Robots have done and are able to do some of the most amazing tasks we never thought we could trust to a machine. Now, robots have a hand in healthcare, perform delivery tasks by themselves, even milk cows. But one thing they have never been really good at is using hands. You get these amazing robots that look like humans, talk like humans, and have the pincers of a crab. A five-fingered robot developed at the University of Washington is capable of dexterous hand movements, and the ability to learn from its own experiences without human intervention.

"At BakerHostetler, we believe that emerging technologies like cognitive computing and other forms of machine learning can help enhance the services we deliver to our clients," Bob Craig, chief information officer for BakerHostetler, said in a statement. The AI won't be used in the courtroom, but it could be a key resource for lawyers preparing for litigation, the statement said. Ross claims its language processing capabilities allow it to respond to questions posed by lawyers about specific laws or cases. The computing system then gathers evidence, reads through laws and draws inferences about the material it has collected. The AI program also aims to keep lawyers up to date on new court decisions that could impact their own ongoing cases.

Scientists have created the world's tiniest practical engines, and these light-powered machines could one day power microscopic robots small enough to enter living cells, the researchers say. Delicious produce, fresh from farmer robot. At least, that's what Japan hopes. Although Google is selling Boston Dynamics to distance itself from "terrifying" humanoid robots, there's still plenty of robot projects underway. Don't lift with your legs or your back.

With all this talk about chatbots from Facebook and Microsoft, teaching artificial intelligence to be smarter has become a central topic of the tech world. But what about what AI can teach us? Ashok Goel, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech, put that question to the test when he added "Jill Watson" – and chatbot powered by IBM's Watson technology– to his list of of teaching assistants for an online course. The chatbot was so good at answering questions that students did not notice their TA was made of silicon until after they'd turned in their finals. Our biggest ever edition of TNW Conference is fast approaching!

Just when you need Big Data, it's nowhere to be found. After Facebook made headlines this week for allegedly meddling with its Trending Topics section, several analytics firms that have provided International Business Times with social media data in the past declined to provide numbers related to the ruckus. The kerfuffle was kicked off by a Gizmodo report alleging the company's Trending Topics section suppresses conservative topics of interest, thanks to the whims of its curators. Within hours of the news, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce wrote a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking representatives of Facebook to travel to Washington for a briefing on its curation guidelines. And Thursday, Facebook released its full guidelines for news selection, showing the extent to which human judgment is part of the process.

Google does not have regulatory approval for its NHS healthcare deal. Two weeks ago, New Scientist revealed that Google's artificial intelligence company DeepMind has access to the personal medical information of millions of UK patients through a data-sharing agreement with the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. A New Scientist investigation has found that the project is being carried out without the ethical and regulatory approval that experts say are required. Google and the Royal Free both claim to be acting in compliance with the rules as they interpret them. A collaboration between DeepMind and the NHS has the potential to do great things.

The future of health care is wearable devices that transmit our vitals to our physicians. Instead of self-reported data, which is often inaccurate (no offense, but your memory just kind of sucks), doctors will have real numbers to form the basis for diagnoses and treatment plans. In the wake of Apple's CareKit launch, connected medical device maker Qardio is launching a platform to share health data from its hardware with your doctor. QardioArm is a medical-grade smart blood pressure monitor that can send data to your doctor. The company has two FDA-approved products for consumers: the smart blood pressure monitor QardioArm and wireless scale QardioBase.

We've been using TensorFlow in daily research and engineering since it was released almost six months ago. We've learned a lot of things along the way. Because there are many subjective articles on TensorFlow and not enough helpful documentation, I've sprinkled in examples, tutorials, docs, and code snippets wherever possible. When it comes to machine learning, it is easy to focus on the tech (features, capabilities, benchmarks, etc). But good programmers know it is much harder to write code that humans will use, versus code that a machine can compile and execute. So my favorite thing about TensorFlow is the simple fact that everyone in the machine learning community is aware of it, most are open to trying it, and hopefully, enough of us will use it to make useful things.

In this talk, Mike Williams, Research Engineer at Fast Forward Labs, looks at how supervised machine learning has the potential to amplify power and privilege in society. Using sentiment analysis, he demonstrates how text analytics often favors the voices of men. Mike discusses how bias can inadvertently be introduced into any model, and how to recognize and mitigate these harms.

With all this talk about chatbots from Facebook and Microsoft, teaching artificial intelligence to be smarter has become a central topic of the tech world. But what about what AI can teach us? Ashok Goel, a computer science professor at Georgia Tech, put that question to the test when he added "Jill Watson" – and chatbot powered by IBM's Watson technology– to his list of of teaching assistants for an online course. The chatbot was so good at answering questions that students did not notice their TA was made of silicon until after they'd turned in their finals. Some of the biggest names in tech are coming to TNW Conference in Amsterdam this May.