The machine was born in a sandbox. Stumbling for meaning, its five parents watched as it learned the rules of the world around it. Everything is built of cubes, which can be climbed one at a time. There is light, and there is darkness. "Up" has a meaning different from "down."

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event. As a child I waited anxiously for the arrival of each new issue of National Geographic Magazine. The magazine had amazing stories from around the world, but the stunningly beautiful photographs were more important to me. The colors, shadows and composition intrigued and wowed me, and there was a cohesion of visual arrangement and storytelling. This childhood fascination with photographs aroused in me a curiosity to understand the behavior, nuances and semantics embedded inside them.

With a vibrant startup ecosystem and fewer legacy systems, India will play a key role in Google's strategy as it looks to take on Amazon's AWS and Microsoft's Azure in the global enterprise cloud services space. "India is a pretty exciting place because there are so many companies growing so quickly over there and the fact that these companies do not have [legacy systems] is pretty exciting. And they can just start in the cloud. You have seen Sundar [Pichai] take a deep interest in India and so, Google overall is very interested in India," Google Cloud chief Diane Greene said, adding that there is a pool of talented manpower as well and, overall, "its vibrant and it's important to be there [in India]." Google is investing heavily in creating business tools and products, driven by open source technology and machine learning to help companies use affordable fast computing.

Venture capitalists pride themselves on their ability to pick winning ideas and winning people. But could artificial intelligence do a better job? Founders Factory, a U.K. startup accelerator, has developed an AI platform that identifies high-potential entrepreneurs. The hope is to avoid the unconscious bias that normally privileges some demographic groups and backgrounds, and prevents others from getting ahead. "I was interested in getting around the bias of selection, that if you've gone to a good school or university, you probably have a good network and a good chance of doing fairly well," says Tom Bowles, who created the software.

But more importantly, a logic-based artificial intelligence allows humans to define the ethical code from which potential Superintelligences can act. "I look at the hypothetical possibility of AI doing drugs from the standpoint of the kind of rationality that I would like to give to a robot," Bringsjord says, "and since that does not emulate the human brain, which is irrational, then the machine is not going to take that drug." John Licato, a research assistant at Rensselaer, supports the theory. "It would be irrational to make choices that would take an AI away from the primary thing that the robot is programmed to do," Licato says. This might not be because an AI won't have the capability of addiction, however, but instead because we equivocate drug use with satisfying a short-term, lower-level bodily desire, like using ecstasy as an aphrodisiac or opiates as a means to escape.

Microsoft had to shutdown its AI-powered chat bot less than 24 hours after its launch. This "conversational understanding" experiment was promising. The more Twitter users would chat with Tay, the smarter it was supposed to get. In fact, Tay became more human, which is not always synonymous with smart. Internet users bombarded Tay with misogynist, racist and abusive tweets.

We look forward to your answer to this and many other questions, and now the results... More than half (53 percent) of Americans feel that our quest to advance the field of artificial intelligence is important. Computers already create complex financial algorithms for retirement planning, and help people pick schools and life partners with the help of statistical analysis but when it comes to decisions concerning end of life care, this may be the right place for humanity to draw a line. If they had their own robot, a majority of Americans (53 percent) would use it for doing day-to-day chores, 21 percent chose problem solving, 17 percent said protection and four percent picked companionship. Two out of three Americans think that human intelligence poses a greater threat to humanity and 30 percent think that Artificial Intelligence does.

Welcome to the 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll for April 2016. This month's poll probes the world of artificial intelligence, a term said to be first used by pioneering Stanford professor John McCarthy more than 60 years ago. He described it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines." From those humble beginnings, machines, computers and robots have made extraordinary advances in their applications and capabilities. Whoever thought that IBM would build a computer that could defeat two of the best Jeopardy players in history?

General Motors received quick regulatory approval of its acquisition of Cruise Automation, the three-year-old startup that has developed a "highway autopilot" product that could accelerate GM's quest for a fully autonomous car. A spokeswoman for the Federal Trade Commission said the agency granted expedited approval, saying the transaction would not violate anti-trust laws. GM did not disclose the purchase price, but some media outlets have reported the automaker paid 1 billion for the small San Francisco company. The companies expect to complete the deal by the end of June. Cruise has developed a device that enables drivers to take their car onto the highway, then they can push a button that transfers control of the accelerator, brakes and steering.

There are about 2.5 million drones in the US and not one has collided with a piloted aircraft – yet. With nearly 600 close-calls reported from August 2015 to January 2016, the Federal Aviation Administration worries it is only a matter of time before there are disastrous incidents. This data shows an urgency for effective anti-drone systems to deal with rogue UAVs, as more unmanned vehicles take the sky. More than 406,000 drone owners have registered their vehicle with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) since late December. There are about 2.5 million drones in the US and not one has hit with a piloted aircraft – yet.