Michael Cohen will not face sanctions after he cited fake legal cases in a court filing generated by artificial intelligence, a federal judge said Wednesday. Cohen, former President Trump's onetime fixer and lawyer, had pleaded guilty to tax and campaign finance violations and is currently under supervised release. He has repeatedly sought to have his sentence reduced, and in his most recent attempt, Cohen provided his attorney with fabricated case citations he later admitted were generated by Google's AI chatbot, formerly known as Bard. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman said the false citations were "embarrassing and certainly negligent" in a 13-page order that denied Cohen's fourth motion for early termination of supervised release. But the judge found that Cohen, who had said he misunderstood how AI works and did not intend to cite fake cases, had not acted in "bad faith" and that neither he nor his lawyer, David Schwartz, should be sanctioned.

Donald Trump's former "fixer," Michael Cohen, used Google Bard to cite made-up legal cases that ended up in a federal court. The New York Times reported Friday that Cohen admitted in unsealed court papers that he passed on documents referencing bogus cases to his lawyer, who then relayed them to a federal judge. Cohen reportedly wrote in the sworn declaration he hadn't stayed on top of "emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology." Cohen's legal team filed the paperwork in a motion asking for an early end to court supervision from his 2018 campaign finance case, for which he served three years in prison. After Cohen's attorney, David M. Schwartz, presented the legal documents to the federal court, Judge Jesse M. Furman of the Federal District Court said he was having trouble finding the three decisions cited by Schwartz (via Cohen).

Every year, it gets harder to keep up with technology updates in convenience services. For many industry players, the pandemic put some projects on hold, but the surging interest in contactless transactions accelerated expansion of technology innovation. An early morning session, "Trending Technologies in Convenience Services," gave attendees a chance to unpack the key tech innovations at the National Automatic Merchandising Association show at Chicago's McCormick Place. "The pandemic has given us a lot of new terms, and it's also accelerated the digital transformation of the industry," session moderator Michael Kasavana, Ph.D., the NAMA endowed professor emeritus, observed at the outset. The well attended session provided updates on artificial intelligence services for convenience services, contactless payments and ways to prevent the growing cybercrime threat.

When the robots rise up, they won't take your life. They'll take your job, particularly those in fields primed for automation, like manufacturing, trucking, and customer service. Technologists, economists, and policymakers believe this future is all but inevitable, and say it's time to begin thinking seriously about how to ensure artificial intelligence advances humanity--and improves the economy, without leaving the middle class behind. Two economists who recently left Washington say the answer lies in ensuring the government provides enough of a safety net to help middle class Americans navigate the coming transition. Jason Furman and Gene Sperling--former chief economic advisors to President Obama--prefer to think of it as a bridge, not a net, that will help people reach the future.

Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have built an inflammatory-aging clock that's more accurate than the number of candles on your birthday cake in predicting how strong your immune system is, how soon you'll become frail or whether you have unseen cardiovascular problems that could become clinical headaches a few years down the road. In the process, the scientists fingered a bloodborne substance whose abundance may accelerate cardiovascular aging. The story of the clock's creation will be published today (July 12, 2021) in Nature Aging. "Every year, the calendar tells us we're a year older," said David Furman, PhD, the study's senior author. "But not all humans age biologically at the same rate. You see this in the clinic -- some older people are extremely disease-prone, while others are the picture of health."

An inflammatory ageing clock can predict how strong your immune system is and when you'll become frail by analysing your blood, according to its developers. The AI-driven device can diagnose life-threatening illness years before any symptoms begin to develop, allow for early treatment and improved recovery. The system can also determine frailty levels in old age seven years in advance, say researchers from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California. The US team analysed blood samples from 1,001 individuals aged eight to 96 years as part of a project called '1000 Immunomes', to create a prediction score. It's even more accurate than the number of candles on your birthday cake, say scientists from Stanford University School of Medicine, who also worked on its development, as it is based on blood-borne proteins that drive chronic inflammation.

During President Obama's two terms in the White House, Jason Furman was a top economic policy adviser and a key voice on the growing importance of artificial intelligence. Furman served as deputy director of the National Economic Council before becoming chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. He also coauthored a report issued by the Obama administration in October 2016 that detailed the economic importance of AI to the US. Furman, who is now a professor of the practice of economic policy at Harvard, spoke to WIRED senior writer Will Knight. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

And with the proliferation of an AI-driven society, the social and economic value of such technology is also on the rise. In turn, harnessing and leveraging such technology needs to extend beyond the interests of venture capitalists, investment groups and entrepreneurs -- and also be a priority on a geopolitical scale. When the global economy starts to feel the shift ushered in with mass-adoption of AI, the United States needs to be leading the charge as opposed to chasing the pack. If the U.S. is to compete on a global level, they'll face an arms race of sorts from a litany of nations that are already doubling-down on the massive advantages that come with national AI proficiency. In fact, 18 different countries have launched national AI strategies, with government funding ranging from $20 million to almost $2 billion.

We may not be far into 2019, but the appetite for reports exploring the future of work shows little sign of abating. At the start of this year, the World Bank published a report that explored the changing nature of work. The report comes in at around 130 pages, so covers a lot of ground, from the changing nature of both work and firms to the need to strengthen social protection and support social inclusion. As many of my previous articles on this topic have looked at human capital, and especially lifelong learning, it was the section on that which caught my attention however. Recently I covered research highlighting the importance of creativity for many roles in the future of work, and the World Bank report echoes this, claiming that specific cognitive skills, such as problem solving, and sociobehavioral skills, such as creativity, are not only likely to be crucial skills to have, but are largely transferable across jobs.

America may be the current world leader in artificial intelligence, but its place is anything but assured. While nations around the world have launched programs to stimulate AI development, the Trump administration has practically ignored the topic. That changed today, when President Tump signed an executive order creating the "American AI Initiative" -- a high-level strategy guiding AI development within the US. But the program includes no new funding for AI development, and is thin on details. The administration is not sharing any timelines for reaching its stated goals, and is instead promising a more detailed plan some time in the coming six months.