By 2021, everyday software will be vastly more intelligent and powerful, replacing humans in more and more tasks. How will we keep up? While some predict mass unemployment or all-out war between humans and artificial intelligence, others foresee a less bleak future. Professor Manuela Veloso, head of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, envisions a future in which humans and intelligent systems are inseparable, bound together in a continual exchange of information and goals that she calls "symbiotic autonomy." In Veloso's future, it will be hard to distinguish human agency from automated assistance -- but neither people nor software will be much use without the other. Veloso is already testing out the idea on the CMU campus, building roving, segway-shaped robots called "cobots" to autonomously escort guests from building to building and ask for human help when they fall short.

For machine learning to become more intelligent it needs data. The more that is fed into self-learning systems, the quicker they are able to take on knowledge and apply it to different situations. With this in mind, Google now wants your help to develop its technology and has released a series of AI experiments that (almost anyone) can use. "AI Experiments is a showcase for simple experiments that let anyone play with this technology in hands-on ways, through pictures, drawings, language, music, and more," the company says. By playing the games Google has created and published, the machine learning powering them is able to become more intelligent.

An update to his DoNotPay bot works by asking users a simple set of questions about their circumstances, before advising them on the best course of action--often helping them draft an effective form letter to apply to their local councils for emergency housing. Councils have to take every letter seriously, and using Freedom of Information requests, he's researched the best ways to prompt them into acting on his bot's clients' behalf. The bot's creator, Joshua Browder, a 19-year-old Brit studying at Stanford University in California, told Ars that since the update launched last Wednesday "almost every local government in the UK has signed up for the website." "I can see on the back end that they are actively trying out the service for themselves," he added. He's also working with Centrepoint, one of the UK's largest and most recognisable homelessness charities, with volunteer lawyers helping out to finesse the legal advice his bot provides.

During his first official visit to Australia, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed how the company will be working with a range of local organisations to push the next stage of Australia's investment into artificial intelligence [AI]. Among the world's first users of Microsoft's new high performance virtual and intelligent machines are the Australian Government, Cricket Australia, and Webjet. Microsoft will deliver cloud services to Australian developers that will underpin the next generation of intelligent apps. This comes as the largest Windows 10 deployment in the Asia-Pacific region, and will help companies around Australia generate deeper customer insights and learnings. Speaking at a technology developer's conference in Sydney on Wednesday, Nadella said the new intelligent technology to be deployed by Microsoft and will allow human-like interactions with complex business systems.

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Elon Musk is a polarizing figure. He's promised that, with his two companies, his sole interest is to free humanity from its current tethers -- Tesla, with its autonomous electric cars, and SpaceX, with its plans for Mars-bound spacecraft. Together, these companies have the potential to release us from our dependence on fossil fuels, virtually eliminate car accident fatalities, and get us off Earth. Musk's vision for the future of the species is bright. As long as you don't let him talk about artificial intelligence.

Facebook has acquired a facial image analysis firm FacioMetrics as it tries to give users new features to add special effects to photos and videos. The technology developed by the startup also includes capabilities for face tracking and recognizing emotions, which could potentially open up other applications for Facebook. The financial terms of the acquisition of FacioMetrics, a startup that was spun off from Carnegie Mellon University, were not disclosed. Facebook will discontinue the products, which are no longer available on app stores.The FacioMetrics website now only has a message about the acquisition. "How people share and communicate is changing and things like masks and other effects allow people to express themselves in fun and creative ways," a Facebook spokesman wrote in an email Wednesday.

Carol E. Reiley is the co-founder and president of Drive.ai. She previously founded Tinkerbelle Laboratories. During my Ph.D. studies, I developed a voice-activated human-robot interface for a surgical robotic system using Microsoft's speech recognition API. But, because the API had been built mainly by 20-30-year-old men, it did not recognize my voice. I had to lower my pitch in order for it to work.

Apps and sites that can be used to hire people for individual tasks like picking up groceries or designing a new logo have taken off in recent years, promising a more efficient and fairer marketplace for employment. However, a new study out of Northeastern University in Boston suggests that racial and sexual discrimination may be common on two popular "gig economy" platforms. Researchers led by Christo Wilson, an assistant professor at Northeastern, and Ancsa Hannák, a PhD student, examined TaskRabbit, a platform for hiring people to run errands, and Fiverr, a marketplace for creative services. On both, they found evidence of bias along racial and gender lines. And it's troubling because the gig economy promised to be not only more efficient and flexible, but also less biased--since algorithms do the work of connecting people.

Not in my lifetime, says Google's cloud chief 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.