When asked to head Facebook's Applied Machine Learning group -- to supercharge the world's biggest social network with an AI makeover -- Joaquin Quiñonero Candela hesitated. It was not that the Spanish-born scientist, a self-described "machine learning (ML) person," hadn't already witnessed how AI could help Facebook. Since joining the company in 2012, he had overseen a transformation of the company's ad operation, using an ML approach to make sponsored posts more relevant and effective. Significantly, he did this in a way that empowered engineers in his group to use AI even if they weren't trained to do so, making the ad division richer overall in machine learning skills. But he wasn't sure the same magic would take hold in the larger arena of Facebook, where billions of people-to-people connections depend on fuzzier values than the hard data that measures ads. "I wanted to be convinced that there was going to be value in it," he says of the promotion. Despite his doubts, Candela took the post. And now, after barely two years, his hesitation seems almost absurd.

There seems to be no escaping a future where robots and artificial intelligence (AI) get to perform more and more jobs, as sci-fi films warn. But Sen. Bam Aquino is not too excited about reaching such technotopia, as he raised concerns about AI completely doing away with human intelligence and leaving thousands of Filipino workers jobless. Aquino, who chairs the Senate committee on science and technology, filed a resolution on Friday seeking an inquiry into the government's preparedness to address the negative effect of AI on the country's workforce. The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) has been tapped to develop an AI program in the Philippines to optimize mass production, particularly in the country's manufacturing sector. Artificial intelligence is defined as the capability of machines to imitate human cognitive functions in doing simple to complex tasks.