With regard to robots we'll use in our daily lives, it would be preferable if their creators come up with versions that don't look particularly human. We must push for a major rethink about how much time we should expect to work in future. This, as Professor of Robot Ethics Alan Winfield explained when interviewed recently on BBC Radio 4, has implications for how wealth will be distributed as well. Professor Stephen Hawking summed up this last challenge best at the 2015 Zeitgeist Conference in London, when he said: "Computers will overtake humans with AI at some within the next 100 years. When that happens, we need to make sure the computers have goals aligned with ours."

Here are some incredibly smart people that are pushing boundaries and/or doing some incredibly inventive things in emerging technology and other areas. Whether it's healthcare, news or immersive technologies - these are the people you'll be hearing a lot more from - collaborate with them now and be a bigger part of the future. Burrell was described as "offering new thinking and fresh ideas to strengthen the future of broadcasting" after taking top honors at the National Association of Broadcasters Innovation Pilot Award for "In Your Shoes" (a broadcast and 360 VR series), Recently working with heavy-hitters like Steven Spielberg's virtual reality company ('The VR Company'), Burrell's work with Oculus has been considered for an Interactive Emmy ("Take Back the Mic: The World Cup of Hip Hop"). Recently returning from South Africa where she created a partnership with Ndaba Mandela (grandson to Nelson Mandela and Founder of Africa Rising), to bring the coding, robotics and emerging technology program permanently to the continent. IN HER OWN WORDS: "There's a strong feeling of uncertainty in the world right now, but when we ask ourselves, 'how can I use the the tools of today and the technology of tomorrow to harness something meaningful and good', we are empowered to reshape our experience of the world."

When he's choosing your music for you, Carl Chery, 37, is in Culver City, California, sitting at his desk in an office with no signage, trying to decide whether Drake and Future's "Jumpman" (jumpman, jumpman, jumpman) has jumped the shark. Or at the gym going for a morning run on the treadmill, thinking about your gym and your treadmill, listening through headphones for changes in tempo and tone: Will this song push you through the pain? Is that one too long on the buildup? "It's hard to describe because it's more of a feeling or instinct," says Chery of his process. He's from Queens, New York, which, despite his residence in Los Angeles for the past four years, is obvious when you hear him talk. "It kind of just happens. You sit there and you start moving and just do it." For a while we thought we could choose our own music. In the wake of the last century we seized the right to take our pick from all of the songs in the world (All of the songs in the world!) and told anyone who didn't like it exactly where they could go.

Writer and filmmaker, 33-year old Eva Konstantopoulos wanted to explore our collective digital dystopia and look at what would happen if memory became a commodity through her new short film Re/collection. What if technology would let you trade your memories for something you wanted to change? The short sci-fi film had its world debut at the Sun Valley Film Festival in Sun Valley, Idaho in March, 2017. It took more than a year to make the $40,000, 18-minute film about the commercialization of the human experience. Konstantopolous said she wanted to tell a story about the consequences on human lives if you could buy and sell memories and how technology would play a role in the commoditization of memories.

Today, there is incredible interest in anything that is even remotely related to Artificial Intelligence. AI is dominating the conversation on a variety of levels. Philosophers and thinkers are debating the moral implications and risks for human kind of a world where intelligent machines are ubiquitous. In the media, it seems that a new movie or TV series on AI is launched every month. Academic papers on the topic are receiving attention from far beyond the scope of the usual research audience.

A clip for the new'Ghost in the Shell' live-action movie pulls on several sources from the manga and anime. In a bid to likely win over fans of the original manga and anime, the upcoming live-action Ghost in the Shell movie adaptation released a new clip from the film. The result is a confusing mishmash of influences and gives me cause for concern. If you are familiar with the manga and 1995 anime movie, then the opening has Motoko Kusanagi jump from a rooftop to assassinate an untoward foreign diplomat. Here though there's a lot going on and it is actually more than a little confused.

If there's one thing that labor economists and leaders in Silicon Valley generally seem to agree on, it's that increasingly sophisticated technology is coming to replace American jobs. According to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, 38 percent of U.S. jobs are at high risk of being replaced by automation in the next 15 years, compared with 30 percent of jobs in the U.K. and 21 percent in Japan. The United States, like the United Kingdom, is dominated by service jobs in sectors like manufacturing, transportation, finance, and food service, and U.S. jobs are particularly at risk because, according to PwC's chief U.K. economist John Hawksworth, the tasks American workers perform are just easier to automate. Still, the White House seems completely uninterested in the imminent threat facing U.S. employment and wages, choosing to cast blame instead on China and Mexico for the decline of U.S. manufacturing jobs. "We want products made by our workers in our factories stamped with those four magnificent words--made in the U.S.A.," President Donald Trump declared on a recent trip to a Boeing plant in South Carolina.

Syfy's epic space show The Expanse is a smash hit among science fiction fans, drawing praise from websites like io9 and Ars Technica and from celebrities like Adam Savage. Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley also loves the show. "This is my favorite show on TV," Kirtley says in Episode 248 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "This is the most serious science fiction TV show--in terms of what hardcore science fiction fans would want in a TV show--that I've seen in a long time, possibly ever." But while the show is widely praised in many corners, it has yet to attract a wider audience.

A natural language model developed in the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory allows a user to speak a simple command, which the robot can translate into an action. If the robot is given a command to pick up a particular object, it can differentiate between other objects nearby, even if they are identical in appearance. Inside the University of Rochester's Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a robotic torso looms over a row of plastic gears and blocks, awaiting instructions. Next to him, Jacob Arkin '13, a doctoral candidate in electrical and computer engineering, gives the robot a command: "Pick up the middle gear in the row of five gears on the right," he says to the Baxter Research Robot. The robot, sporting a University of Rochester winter cap, pauses before turning, extending its right limb in the direction of the object.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Japan recently announced a major robotics event for next year. The World Robot Summit will feature a series of competitions, talks, and exhibits.