Investments in AI for drug discovery are surging. Big Pharmas are throwing big bucks. Sanofi signed a 300 Million dollars deal with the startup Exscientia, and GSK did the same for 42 Million dollars. The Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz launched a new 450 Million dollars bio investment fund, with one focus area in applications of AI to drug discovery. In this craze, lots of pharma/biotech companies and investors wonder whether they should jump on the bandwagon in 2018, or wait and see.

Inherent batch-to-batch variability, aging, and contamination are major factors contributing to variability in oilfield cement-slurry performance. Of particular concern are problems encountered when a slurry is formulated with one cement sample and used with a batch having different properties. Such variability imposes a heavy burden on performance testing and is often a major factor in operational failure. We describe methods that allow the identification, characterization, and prediction of the variability of oilfield cements. Our approach involves predicting cement compositions, particlesize distributions, and thickening-time curves from the diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectrum of neat cement powders.

This symposium was motivated by the recognition that even as autonomous system technologies mature into practical applications, humans still refuse to disappear. Humans stay in the loop, so practical applications require that the autonomous software be understandable and adjustable. Adjustable autonomy means dynamically adjusting the level of autonomy of an agent depending on the situation. For real-world teaming between humans and autonomous agents, the desired or optimal level of control can vary over time. Hence, effective autonomous agents will support adjustable autonomy, which contrasts with most work in autonomous systems, where the style of interaction between the human and the agent are fixed by design. The adjustable autonomy concept includes the ability for humans to adjust the autonomy of agents, for agents to adjust their own autonomy, and for a group of agents to adjust the autonomy relationships within the group.

Editor: We are currently working on a project that attempts to integrate artificial intelligence and legal reasoning for the purpose of simulating judicial decision making. The project has defined legal reasoning and legal analysis-the former taking place before the latter begins. Using a historical approach with our legal system's basis founded in English common law, we attempted to examine the role of stare decisis in decision making. More extensively we examined the role of reasoning in legal analysis, relying on Wittgenstein and to some extend Hofstadter, for an explanation of the foundation of the thought behind man's reasoning process. Legal reasoning is a specialized thought process, but reasoning is generic to all processes that attempt to incorporate artificial intelligence.

Implementation of the case-based reasoner in rules and objects using a commercial knowledge-based system shell is described. Although some refinements remain, the performance of the case-based reasoner has met its design goals. The chemical industry is heavily regulated. Every hazardous chemical product must have a set of shipping descriptions that conform to strict regulations issued by the Department of Transportation (DOT), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Shipping descriptions provide a concise characterization of the hazards a chemical can present during transportation (figure 1). Failing to comply with transport regulations can result in penalties ranging from delayed shipments to heavy fines or even incarceration of corporate officials. In addition, each chemical product has a material safety data sheet (MSDS) that conforms to Occupational Safety and Health (OSHA) and American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards. Unlike shipping descriptions, MSDSs are lengthy documents of 8 to 10 pages that provide a detailed description of the health hazards a product can pose in the workplace (figure 2). They also contain information on procedures for storing, handling, and disposing of a chemical. Inadequately prepared MSDSs can lead to substantial product-liability lawsuits against the company if the product is involved in an industrial accident. The ultimate goal of these regulations is to ensure proper communication of health and safety information for the protection of the public. Air Products is committed to the initiative of the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) known as Responsible Care. This initiative focuses on the safe manufacturing, distribution, use, recycling, and disposal of chemicals. Proper communication through accurate shipping descriptions and full disclosure of hazard information in the MSDS plays a key role in fulfilling obligations under Responsible Care. Maintaining shipping descriptions and MSDSs requires a major effort. Most corporate systems are intensely manual.

In preparation for the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Telefonica de Espana S.A. (Madrid, Spain), the Spanish telephone company, has developed a Spanish-language speech recognition system. A caller will be able to access business information by dialing a toll-free number and saying "uno, " "dos" or "tres" into the phone in response to a recorded prompt (such as "say one for sales, two for service," etc.). An intelligent network system developed by ATT Spain will recognize the caller's speech input and send the data to the network for connection to the desired service. Varian Associates (Palo Alto, CA) has implemented an expert troubleshooting system to provide better service for its customers worldwide. The company's customer support personnel are now using a computer-aided intelligent service system to analyze equipment failures and track parts usage more rapidly.

As the Associated Press reports, art conservation experts in Santa Fe and Chicago will use this type of technology to detect, track and analyze a particular type of chemical buildup found on many of O'Keeffe's paintings that cause thousands of tiny blisters to form and grow. Canvases used by O'Keeffe and many other 20th century artists were primed with non-drying fats or oils and when they combine with pigments or drying agents, it can lead to a buildup of soap that causes the blisters. "They're a little bit bigger than human hair, and you can see them with the naked eye," Dale Kronkright, an art conservationist at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, told the AP. And when enough of those little blisters show up, they can begin to darken a painting. "Left unchecked, they will continue to grow, both grow in number and grow in size -- and in damaging effect," Konkright said.

That's not because it's impossible to ban weapons technologies. Some 192 nations have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention that bans chemical weapons, for example. But it hasn't suggested it would be open to international agreement banning autonomous weapons. In 2015, the UK government responded to calls for a ban on autonomous weapons by saying there was no need for one, and that existing international law was sufficient.

Berkeley-based Lygos is engineering and designing microbes that convert low-cost sugar into high-value, specialty chemicals. In other words, the latest advances in software, big data, machine learning, biotech, and chemistry may be combining to quite possibly start a new industrial revolution. Lygos develops microbes to convert sugar into high-value specialty chemicals, focusing its flagship product on malonic acid (derived from petroleum), which is used in a diverse set of industries, including flavor and fragrance, electronic manufacturing, and coatings. And, though they will borrow tech from the titans of Silicon Valley (e.g., TensorFlow from Google), and cloud vendors like AWS will lower the bar for developers dipping their toes into machine learning, the biggest impact of big data will not go toward ad-clicking strategies.

The boundaries between smart materials, artificial intelligence, embodiment, biology, and robotics are blurring. Smart materials largely cover the same set of physical properties (stiffness, elasticity, viscosity) as biological tissue and state-of-the-art soft robotic technologies that have the potential to deliver this capability. We can foresee smart skins, assist and medical devices, biodegradable and environmental robots or intelligent soft robots. Ultimately wearable assist devices will make conventional assist devices redundant.