For the first Green Umbrella program of the season, Saturday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, John Adams conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group in five premieres -- four of them commissioned by the orchestra, including one by 17-year-old clarinetist Andrew Moses and another by Ingram Marshall, 74 and in too poor of health to have attended, whose "Flow" is special enough that it deserves to bring lasting glory to the orchestra. But because I didn't want Marshall's piece to get lost in a big evening, I've buried the lead: The New Music Group was followed by a late-night appearance of wild Up, with Christopher Rountree conducting his increasingly impressive young ensemble in three more premieres. One was his own dazzling violin concert featuring Jennifer Koh as soloist, yet another L.A. Phil commission. Exiting the Grand Avenue staircase close to midnight, we were given bells for audience participation in still another L.A. Phil-commissioned world premiere, this by the collective Lucky Dragons. Even with all that, I've buried the lead, again.

In the history of cinema, few images are as iconic as Yul Brynner's gunslinger, relentlessly pursing his quarry: Westworld theme-park guest Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin), the sole survivor of a software glitch that turned the robots populating its imaginary worlds into killers. "It was terrifying, terrifying, but so much of it has become kind of iconic," says producer Jonathan Nolan, who with co-producer (and wife) Lisa Joy, is steering the HBO television reboot of the film. "Yul Brynner, this unstoppable creation, wearing the same wardrobe from The Magnificent Seven, is iconic." Though the film, just 88 minutes long and written and directed by Michael Crichton, seems to wholly belong to the 1970s in tone and style, its themes made a reboot unusually relevant, Nolan says. "The world has obviously changed in the decades since the original film, but changed only in ways that make the original premise that much more interesting," he says.

At the end of Sept 2016 #ArtificialIntelligence paranoia was evident. An AI Allliance (Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, to benefit people and society.) Commenting on the Partnership, Mashable seems rather ignorant; or at least they don't speak for S45, when they wrote (1 Oct 2016): "We are racing toward a future we barely understand." Mashable elaborated: "And it scares the hell out of people." Why does Mashable think the future is difficult to understand?

Video captured a crowd attacking a California Highway Patrol vehicle in Fresno with an officer inside last week. The incident took place last weekend, and three men have since been arrested in connection with the case. The video shows the assailants punching, kicking and throwing objects at the CHP SUV before the officer is about to drive away. One suspect "admitted to kicking the CHP vehicle and said he did so because he was upset with the CHP because a CHP officer recently towed his vehicle," Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer told ABC30. "There were several other people that were kicking the sides of the CHP vehicle. People there were other people that were chanting, yelling, 'F the police, we run the streets.'"

Salesforce.com Inc. CRM 0.18 % 's annual Dreamforce customer conference, set to blanket downtown San Francisco next week, will be an unusual blend of business, technology, entertainment, philanthropy and personal empowerment. The conference, which is the world's largest tech get-together sponsored by a single company, will be an expression of the business-software provider's socially conscious corporate culture and the idiosyncratic character of its Chief Executive Marc Benioff. The event, which is expected to draw 170,000 attendees--17% more than last year--comes as Salesforce, whose public profile to date has been confined largely to salespeople and marketers, is stepping onto a larger stage. The company on Thursday vowed to block Microsoft Corp. MSFT 0.35 % 's 26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn Corp. LNKD 0.13 %, after failing in its own effort to buy the online network of 450 million mostly professional members. Meanwhile, Salesforce is considering a bid for the consumer-focused messaging service Twitter.

The gig: Kirstin Harper-Smith, 32, is senior project manager at Boston-based Suffolk Construction, where she is supervising the building of a 525-unit apartment tower on Hope Street in downtown Los Angeles. The 888 Grand Hope Lofts project by L.A. developer CIM Group will eventually rise 34 stories, consuming 27,000 cubic yards of concrete and 3,500 tons of rebar along the way. As head of the 10-person office side of the project, she oversees the budget, ensures safety requirements are met and directs who should do what jobs when -- all while trying to keep the project on schedule to wrap in about two years. She anticipates 10-hour days until then. An early start: Harper-Smith caught the engineering bug while growing up in San Diego.

Computers programmed with artificial intelligence can be better listeners when certain concerns exist. Allowing people to talk reduces anxiety. Finding patient, disciplined listeners can be tough though. Computers, using artificial intelligence software, have infinite patience and tolerance. In "The Computer Will See You Now" (The Economist, August 16, 2014 edition), Jonathan Gratch (Institute for Creative Technologies) has successfully explored such computers as therapists in some circumstances.

For all their brilliance, our phones still have as much emotional intelligence as glue. Yet, as electronics become ever more important in our lives, it may make sense to start teaching them to be more aware of our feelings. Early glimpses of such efforts were afoot at a gathering of over 700 artificial-intelligence software developers, academics and researchers this week in Manhattan, where several talks focused on finding ways to make our robots, voice assistants and chatbots more, well, emotional. "People are building these very intimate relationships with these companions, but right now these companions have no empathy," Rana el Kaliouby, CEO of emotional-recognition tech firm Affectiva, said onstage Tuesday at the inaugural O'Reilly Artificial Intelligence Conference. Teaching robots about emotion illustrates the promise and the huge challenges in developing AI tools.

Washington D.C. has approved one company to launch its ground-based, autonomous robot delivery service. A new ground-based robot delivery service has been approved in Washington D.C., and one startup company will soon begin testing its autonomous robot delivery service. According to a new report from Recode, Starship Technologies has announced that its six-wheeled, autonomous robots will soon begin to deliver both groceries and restaurant takeout to homes and businesses. These new robots are intended to solve the "last mile" problem, where packages are transported from the fulfillment center to people's homes. Amazon has hopes to solve this problem with drones, but the FAA currently requires the drone operator to be in the line of site of the drone; however, ground-based robots have fewer potential problems.

A coroner says a 6-year-old boy has died days after he was critically wounded in a school shooting in South Carolina. Anderson County Coroner Greg Shore said Jacob Hall died about 1 p.m. Saturday. Jacob had been fighting for his life at a hospital since the shooting Wednesday at Townville Elementary School. A bullet struck Hall in a main artery in his leg, causing massive bleeding. Authorities say another student and a first-grade teacher were also shot when a 14-year-old boy opened fire on a playground.