Should the government regulate artificial intelligence? That was the central question of the first White House workshop on the legal and governance implications of AI, held in Seattle on Tuesday. "We are observing issues around AI and machine learning popping up all over the government," said Ed Felten, White House deputy chief technology officer. "We are nowhere near the point of broadly regulating AI … but the challenge is how to ensure AI remains safe, controllable, and predictable as it gets smarter." One of the key aims of the workshop, said one of its organizers, University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo, was to help the public understand where the technology is now and where it's headed.

A lot of tech-smart people think artificial intelligence (AI) might pose a threat to the existence of humankind. Others think it's not something to worry about, or not for a very long time, if ever. Operating on the reasonable assumption that what happens tomorrow depends on what we do today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is holding public workshops in four cities to look at the state of AI and to look ahead at potential benefits and problems. What I heard is that what happens with AI is about us -- how we design it, manage it and use it. We have to be accountable.

The recent media frenzy about artificial intelligence (AI) has been unavoidable. This vision has perhaps come a step closer with the arrival of IBM Watsoni and Richard Susskind's latest book, The Future of the Professionsii, which predicts an internet society with greater virtual interaction with professional services such as doctors, teachers, accountants, architects and lawyers. In reality, is AI many years away from making any real impact in the legal sector? And should law firms see this technical advancement as an opportunity or threat? Broadly speaking, AI is the theory and development of computer systems which will perform tasks that normally require human intelligence.

Although Foxconn confirmed to the BBC that it was working to automate much of its manufacturing operations, the company denied that the new robotic assembly line would mean fewer jobs for humans. Instead, the company says it is simply using the machines to "replace repetitive tasks previously done by employees" while allowing those employees to focus on more valuable parts of the manufacturing process like R&D and quality control. "We will continue to harness automation and manpower in our manufacturing operations," Foxconn told the BBC, "and we expect to maintain our significant workforce in China." Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post also reports that 35 Taiwanese companies including Foxconn have spent a total of 4 billion yuan (or about 609 million USD) on artificial intelligence last year. Many of those companies employ tens of thousands in Kunshan, where two-thirds of the 2.5 million people are migrant workers. According to a government survey, 600 companies in Kunshan plan to follow Foxconn's lead.

They say that kids aren't born sexist or racist--hate is taught. Artificial intelligence is the same way, and humans are fabulous teachers. ProPublica reported, for example, that an algorithm used to to predict the likelihood of convicts committing future crime tends to tag black folks as higher risk than whites. Despite the oft-repeated claim that such data-driven approaches are more objective than past methods of determining the risk of recidivism or anything else, it's clear that our very human biases have rubbed off on our machines. Consider the case of Microsoft's simple Tay bot, which sucked up all the slurs and racist opinions that Twitter users threw at it and ended up spouting Nazi drivel.

FILE - In this Thursday, March 8, 2012, file photo, Clarium Capital President Peter Thiel speaks during his keynote speech at the StartOut LGBT Entrepreneurship Awards in San Francisco. Billionaire tech investor Thiel has been secretly funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media for publishing a sex tape, according to reports in Forbes and The New York Times. FILE - In this Monday, March 21, 2016, file photo, Hulk Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, left, looks on in court moments after a jury returned its decision in St. Petersburg, Fla. Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel has been secretly funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media for publishing a sex tape, according to reports in Forbes and The New York Times. Here's some biographical information on billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel, who has been secretly funding Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media, according to published reports: COMPANY CONNECTIONS: Thiel co-founded PayPal in 1998 and was its chairman and CEO. PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002 for 1.5 billion.

On a spring afternoon in 2014, Brisha Borden was running late to pick up her god-sister from school when she spotted an unlocked kid's blue Huffy bicycle and a silver Razor scooter. Borden and a friend grabbed the bike and scooter and tried to ride them down the street in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs. Just as the 18-year-old girls were realizing they were too big for the tiny conveyances -- which belonged to a 6-year-old boy -- a woman came running after them saying, "That's my kid's stuff." Borden and her friend immediately dropped the bike and scooter and walked away. But it was too late -- a neighbor who witnessed the heist had already called the police. Borden and her friend were arrested and charged with burglary and petty theft for the items, which were valued at a total of 80. Compare their crime with a similar one: The previous summer, 41-year-old Vernon Prater was picked up for shoplifting 86.35 worth of tools from a nearby Home Depot store. Prater was the more seasoned criminal. He had already been convicted of armed robbery and attempted armed robbery, for which he served five years in prison, in addition to another armed robbery charge. Borden had a record, too, but it was for misdemeanors committed when she was a juvenile.

Earlier this week, ProPublica published a damning article on the use of algorithms in the criminal justice system. In the article, titled "Machine Bias", they studied how a widely used algorithm differs in how accurately it predicts the recidivism of different races. And their findings are troubling: the algorithm systematically under-predicts the recidivism of white criminals and over-predicts the recidivism of black criminals. This has important consequences, since recidivism -- a criminal's propensity to commit a future crime -- is a large factor in determining sentencing and rehabilitation requirements. As with all things statistical, it is important to get the nuances correct.

Intelligent machines won't be ruling the world anytime soon – but what happens when they turn you down for a loan, crash your car or discriminate against you because of your race or gender? On one level, the answer is simple: "It depends," says Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who specializes in the issues raised by autonomous vehicles. But that opens the door to a far more complex legal debate. "It seems to me that'My Robot Did It' is not an excuse," says Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, or AI2. The rapidly rising challenges that face America's legal system and policymakers were the focus of today's first-ever White House public workshop on artificial intelligence, presented at the University of Washington School of Law. For a full afternoon, Smith, Etzioni and other experts debated the options in an auditorium that was filled to capacity.

Matching demand and supply seems mundane, but it takes a lot of work to actually make it happen. As we pointed out before in The Evolution of Marketplaces, marketplaces have evolved dramatically from horizontal listing based models like Craigslist to vertical transactional end-to-end marketplaces like Uber today. Every few years there are technological breakthroughs that allow entrepreneurs to adjust the dynamics of online marketplaces to make them more efficient. Native mobile apps, seamless payments and GPS tracking are just a few of the examples that have improved marketplaces substantially during the last two decades. Today, we are at the beginning of the next evolution: AI-powered marketplaces.