Most legal expert systems attempt to implement complex models of legal reasoning. This book argues that a complex model is unnecessary. It advocates a simpler, pragmatic approach in which the utility of a legal expert system is evaluated by reference, not to the extent to which it simulates a lawyer's approach to a legal problem, but to the quality of its predictions and of its arguments. The author describes the development of a legal expert system, called SHYSTER, which takes a pragmatic approach to case law. He discusses the testing of SHYSTER in four different and disparate areas of case law, and draws conclusions about the advantages and limitations of this approach to legal expert system development.

The First Amendment may protect speech by strong Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this Article, we support this provocative claim by expanding on earlier work, addressing significant concerns and challenges, and suggesting potential paths forward. This is not a claim about the state of technology. Whether strong AI -- as-yet-hypothetical machines that can actually think -- will ever come to exist remains far from clear. It is instead a claim that discussing AI speech sheds light on key features of prevailing First Amendment doctrine and theory, including the surprising lack of humanness at its core.

A drone company apparently made the most futuristic flying camera ever made – but has now been hit with disappointed customers and lawsuits. Lily announced this month that it was winding itself down and would refund everyone who pre-ordered his drone in the middle of 2015. It was the ignominious end of an 18 month period that saw the company soar to the top tech world with its stunning features. But it slowly dawned on many of its customers over the following months that it actually was. Now its customers claim that it had duped them with the flashy and splashy video that introduced the technology.

Artificial intelligence could make major strides in 2017, as machine learning and new advances means that we can create intelligence that can pass the Turing test and outthink humans in the process. But at the same time, tech gurus are worried about the ethical complications which could result from the development of AI. The Knight Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to activities such as promoting journalism and innovation, is teaming up with tech gurus including LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to establish a fund called the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Fund. In a press release, the Knight Foundation said that the fund will be used "to apply the humanities, the social sciences and other disciplines to the development of AI." It will work with educational institutes like MIT Media Lab and Harvard's Berkman Klein Center to ensure that technology builds ethical AIs that will benefit society.

A lot can happen in 12 months. Last year, bots exploded into the mainstream, and adoption was rapid. For example, over $1.5 billion was invested in AI startups; Microsoft has over 35,000 bot developers on its platform; The Economist even asked if bots are the new apps. As with any technology that grows so quickly in such a short amount of time, sometimes we need to take a step back. Last year, we saw bots enter the home through the likes of Amazon Echo's Alexa and Google Assistant, and this paved the way for more bots to be introduced to our everyday lives.

As we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I want to reflect on all the positive things that have stemmed from this great man sharing his visions and dreams to make the world a better place. What if Dr. King had some of the modern marvels that we use daily to communicate, entertain, and share our personal views with our community and the world: Would things have been different? While having lunch with my friend and fellow #techie Rishabh Sharma, CEO of Poletus--which uses state of art machine learning as a central nervous system to its product offering--we began to run the mental algorithmic reasons of what if. The first thing that came to mind is what if Dr. King had access to machine learning. Now, I know that some think that machine learning is something mythical, but it's not.

London-based startup RentersUnion has created what it's hoping will be a socially useful chatbot, pitching their web-based bot as a robot replacement for (expensive) housing lawyers. The intended user is anyone not on the London property ladder, and thus at the mercy of landlords, tenancy agreements and (apparently ever-inflating) rents. Not that the chatbot can do much about the latter problem, sadly. But it does offer a little automated help with parsing wordy tenancy agreements to, for example, extract salient details such as fees in an effort to empower a downtrodden section of society. Visitors to the bot are offered a selection of topics it can help with -- from issues with their energy bills to problems with repairs or questions around fees.

This page includes forthcoming AAAI sponsored conferences, conferences presented by AAAI Affiliates, and conferences held in cooperation with AAAI. AI Magazine also maintains a calendar listing that includes nonaffiliated conferences at www.aaai.org/Magazine/calendar.php. ICAIL 2017 will be held 12-16 June, Twenty-Ninth Innovative Applications Thirtieth International Florida AI 2017 in London, UK of Artificial Intelligence Conference. IAAI-17 will be held February FLAIRS-2017 will be held May 22-24, 4-9 in San Francisco, California USA. IEA/AIE-2017 will be AAAI 2017 Spring Symposium Series on Automated Planning and Scheduling.

For a social networking service to acquire and retain users, it must find ways to keep them engaged. By accurately gauging their preferences, it is able to serve them with the subset of available content that maximises revenue for the site. Without the constraints of an appropriate regulatory framework, we argue that a sufficiently sophisticated curator algorithm tasked with performing this process may choose to explore curation strategies that are detrimental to users. In particular, we suggest that such an algorithm is capable of learning to manipulate its users, for several qualitative reasons: 1. Access to vast quantities of user data combined with ongoing breakthroughs in the field of machine learning are leading to powerful but uninterpretable strategies for decision making at scale. 2. The availability of an effective feedback mechanism for assessing the short and long term user responses to curation strategies. 3. Techniques from reinforcement learning have allowed machines to learn automated and highly successful strategies at an abstract level, often resulting in non-intuitive yet nonetheless highly appropriate action selection. In this work, we consider the form that these strategies for user manipulation might take and scrutinise the role that regulation should play in the design of such systems.

The EU's legal affairs committee is walking blindfold into a swamp if it thinks that "electronic personhood" will protect society from developments in AI (Give robots'personhood', say EU committee, 13 January). The analogy with corporate personhood is unfortunate, as this has not protected society in general, but allowed owners of companies to further their own interests – witness the example of the Citizens United movement in the US, where corporate personhood has been used as a tool for companies to interfere in the electoral process, on the basis that a corporation has the same right to free speech as a biological human being. Electronic personhood will protect the interests of a few, at the expense of the many. As soon as rules of robotic personhood are published, the creators of AI devices will "adjust" their machines to take the fullest advantage of this opportunity – not because these people are evil but because that is part of the logic of any commercial activity. Just as corporate personhood has been used in ways that its original proponents never expected, so the granting of "rights" to robots will have consequences that we cannot fully predict – to take just two admittedly futuristic examples, how could we refuse a sophisticated robot the right to participate in societal decision-making, ie to vote?