Will skills be as vibrant as apps?

MEPs have warned European countries must "seriously" consider introducing a general basic income to prepare for wide scale unemployment that could come as a result of robots taking over manual jobs. A draft report, tabled by a socialist MEP Mady Delvaux-Stehres, warns preparations must be made for what it describes as the "technological revolution" currently taking place, including provisions for the "possible effects on the labour market of robotics". The report, which passed by 17 votes to two and will be put in front of the entire European Parliament in February, urges member states to consider a general basic income in preparation for robots taking over people's jobs. It states: "In the light of the possible effects on the labour market of robotics and AI a general basic income should be seriously considered, and invites all Member States to do so." The resolution also suggests that a system of reporting on how robotics are affecting the economic results of companies should be established "for the purpose of taxation and social security contributions".

IBM received a record-breaking number of U.S. patents in 2016, topping the list for the 24th consecutive year, showing the efforts the company is making to expand its business into products that process and analyze vast amounts of health-care data. International Business Machines Corp. was awarded 8,088 patents in 2016, it said Monday. The top five winners remained the same as the previous year, with Samsung Electronics Co., Canon Inc., Qualcomm Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google nabbing those spots, according to data compiled by IFI Claims Patent Services, a unit of Fairview Research LLC. IBM has been working to turn around its business by putting more resources into cognitive computing, which adds a layer of data analytics and machine learning to software and information in order to pull out computer-generated insights and automate processes. Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty has been targeting the health-care industry specifically, which she often refers to as the company's "moonshot."

The Lily Camera, a throw-and-shoot camera, is displayed during CES Unveiled at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in Jan. 2016. On Dec. 20, Lily Robotics was up against a wall. It was five days before Christmas, and dozens of eager customers who had spent more than $499 to pre-order the company's flagship product were wondering if they were ever going to see it. A San Francisco-based startup that had promised to build an autonomous flying camera, Lily was among the most-anticipated consumer hardware companies in Silicon Valley. In May 2015, its splashy launch video, featuring a four-propeller robot whizzing around a kayaker and snowboarder, went viral and was watched 5.3 million times in its first month.

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?

Wow! What a year 2016 has been. The big data industry has significant inertia moving into 2017. In order to give our valued readers a pulse on important new trends leading into next year, we here at insideBIGDATA heard from all our friends across the vendor ecosystem to get their insights, reflections and predictions for what may be coming. We were very encouraged to hear such exciting perspectives. Even if only half actually come true, Big Data in the next year is destined to be quite an exciting ride. IT becomes the data hero. It's finally IT's time to break the cycle and evolve from producer to enabler. IT is at the helm of the transformation to self-service analytics at scale. IT is providing the flexibility and agility the business needs to innovate all while balancing governance, data security, and compliance. And by empowering the organization to make data-driven decisions at the speed of business, IT will emerge as the data hero who helps shape the future of the business.

Getty A Tanscorp UU smart robot is displayed at CES 2017 at the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas. The European parliament has urged the drafting of a set of regulations to govern the use and creation of robots and artificial intelligence, including a form of "electronic personhood" to ensure rights and responsibilities for the most capable AI. In a 17-2 vote, with two abstentions, the parliament's legal affairs committee passed the report, which outlines one possible framework for regulation. "A growing number of areas of our daily lives are increasingly affected by robotics," said the report's author, Luxembourgish MEP Mady Delvaux. "In order to address this reality and to ensure that robots are and will remain in the service of humans, we urgently need to create a robust European legal framework".

Earlier this year, Microsoft dipped a toe into the Artificial Intelligence space with an AI-powered chatbot that it set loose on Twitter. Designed to pass for a conversational teenager, responding to queries and mimicking casual, playful speech patterns familiar to Millennial and Gen Z users, it was supposed to be cool. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before Tay, the Microsoft-labeled "AI fam from the internet that's got zero chill" devolved into a racial slur spewing monster. Of course, the curious case of Tay was somewhat of a fluke, a science experiment gone rogue, hijacked by internet trolls bent on exploiting the software that ran her. Nevertheless, Microsoft's negative run with Tay highlights an interesting problem facing chatbot developers as well as those who will adopt artificial intelligence technologies for customer service and marketing purposes: How do you make sure your AI chatbot not only stays on the rails, but also operates in a manner that's sensitive to your customers' needs?

Many current fears around AI and automation center around the idea that superintelligence could somehow "take over," turning streets around the globe into scenes from The Terminator. While there is much to be gained from discussing the safe development of AI, there's another more imminent danger: Autonomous weapons. On Friday, after three years of negotiations, the UN unanimously agreed to take action. At the Fifth Review Conference of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, countries around the world agreed to begin formal discussions--which will take place for two weeks at the 2017 UN convention in Geneva--on a possible ban of lethal, autonomous weapons. Talks will begin in April or August, and 88 countries have agreed to attend.

The idea of mandating manufacturers implement a form of "kill switch" into their designs is not new. In 2016 researchers at Google DeepMind proposed what they called a "big red button" that would prevent an AI from embarking on, or continuing, a harmful sequence of actions. The paper Google released discussed the problems with implementing such a form of kill switch into a machine with self-learning capabilities. After all, the AI may learn to recognize the actions that its human controller is trying to subvert and either avoid undertaking similar tasks causing it to become dysfunctional or, in a worst-case scenario, learn to disable its own "big red button."