A new research centre opened its doors Wednesday at Britain's Cambridge University to look at the implications--good and bad--of artificial intelligence. Professor Stephen Hawking, who was due to speak at the centre's launch later on Wednesday, said: "The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. "We do not yet know which. The research done by this centre will be crucial to the future of our civilisation and of our species," he said. Making sure AI is used to benefit humanity is the express aim of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), funded by a 10 million (11.2 million-euro, 12.3-million) grant from the Leverhulme Trust. A collaboration between the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Berkeley, California, the CFI will see researchers from multiple disciplines work with industry representatives and policymakers on projects ranging from regulation of autonomous weapons to the implications of AI for democracy. Its practical applications can help us to tackle important social problems, as well as easing many tasks in everyday life," said Margaret Boden, a professor of cognitive sciences and consultant to the CFI.

At last week's White House Frontiers Conference, President Obama outlined a vision for the development of AI: A plan that involves the collaboration of the US government. The event, co-hosted by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, was the first of its kind. Earlier that week, the White House had unveiled a report--Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence--which outlined how the government can be involved in researching, developing, and regulating future technologies. So how well does the American president understand AI? And how powerful will these policies be?

On Election Day, journalists at The Washington Post will get an assist from their non-human counterparts. The newspaper announced Wednesday morning that it will use automation to cover 500 races. The automation technology, Heliograf, was first used by The Post to cover the Rio Olympics and will be repurposed to provide "up-to-date reporting, analysis and results for nearly 500 races." In addition, the Post will surface stories based on the readers' location. In August, Washington Post Director of Strategic Initiatives told Poynter that Heliograf wasn't aimed at replacing human reporters -- rather, it's intended to be a complementary service aimed at freeing up reporters and editors to cover more nuanced stories.

It's another step in the march toward advice that erodes investors' needs for human help: A robo adviser focused on serving the high-net-worth client, powered by artificial intelligence and designed to automate their specific tax management concerns. Meeting the complicated needs of the wealthy requires a deep knowledge of tax rules and regulations says Hedgeable CEO Mike Kane. "Technology and AI systems can interpret and learn from these rules better than humans can, without our emotional biases." Doubling down on its embrace of Asian themes, Hedgeable's newest offering in its robo platform is a feature called'Tax Samurai,' run by an AI bot called'Katana.' For 30 basis points, it will work for client accounts with a minimum of 1 million to analyze their securities, aggregate all of their financial data, create tax efficient transfers, apply automated downside protection on any current holdings, and perform tax efficient trading and tax-loss harvesting.

How will AI shape the average North American city by 2030? A panel of experts assembled as part of a century-long study into the impact of AI thinks its effects will be profound. The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence is the brainchild of Eric Horvitz, a computer scientist, former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and managing director of Microsoft Research's main Redmond lab. Every five years a panel of experts will assess the current state of AI and its future directions. The first panel, comprised of experts in AI, law, political science, policy, and economics, was launched last fall and decided to frame their report around the impact AI will have on the average American city.

As Fei-Fei Li sees it, this is a historical moment for civilization fueled by an artificial intelligence revolution. "I call everything leading up to the second decade of the twenty-first century AI in-vitro," the Stanford computer science professor told the audience at last week's White House Frontiers Conference. Heretofore, the technology was being fundamentally understood, formulated, and tested in labs. "At this point we're going AI in-vivo," she said. "AI is going to be deployed in society on every aspect of industrial and personal needs."

While IoT remains wildly insecure, thanks to the integrated solution operated by the WISeKey Vertical Platform, IoT devices would be able to organize themselves into trusted networks based on mutual authentication, identity and integrity. This trusted cybersecurity platform will only enable IoT devices which can provide a recognized identity and a valid integrity report to communicate with peer devices that are part of the trusted community. Adding AI at the chip level together with the WISeKey RoT it will allow the IoT to provide authenticated sensor data. Current IoT data do not provide value for their manufacturers unless it can be converted into actionable, contextualized information generated by IoT sensors fully identifiable. The majority of IoT devices are not built with embedded secured systems thus are very vulnerable.

Apple has made a firm commitment to futuristic machine learning by appointing its first director of AI research. Ruslan Salakhutdinov comes from the same US university that developed an AI bot programmed to kill humans in a computer game. Mr Salakhutdinov announced his new appointment with the Cupertino tech firm on Twitter this week and stated that he is looking to recruit more experts for his team. Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Apple's new director of AI comes from the same US university that developed an AI bot programmed to kill humans in a computer game. Pictured is a still from the film I, Robot.

The mussels you see on the shoreline might not just be soaking up some rays... they could be key to studying climate change. An research team has published data from robotic mussels whose sensors have been collecting temperatures for the past 18 years in a bid to monitor climates around the world. By recording the body heat of the real mussels around them every 10 to 15 minutes, the artificial sea life can track and predict global warming in situations where it's most likely to have a pronounced effect. Mussels are highly dependent on air temperature and sunlight for warmth, so they're more reliable gauges of an ecosystem's health than many other techniques. If they're too hot, something is likely wrong.

Earlier this month, the National Science and Technology Council released a report entitled: Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence. While it is promising that the Obama Administration recognizes the importance in beginning to seriously contemplate AI and its implications for human endeavors in the 21st century, the report seems intent on betting that the warnings advocated by Musk and others are not something worth worrying about today. In discussing the associated risks of potentially harmful AI, the report states: "The policies the Federal Government should adopt in the near-to-medium term if these fears are justified are almost exactly the same policies the Federal Government should adopt if they are not justified." The report goes on to assert that the best path forward is to focus on the "less extreme" near term risks inherent in AI development such as security and privacy. The issue with the government's stance here is not in its logic but rather in its assumption that the long-term concerns of AI really are long-term, seemingly declaring the alarm-sounding by industry experts as little more than science fiction overindulgence.