Security firm IOActive tested 12 devices made for the home, businesses and industrial purposes, and in a report said all were found to contain critical vulnerabilities which could allow attackers to control them remotely. While current devices do not have the "strength, speed and force" to cause an adult harm, the design flaws are so common, the company says, that when stronger robots are developed the risk of harm could be significant. "We found a lot of authentication vulnerabilities, where the user of the robot is not actually verified to be the owner," said Lucas Apa, a senior security consultant at IOActive. These issues mean that "anyone within the same network can interact with the robot and issue it commands - to move around or even to return the video or microphone recordings that it's making to a third party". The robots, especially when used in a business setting, could therefore facilitate industrial espionage, the firm says.

Last fall, University of Virginia computer science professor Vicente Ordóñez noticed a pattern in some of the guesses made by image-recognition software he was building. "It would see a picture of a kitchen and more often than not associate it with women, not men," he says. That got Ordóñez wondering whether he and other researchers were unconsciously injecting biases into their software. So he teamed up with colleagues to test two large collections of labeled photos used to "train" image-recognition software. Two prominent research-image collections--including one supported by Microsoft and Facebook--display a predictable gender bias in their depiction of activities such as cooking and sports.

After it launched Android Oreo on Monday, the tech giant is reportedly working on three new products, apart from the already confirmed Pixel 2 smartphones -- a Google Home Mini speaker, a new Chromebook, and most significantly, a new pair of smart headphones that will rival the Apple AirPods. Google may be working on new smart headphones capable of running Google Assistant, according to 9to5 Google. Since the source code refers to Google's proprietary software, it may be possible the tech giant may come up with its own line of headphones. While the Chromebook Pixel launch may help in rebranding the Chromebook brand, Google Home Mini is expected to compete with Amazon Echo Dot, both being miniature versions of existing smart speakers, Android Police reported Monday, citing sources aware of the company's plans.

The world's leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics experts, including Tesla's Elon Musk and Google's Mustafa Suleyman, have urged the United Nations to take action to prevent the development of killer robots before it is too late. The letter signed by 116 experts from 26 countries opens with the words, "As companies building the technologies in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics that may be repurposed to develop autonomous weapons, we feel especially responsible in raising this alarm." Though none has been build yet, conceptually a killer robot is fully autonomous and can engage, target and kill humans without any human intervention. Unlike a cruise missile or a remotely piloted drone, where humans make all the target decisions, a quadcopter with AI, for example, can search and destroy people that meet pre-defined criteria on its own. "Retaining human control over use of force is a moral imperative and essential to promote compliance with international law, and ensure accountability," Mary Wareham, advocacy director, Arms Division, Human Rights Watch, wrote in January.

Artificial intelligence is set to change everything. Over the next few years, it will transform every aspect of the legal business. But many lawyers still underestimate its impact, and many law firms haven't grasped the huge opportunity it presents. Right now, legal AI lags behind artificial intelligence in other sectors, such as retail and finance. But this won't last because the industry needs AI to cope with today's new demands.

Robots are secretly plotting to kill us. Or, at best, they will take our jobs, one by one. From science fiction written by Isaac Asimov eight decades ago to "Dilbert" cartoons today, the relationship between robots and humans has long fascinated--and worried--people. And there are concerns beyond the ones stoked by watching too much "Terminator ." Apple computer pioneer Steve Wozniak once suggested that robots would turn us into their pets .

One response to the call by experts in robotics and artificial intelligence for an ban on "killer robots" ("lethal autonomous weapons systems" or Laws in the language of international treaties) is to say: shouldn't you have thought about that sooner? Figures such as Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, are among the 116 specialists calling for the ban. "We do not have long to act," they say. "Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close." But such systems are arguably already here, such as the "unmanned combat air vehicle" Taranis developed by BAE and others, or the autonomous SGR-A1 sentry gun made by Samsung and deployed along the South Korean border.

We all know what it's like to forget something. Even people capable of extraordinary memory feats – say, memorising the order of a deck of cards in less than 20 seconds – will still forget where they left their keys. People, it seems, are never in complete control of their memories. Forgetting is a tricky business, both for humans and for artificial intelligence (AI), and researchers are exploring the idea of robot memory in many different ways. This raises not only technical issues, but concerns related to privacy, law and ethics.

As the legal community flees Las Vegas, leaving another successful ILTACON and several hundred thousand dollars in bad decisions in their wake, two questions weigh upon my mind. Is there something broken about the way we talk about artificial intelligence, and why does the airport give a goddamn about my mixers? Artificial intelligence is a sufficiently ominous sounding invention. It gets the Asimov-obsessed firm stakeholders all hot and bothered in a way that "predictive coding" never really could. But ultimately, discussions of artificial intelligence in the law break down to one of two flavors: vendors willing to tell you frankly that this technology requires carefully constructed processes, vigilant management, and meticulous attention to detail; and those who tell you it's MAGIC!