Professor Stephen Hawking has warned that artificial intelligence could develop a will of its own that is in conflict with that of humanity. It could herald dangers like powerful autonomous weapons and ways for the few to oppress the many, he said, as he called for more research in the area. But if sufficient research is done to avoid the risks, it could help in humanity's aims to'finally eradicate disease and poverty', he added. He was speaking in Cambridge at the launch of The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, which will explore the implications of the rapid development of artificial intelligence. All great achievements of civilisation, from learning to master fire to learning to grow food to understanding the cosmos, were down to human intelligence, he said. 'I believe there is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer.

Thousands of gay and bisexual men convicted of now-abolished sexual offences are to receive posthumous pardons, the government has announced. It will mean formal pardons for those convicted over consensual same-sex relationships before homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK. Justice Minister Sam Gyimah said the move was "hugely important". It honours a government commitment made after World War Two code-breaker Alan Turing was pardoned in 2013. Under the move - dubbed "Turing law" - deceased people who were convicted of sexual acts that are no longer deemed criminal will receive an automatic pardon.

Despite the best efforts of movies like Ex Machina, Morgan and Avengers: Age of Ultron, a new survey found that people from around the world largely see artificial intelligence having a more positive than negative impact on their lives and society in general. Communications firm Weber Shandwick has just published its "AI-Ready or Not: Artificial Intelligence Here We Come!" report, conducted with KRC Research, for marketers, surveying 2,100 consumers across five global markets on AI, its many uses, how they see it evolving, and how comfortable they are with that development. But don't go tearing up your plans for an unconnected cabin in the woods just yet, because even though consumer survey respondents were seven times more likely to see the sunny side of AI, a full one-third of respondents also admitted to knowing nothing about AI at all. The survey also interviewed 150 marketing executives (primarily CMOs) in the U.S., the U.K., and China responsible for the oversight and execution of marketing or branding activities at their organizations. On the consumer side, 77% of respondents would like AI's development to accelerate or remain at its current pace, two-thirds or more trust AI with handling medication reminders, travel directions, entertainment, targeted news, and manual labor and mechanics.

Instead of using guns to kill elephants and rhinoceroses, some poachers in Zimbabwe have begun poisoning the animals' water with cyanide? a practice some activists believe could be curbed by flying drones over parks in the African country. Although drone usage hasn't been proven to stop the killing of elephants, anti-poaching program Air Shepherd is prepared to use monitoring to help stop people from poisoning animals. The organization already flies drones over parks in three southern Africa countries at night to patrol for gun-toting poachers. The suspected cause of death, according to news reports, is cyanide, which has been used to kill hundreds of elephants in recent years. "The biggest problem that we have is that ivory is a business," said Otto Werdmuller Von Elgg, the CEO of UAV and Drone Solutions, a business partnering with the Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation to run the Air Shepherd program. "The poaching of the animals is the last thing that people want to solve.

If you're reading this in the United States, there's a 50 percent chance that a photo of your face is in at least one database used in police facial-recognition systems. Police departments in nearly half of U.S. states can use facial-recognition software to compare surveillance images with databases of ID photos or mugshots. Some departments only use facial-recognition to confirm the identity of a suspect who's been detained; others continuously analyze footage from surveillance cameras to determine exactly who is walking by at any particular moment. Altogether, more than 117 million American adults are subject to face-scanning systems. These findings were published Tuesday in a report from Georgetown Law's Center for Privacy and Technology.

Pisa, 11-16 July We are pleased to announce the launch of the first edition of the International Summer School on'The Regulation of Robotics in Europe: Ethical, Legal and Economic Implications', which will be held in Pisa (Tuscany, Italy) from 11th to 16th July, 2016. This unique initiative, funded by the European Commission through the Jean Monnet Program, stems from the successful experience of the RoboLaw project (www.robolaw.eu) For further information please click HERE Bruxelles, September 24th, 2014 RoboLaw enters the European Parliament RoboLaw project coordinator Prof. Erica Palmerini and RoboLaw researcher Dr. Andrea Bertolini have been invited to present a paper on the main findings of the RoboLaw project at the workshop'Upcoming issues of EU law', organised by the JURI Committee of the European Parliament. The paper presented, entitled'REGULATING ROBOTICS: A CHALLENGE FOR EUROPE' is available here Bruxelles, September 24th, 2014 RoboLaw meets NEERI at the European Commission Prof. Erica Plamerni and Dr. Andrea Bertolini will participate in a meeting with the coordinator and the researchers of NEERI - Neuro-Enhancement: Responsible Research and Innovation, an FP7 project about human enhancement. The objective of the meeting is to discuss possible future collaborations and networking.

Artificial Lawyer spent 12 happy hours at the Legal Geek Conference on Brick Lane in East London yesterday and can confirm to those who might be wondering, that yes, this was the best legal tech event of the year. The success of the event was very much driven by an entrepreneur himself, Jimmy Vestbirk, who created Legal Geek and set the tone from the get-go, with a great Truman Brewery space for the event and mandatory high fives to the attendees sitting on either side. There was also a no ties policy and that deserves a special commendation. What set this event apart from others was that the speakers were the real thing. They were the founders and/or senior staff members of the legal AI companies everyone else is talking about.

We are on the cusp of an exciting -- and unchartered -- new era in technology, where decisions and problem-solving will be aided by smart machines that will sense, learn, infer and even think on behalf of humans. Although not yet mainstream, smart machines are increasingly making appearances in the form of autonomous cars, robots and other cognitive computing systems that are able to solve problems and make decisions without human intervention. Conversational user interfaces are also on the rise, relying on smart technologies and machine learning to facilitate dialogue between people and bots. The proliferation of data and intelligent platforms has become increasingly prevalent and is beginning to shape the way businesses must transform their own organizations to become more agile and adaptive in how they go to market and engage with their customers. Smart machines can help marketers filter out mountains of noise to pinpoint that single piece of insight needed to make a more informed decision.

PRNewswire has reported on RAVN Systems, leading experts in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Search and Knowledge Management solutions, and Fireman & Company, the leading management consulting firm for law firms and corporate legal departments, announcing a strategic partnership to deliver revolutionary Artificial Intelligence (AI) and enterprise search technology to the North American legal market. This strategic partnership will provide law firms and corporate legal departments with the most advanced AI search platform on the market. Peter Wallqvist, CEO at RAVN Systems commented, "We are excited to collaborate with Joshua Fireman and his team and align our collective focus of transforming legal services through innovation. RAVN's search technology will provide firms and corporate clients with a radically enhanced Universal Search and Knowledge Management tool that exploits Artificial Intelligence to efficiently capture, find, manage and collaborate on their organisations' information estate. The technology's advanced features include Expertise Location, Clause Extraction and a Knowledge Graph to navigate links between knowledge types across the enterprise."

American law enforcement agencies have created a massive facial recognition database. If you're an adult in the US, you might already be in it. According to a comprehensive report by the Center for Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, the law enforcement's database has 117 million American adults on file. The report says authorities used driver's license IDs from 26 states to build the database, which includes people who've never committed any kind of crime before. That's already a problem in and of itself, but it's compounded by the lack of oversight on how it's used.