Games and puzzles play important pedagogical roles in STEM learning. New AI algorithms that can solve complex problems offer opportunities for scaffolded instruction in puzzle solving. This paper presents the ALLURE system, which uses an AI algorithm (Deep CubeA) to guide students in solving a common first step of the Rubik's Cube (i.e., the white cross). Using data from a pilot study we present preliminary findings about students' behaviors in the system, how these behaviors are associated with STEM skills - including spatial reasoning, critical thinking and algorithmic thinking. We discuss how data from ALLURE can be used in future educational data mining to understand how students benefit from AI assistance and collaboration when solving complex problems.

Black Mirror is more than science fiction – its stories about modernity have become akin to science folklore, shaping our collective view of technology and the future. Each new innovation gets an allegory: smartphones as tools for a new age caste system, robot dogs as overzealous human hunters, drones as a murderous swarm, artificial intelligence as new age necromancy, virtual reality and brain chips as seizure-inducing nightmares, to name a few. It is a must-watch, but must we take it so seriously? Black Mirror fails to consistently explore the duality of technology and our reactions to it. It is a critical deficit.

Will it be easier to retreat to a replicant of a deceased partner than to navigate the confusing and painful realities of human relationships? Indeed, the AI companionship provider Replika was born from an attempt to resurrect a deceased best friend and now provides companions to millions of users. Even the CTO of OpenAI warns that AI has the potential to be "extremely addictive." We're seeing a giant, real-world experiment unfold, uncertain what impact these AI companions will have either on us individually or on society as a whole. Will Grandma spend her final neglected days chatting with her grandson's digital double, while her real grandson is mentored by an edgy simulated elder?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform education with its power of uncovering insights from massive data about student learning patterns. However, ethical and trustworthy concerns of AI have been raised but are unsolved. Prominent ethical issues in high school AI education include data privacy, information leakage, abusive language, and fairness. This paper describes technological components that were built to address ethical and trustworthy concerns in a multi-modal collaborative platform (called ALLURE chatbot) for high school students to collaborate with AI to solve the Rubik's cube. In data privacy, we want to ensure that the informed consent of children, parents, and teachers, is at the center of any data that is managed. Since children are involved, language, whether textual, audio, or visual, is acceptable both from users and AI and the system can steer interaction away from dangerous situations. In information management, we also want to ensure that the system, while learning to improve over time, does not leak information about users from one group to another.

From grading papers to summarizing medical documents, large language models (LLMs) are evermore used for evaluation of text generated by humans and AI alike. However, despite their extensive utility, LLMs exhibit distinct failure modes, necessitating a thorough audit and improvement of their text evaluation capabilities. Here we introduce ALLURE, a systematic approach to Auditing Large Language Models Understanding and Reasoning Errors. ALLURE involves comparing LLM-generated evaluations with annotated data, and iteratively incorporating instances of significant deviation into the evaluator, which leverages in-context learning (ICL) to enhance and improve robust evaluation of text by LLMs. Through this iterative process, we refine the performance of the evaluator LLM, ultimately reducing reliance on human annotators in the evaluation process. We anticipate ALLURE to serve diverse applications of LLMs in various domains related to evaluation of textual data, such as medical summarization, education, and and productivity.

One of the more famous scenes in recent video-game history can be found at the beginning of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, from 2017. The player's avatar, Link, starts on a plateau high above the land of Hyrule. It's a test zone in which to familiarize oneself with the mechanics of the game. But a paraglider tool, obtained at the end of the introduction, makes it possible to leave the plateau behind and enter the rest of the environment. After exiting a cavern, Link stands at the lip of a cliff, and the camera pans out to survey the vast landscape, a patchwork of forests, rolling hills, seas of fog, and darkened mountains. Like Simba in "The Lion King," the player gets the sense that everything the light touches is her kingdom, a sprawling natural world explorable from end to end.

Most of the attendees at the Consumer Electronics Show, in January, were on the hunt for self-driving cars and improved smartphone cameras, but I arrived at the Las Vegas expo looking for high-tech innovations in beauty. I walked past the AI chemistry teachers and the robot puppy, and headed straight to the at-home lipstick maker and plaque-detecting toothbrush. Over the course of three days, I discovered that our makeup and skin-care routines will be just as high-tech as our living rooms--and change is coming faster than you'd think. Brushing your teeth is possibly the least sexy part of your daily routine, which is probably why the average person only spends about 45 seconds doing it. But new electric brushes are making this mundane experience more fun, more efficient, and more worthy of 120 seconds. This story originally appeared on Allure.

Amazon's popular Echo family of devices keeps growing. From the first can-shaped Echo, to the big-screen Echo Show, and even the cute Echo Dot, you can get Alexa into your home any number of ways. These Echo products can answer your questions, help you order essentials for your home, play all sorts of audio content, and even function as the control hub for your burgeoning smart home. These are our favorite Amazon Echos for every home and every budget. The Echo Plus is the best-sounding Echo.

Did you ever watch the 2015 movie Chappie? Set in the 22nd Century in South Africa, it's about a robotic police force fighting crime, the development of an artificial intelligence chip, and a robot named Chappie who begins to think like a human. Even since 2001 when Steven Spielberg's science fiction drama AI hit theaters, humanoid robots and artificial intelligence have been considered synonymous. In reality, though, the artificial intelligence industry is much broader. This essential part of the technology sector aims to create intelligent machines of all kinds that work and react like humans.

When you're looking for a smart home speaker, you might think you're stuck with those made by Amazon, Apple or Google in order to use the specific intelligent assistants from the respective companies. Now, however, you can pick up a speaker that works with Alexa or Google Assistant, in addition to the one that already supports Microsoft's Cortana. The Samsung-owned Harman International just announced three new JBL Link speakers at IFA, each a voice activated speaker with Google Assistant built in. The company also revealed the Harman Kardon Allure, an Alexa-enabled smart speaker with 360-degree sound. The Link speakers come in two portable sizes as well as a larger design, can be linked together for multi-room listening and also have Chromecast built in.