Few would have thought, just fifteen years ago, that a body of the European Parliament would discuss creating a special legal status for robots, with specific rights and obligations, or advocate for seriously considering a general basic income in the light of the possible effects of robotics on the job market. Still, that's happened recently, when the parliament's legal affairs committee passed a report containing several recommendations to the commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics which should in turn, based on that, present a legislative proposal to be voted by the full house. In the latter scenario, the report's authors think that the responsibility should be allocated to all parties involved (the robot, the manufacturer, the engineer who wrote the software) proportionally to the level of instructions given to the robot and of its autonomy. The greater the autonomy, the more the blame should be put on the machine itself and not on any third party. In any case, the victim of the incident would always be compensated, by means of an obligatory insurance scheme and compensation fund.

Lily Robotics, the defunct manufacturer of the world's first "selfie drone", is being sued over allegations that it faked product shots and misled consumers about the capability of its prototype devices. The lawsuit alleges that videos on Lily's website, presented as though they had been taken by the drone, were in fact shot by a mixture of GoPro cameras and DJI drones, a competitor model that costs up to four times as much and requires a skilled filmmaker to manually control the camera. The San Francisco District Attorney's (SFDA) office filed the case on Thursday, the day after Lily announced it was shutting down and refunding customers who had pre-ordered its drone at prices ranging from $499 to $899. Promotional videos detailed a number of groundbreaking capabilities of the Lily drone: the ability to take off from, and land on, a user's outstretched hand; a waterproof casing to enable water-based launches; and most impressively, autopilot mode that could allow the drone to follow the user at a set distance and automatically film them. In the videos, a drone operating under the autopilot setting was shown following people engaged in extreme sports such as snowboarding and white water kayaking.

Artificial Intelligence provider RAVN Systems has appointed former Ashurst CIO David Lumsden as its new CEO. Lumsden, who is also formerly CEO of technology provider Tikit Group and who joined RAVN last year as chief strategy officer (CSO), replaces Peter Wallqvist, one of the founders of RAVN. Lumsden has more than 30 years' experience in the legal IT and professional services market. He was CEO of Tikit Group between 2000 and 2013 and spent seven years as CIO at Ashurst. "RAVN has a strong reputation in the markets we're currently operating in," said Lumsden.

The field of artificial intelligence is a large one, full of interesting research, arguments, and people -- so you could be forgiven (as I hope to be) for not being familiar with Joanna Bryson, professor of CS at the University of Bath who for decades has studied AI and its many ethical and technical conundra. She just wrapped up an AMA and you should read it. Bryson handles a good crop of questions from the Science subreddit with wonderful insight and humor, plus a knack for epigrams that sum the problem up in a new way that changes one's perspective. Here are a handful of excerpts. We may not owe robots human rights merely because they look and act human, but will they reach a state of self-awareness to which we will be obligated to accord rights?

This press release contains forward-looking statements concerning Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) including the features, functionality, expectations, timing and availability of AMD Radeon Instinct products, which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are commonly identified by words such as „would," „may," „expects," „believes," „plans," „intends," „projects" and other terms with similar meaning. Investors are cautioned that the forward-looking statements in this document are based on current beliefs, assumptions and expectations, speak only as of the date of this press release and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. Such statements are subject to certain known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond AMD's control, that could cause actual results and other future events to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. Material factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, without limitation, the following: Intel Corporation's dominance of the microprocessor market and its aggressive business practices may limit AMD's ability to compete effectively; AMD is party to a wafer supply agreement with GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. (GF) with obligations to manufacture products at GF with certain exceptions.

NEW YORK, NY, January 12, 2017 – Algorithms, the set of instructions computers employ to carry out a task, influence almost every aspect of society. The explosive growth of data collection, coupled with increasingly sophisticated algorithms, has resulted in a significant increase in automated decision-making, as well as a greater reliance on algorithms in human decision-making. Industry forecasters believe software programs incorporating automated decision-making will only increase in the coming years as artificial intelligence becomes more mainstream. One of the major challenges of this emerging reality is to ensure that algorithms do not reinforce harmful and/or unfair biases. A few examples of potential algorithmic bias that have been featured in government reports and news articles include: (1) Job hunting web sites: Do these sites send more listings of high paying jobs to men than to women?

'Can a robot sin?" the journal Christian Today asks readers. That, in essence, is what we are asking when we consider, for example, how the artificial intelligence (AI) driving a driverless car programmed to avoid accidents, can consider such ethical questions as what to do when faced with a choice between two accidents? Or how we are to control self-learning machines like the Twitter "chatbot" which had to be deactivated last year after it started posting increasingly racist, sexist and xenophobic messages, based on what it had "learnt" online. The questions raised by the likes of HAL 9000 and Isaac Asimov are now mainstream. Worries about the ethics and control of new so-called "autonomous weapons", which select and kill targets without human intervention, have led to calls for a ban from, among others, the likes of billionaire Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.

If it weren't the print edition, I would have sworn 9th January's New York Times business section had been personalized for me: there were articles on self-driving cars, virtual reality, and how "Data Could Be the Next Tech Hot Button". That precisely matches my current set of obsessions. It's especially apt because the article on data makes a point that's been much on my mind: government regulation may be the only factor that prevents AI-powered virtual reality from taking over the world, and governments may feel impelled to create such regulation in self-defense of their authority. But the fact that all three were top of mind for its editors and, presumably, readers was enough to illustrate their importance. I'm doubly glad that these articles appeared together because they reinforced my intent to revisit these issues in a more concise fashion than my rambling post on RoseColoredGlasses.Me.

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)– NEW RELIC FUTURESTACK – Digital intelligence leader New Relic, Inc. (NYSE:NEWR) today shared a preview of its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, code-named "Project Seymour," at the company's fourth annual FutureStack event in San Francisco. Project Seymour is designed to deliver advanced AI and machine learning capabilities to help companies uncover the most interesting, most relevant, and most actionable insights to improve their customer experience, and the performance and availability of their digital initiatives. "Our customers have increasingly complex systems and often struggle to understand all of the facets of what's going on in their customer experience, in their applications, and in their infrastructure. Seymour is another manifestation of New Relic's continued obsession to make it easy for our customers to understand everything going on in their digital business," said Lew Cirne, CEO and founder, New Relic. "New Relic has a unique opportunity to leverage the power of AI because our cloud-based platform already analyzes billions of metrics for our customers every day. We simply do not believe you can get the same benefits from on-premise solutions because you wouldn't have enough data to uncover the same meaningful insights."

On the face of it, the report and the claims may sound odd – but they have taken place to ensure that an agency can be set up in due course to oversee legal and social implications that may arise from the use of robots in our everyday lives in future. The committee advises that an advisory code, which should apply to all manufacturers within the EU, should be given oversight from the Union, as should legal frameworks. The proposals, while aiming to make sure that legal guidelines and rights can be laid out well in advance of any automatons becoming household properties, have been met with some criticism – arguing that the idea of a robot being garnished with human rights may not go down swimmingly with some manufacturers.