Google is worried about artificial intelligence. No, not that it will become sentient and take over the world, but that, say, a helpful house robot might accidentally skewer its owner with a knife. The company's latest AI research paper delves into this issue under the title "Concrete Problems In AI Safety." Really, though, that's just a fancy way of saying "How Are We Going To Stop These Terror-Bots Killing Us All In Our Sleep." To answer this brain-tickler, Google's computer scientists have landed on five "practical research problems" -- key issues that programmers will need to consider before they start creating the next Johnny Five.

Google is worried about artificial intelligence. No, not that it will become sentient and take over the world, but that, say, a helpful house robot might accidentally skewer its owner with a knife. The company's latest AI research paper delves into this issue under the title "Concrete Problems In AI Safety." Really, though, that's just a fancy way of saying "How Are We Going To Stop These Terror-Bots Killing Us All In Our Sleep." To answer this brain-tickler, Google's researchers have landed on five "practical research problems" -- key issues that programmers will need to consider before they start creating the next Johnny Five.

Swarm intelligence has made some impressive predictions on horse racing this season, by correctly placing the top four Kentucky Derby finishers last month. This might affect bookies but what about horses? If an "artificial" intelligence can benefit betting, can it help keep a horse healthy and performing well? A French startup called Arionea thinks so. The company is betting big that artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) will revolutionize the racetrack -- with the help of a new device dubbed the Equimetre.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 1bn non-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research firm OpenAI has announced its major technological goals which include creating a household robot, a natural language processing chatbot and an intelligent agent capable of winning any game. Announced in a blog post on 20 June, the firm says "robotics is a good testbed for many challenges in AI". "OpenAI's mission is to build safe AI, and ensure AI's benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible," the company says in the blog post authored by Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk. "We're trying to build AI as part of a larger community, and we want to share our plans and capabilities along the way. We're also working to solidify our organisation's governance structure and will share our thoughts on that later this year."

Enfield Council has taken a step into the use of artificial intelligence in a deal with cognitive technology company IPSoft to use its Amelia virtual agent in supporting its services. The London borough plans to begin using the software during the autumn, providing the first role for the technology platform in a public sector organisation. A spokesperson for the council told UKAuthority: "The initial deployment will be to help people navigate the website more effectively, and free up time for customer service staff to handle the more complicated enquiries." Amelia is a cognitive agent for service desk roles that uses natural language to communicate with people. IPsoft claims it can analyse language, understand context, apply logic, learn through observation, determine what actions to take to resolve problems and sense emotions.

With much current discussion of AI fixating on ethical implications--whether AI may eventually "outsmart" or harm us; how we can ensure that AI acts in our best interests--it's worth considering a new approach to AI that keeps humans in the loop: swarm intelligence. UNU, a software platform run by Unanimous A.I., brings groups of people together online to arrive at all kinds of real-time decisions and predictions, ranging from who will win March Madness to the top four horses at the Kentucky Derby. The system has proven remarkably effective at coming up with accurate answers. In fact, it has outperformed experts in a variety of contests--in the 2015 Oscar predictions, for instance, the swarm had a higher than 70% accuracy--New York Times critics, it should be noted, were right 55% of the time. SEE: How'artificial swarm intelligence' uses people to make better predictions than experts But, beyond accuracy, there is another advantage to using the swarm: according to new research, it makes more ethical decisions.

Boštjan Kaluža, PhD, is a researcher in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Boštjan is the chief data scientist at Evolven, a leading IT operations analytics company, focusing on configuration and change management. He works with machine learning, predictive analytics, pattern mining, and anomaly detection to turn data into understandable relevant information and actionable insight. Prior to Evolven, Boštjan served as a senior researcher in the department of intelligent systems at the Jozef Stefan Institute, a leading Slovenian scientific research institution, and led research projects involving pattern and anomaly detection, ubiquitous computing, and multi-agent systems. Boštjan was also a visiting researcher at the University of Southern California, where he studied suspicious and anomalous agent behavior in the context of security applications.

Boštjan Kaluža, PhD, is a researcher in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Boštjan is the chief data scientist at Evolven, a leading IT operations analytics company, focusing on configuration and change management. He works with machine learning, predictive analytics, pattern mining, and anomaly detection to turn data into understandable relevant information and actionable insight. Prior to Evolven, Boštjan served as a senior researcher in the department of intelligent systems at the Jozef Stefan Institute, a leading Slovenian scientific research institution, and led research projects involving pattern and anomaly detection, ubiquitous computing, and multi-agent systems. Boštjan was also a visiting researcher at the University of Southern California, where he studied suspicious and anomalous agent behavior in the context of security applications.

A robotic employee will be deployed instead of human council workers to answer customer queries. IPsoft said Amelia, its technology platform, will be deployed to work for Enfield Council in North London. Capable of analyzing natural language, she understands context, applies logic, learns, resolves problems and even senses emotions. IPsoft said Amelia will be deployed to work for Enfield Council in North London. Capable of analyzing natural language, she understands context and even senses emotions.

Do join our debate chaired by Will Hutton, author of'How Good We Can Be', on The Future with AI: Will it be good for us? The UK has a wealth of capability in AI techniques and their application, but a future with AI raises many questions. In this 90 minute debate our panel of thought leaders chaired by Will Hutton, author of'How Good We Can Be', will address your questions. They will discuss the safeguards that might be needed to ensure a responsible and ethical approach towards the applications of AI technologies. The debate will be followed by refreshments and networking.