"When it comes to A.I., we may be worried about the wrong things," says Amy Webb, a forecaster of digital trends and author of "The Signals Are Talking." Rather than the cliche of artificial intelligence that goes to war against humanity, Webb says we might worry about A.I. that too accurately mimics humanity. As artificial intelligence continues to develop, Webb, the founder of the Future Today Institute and an adjunct professor at NYU, says her greatest concern is that A.I. is created by humans, and so reflects back our own beliefs, values, and biases. She offers as an example Tay, an A.I.-powered chatbot released on Twitter earlier this year. It only took 24 hours for Tay to start posting racist and xenophobic messages all across the internet.

So there you have it – 5 free eBooks (plus a bonus book) for your summer reading. It would be great if you would leave brief reviews of these books in the comments below – I'm sure all the authors would appreciate your comments and shares. Join the debate below and let me know your thoughts... About the Author Lee Baker is an award-winning software creator with a passion for turning data into a story. A proud Yorkshireman, he now lives by the sparkling shores of the East Coast of Scotland. Physicist, statistician and programmer, child of the flower-power psychedelic '60s, it's amazing he turned out so normal! Turning his back on a promising academic career to do something more satisfying, as the CEO and co-founder of Chi-Squared Innovations he now works double the hours for half the pay and 10 times the stress - but 100 times the fun! He also wanted to be rich, famous and good looking.

'Tis the season for the public relations exercise known as "here's what we think (or hope) will happen in the tech sector next year," flooding my inbox with predictions for 2017. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, let alone over the next 12 months, but the exercise yields interesting insights into what's hot (and what's not) in technology today. Artificial intelligence (and machine/deep learning) is the hottest trend, eclipsing, but building on, the accumulated hype for the previous "new big thing," big data. The new catalyst for the data explosion is the Internet of Things, bringing with it new cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The rapid fluctuations in the relative temperature of these trends also create new dislocations and opportunities in the tech job market.

A year ago I wrote that I had seen the future. I had attended the IBM Insights conference in Las Vegas, an entire conference devoted to the Internet of Things, analytics, cognitive marketing and related topics. And if the concept of Moore's Law (that technology doubles every year – or every 18 months or two years, depending on what you read) holds true, then a lot has happened since then. While last year's future is now a history lesson, what is currently happening in the World of Watson is moving at warp speed! This past week more than 17,000 people attended IBM's World of Watson, the new name of the conference devoted to cognitive technology.

If you thought Siri was smart, wait until you get a load of Spaun. Created by neuroscientist Chris Eliasmith at the University of Waterloo in Canada, Spaun is "the world's largest simulation of a functioning brain," according to a report from Canada.com. Spaun is able to recognize numbers and memorize lists and patterns and reproduce them on command. This makes Spaun unique among its virtual peers, since other large-scale models of the brain "don't do anything," Eliasmith said. Spaun, which stands for Semantic Pointer Architecture Unified Network, has 2.5 million simulated neurons organized into subsystems to resemble the prefrontal cortex, basil ganglia, thalamus and other cognitive machinery in the brain.

IEEE publishes draft report on'ethically aligned' AI design AMD's strange, cube-shaped device for deep learning packs four'Vega' GPUs Microsoft officially launches Zo.ai, more bot-building tools Stay up-to-date on the topics you care about. We'll send you an email alert whenever a news article matches your alert term. It's free, and you can add new alerts at any time.

However, many businesses may ask; are Chat Bots an innovation and investment too far? What should be the strategy for building a successful Bot? How to make the Bot human-like? A human-like Bot will require the use of text analytics, artificial intelligence and sentimental analysis in varying degrees. The study answers these questions and highlights a way to classify and explain the range of available Bot solutions.

At a dinner I attended some years ago, the distinguished differential geometer Eugenio Calabi volunteered to me his tongue-in-cheek distinction between pure and applied mathematicians. A pure mathematician, when stuck on the problem under study, often decides to narrow the problem further and so avoid the obstruction. An applied mathematician interprets being stuck as an indication that it is time to learn more mathematics and find better tools. I have always loved this point of view; it explains how applied mathematicians will always need to make use of the new concepts and structures that are constantly being developed in more foundational mathematics. This is particularly evident today in the ongoing effort to understand "big data"--data sets that are too large or complex to be understood using traditional data-processing techniques.

As the tech world pushes forward with the development of artificial intelligence, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is asking everyone to pause and consider the ethical ramifications. It's kicked off that process by publishing the first draft of a document that explores a range of ethical challenges posed by AI. The document, "Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Wellbeing with Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems (AI/AS)," was drafted by committees of the IEEE's Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems. More than one hundred global thought leaders and experts on AI, ethics and related issues are contributing to the initiative. With the first draft published, the IEEE is inviting public comment on the document. "We need to make sure that these technologies are aligned to humans in terms of our moral values and ethical principles," the report's executive summary says.

Come join us to learn about local Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and the future of AI. Our panelists will discuss their research in machine learning, intelligent interaction, and mechanism design. Our panelists will discuss how their field has evolved, common misconceptions, their thoughts on the rate of progress towards general AI applications, and how advances in AI will impact society.