the importance of artificial intelligence research. This article presents his recipe for success advice, with advice directed at newer AI researchers (with some notes for experienced ones as well).

The AAAI 2017 Fall Symposium Series was held Thursday through Saturday, November 9–11, at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Virginia, adjacent to Washington, DC. The titles of the six symposia were Artificial Intelligence for Human-Robot Interaction; Cognitive Assistance in Government and Public Sector Applications; Deep Models and Artificial Intelligence for Military Applications: Potentials, Theories, Practices, Tools and Risks; Human-Agent Groups: Studies, Algorithms and Challenges; Natural Communication for Human-Robot Collaboration; and A Standard Model of the Mind. The highlights of each symposium (except the Natural Communication for Human-Robot Collaboration symposium, whose organizers did not submit a report) are presented in this report.

No methods currently exist for making arbitrary neural networks fair. In this work we introduce GRAD, a new and simplified method to producing fair neural networks that can be used for auto-encoding fair representations or directly with predictive networks. It is easy to implement and add to existing architectures, has only one (insensitive) hyper-parameter, and provides improved individual and group fairness. We use the flexibility of GRAD to demonstrate multi-attribute protection.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Microsoft that describes a method of cheat detection for games on a platform level using machine learning. The idea is to bring cheat detection outside the game given platforms can't detect cheats within the game itself.

Ray Kurzweil's impact on my life in general but especially on what I have been doing for the past 3 or 4 years is hard to exaggerate. It is a simple fact that, if I haven't read his seminal book The Singularity is Near, I would be neither blogging nor podcasting about exponential technologies, not to mention going to Singularity University. And so it was with great excitement and some trepidation that I went to interview Dr. Kurzweil in his office in Boston. Part of my trepidation came from some technical concerns: I wish I could buy a better camera. I wish I could hire a team of audio and video professionals so that I can focus on the interview itself.

A mass-shooting in Annapolis, Maryland, at the Capital Gazette yesterday killed five journalists, making it the most deadly domestic attack on the press since 9/11. Local police say a suspect in custody, Jarrod Ramos, appears to have acted alone and been motivated by retribution for a failed defamation lawsuit against the paper. As accounts of the shooting and its aftermath arrived, one detail stood out: The suspect was uncooperative after apprehension, and the county police used facial-recognition technology to identify him. Some would celebrate the use any available technology to name an unidentified and uncooperative suspect caught in the act of a mass shooting, especially before the incident is clearly contained. But recently, complex surveillance technologies, like a service that Amazon pitched to law enforcement, have come under scrutiny.

It has been, to be quite honest, a fairly bad week, as far as weeks go. But despite the sustained downbeat news, a few good things managed to happen as well. California has passed the strongest digital privacy law in the United States, for starters, which as of 2020 will give customers the right to know what data companies use, and to disallow those companies from selling it. It's just the latest in a string of uncommonly good bits of privacy news, which included last week's landmark Supreme Court decision in Carpenter v. US. That ruling will require law enforcement to get a warrant before accessing cell tower location data.