SOFIA (Bulgaria), October 23 (SeeNews) - Artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to create new jobs and affect industries in the future while changing the skillsets required from potential employees, industry representatives said on Wednesday. Rather than posing a risk to employment in the future, AI offers a set of opportunities as it will expand industries and provide employees with occupational options not existing today, AI industry representatives said during a conference in Sofia hosted by Hewlett Packard Enterprise operated by Selectium. "It is not about losing or gaining – it is about shifting skills. There will be some industries or some sectors that will suffer, however it is not a threat but an opportunity," Jim Neenan, a Business Solution Architect at U.S.-headquartered cloud infrastructure and digital workspace technology company VMware, said. "It will be a fatigue process, but it definitely shouldn't cross our hands," Neenan added.

From the critical, like law enforcement, healthcare, and humanitarian aid, to the mundane, like dating and shopping, artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be the answer to all our problems. AI is a catch-all phrase for a wide-ranging set of technologies most of which apply learning techniques from statistics to find patterns in large sets of data and make predictions based on those patterns. It seems like there are meetings every other week, organised by representatives from industry, government, academia, and civil society to address the perils of AI and formulate solutions to harness its potential. But who is driving the regulatory agenda and what do they stand to gain? This question needs to be answered because letting industry needs drive the AI agenda presents real risks.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. "Hello, and welcome [to] Mars!" From a flash of blush-tinted light appears Saeed, a shimmering, trim-bearded, space-suited projection of a man, with the disconcerting proportions and awkward gestures of a 2002-era video game character. But it's not 2002--Saeed is the first person you encounter in a virtual reality experience set in 2057, a fanciful ambassador welcoming you, virtual visitor, to your "second home" on Mars. Saeed, and the dusty virtual landscape he guides you through, are creations of the United Arab Emirates. In the fall of 2017, the UAE released this particular VR experience to promote its plans for a mission to Mars (anticipated launch 2021) and the Mars Science City, a simulated habitation slated for construction in the Emirati desert.

Faculty, students, and industry representatives packed MIT's Grier Room on Thursday, Dec. 4, to learn about new research in robotics, machine learning, wireless power transfer, synthetic biology, and more -- all being conducted by undergraduates through the groundbreaking SuperUROP program within the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). "My feeling is some of this work is as good as master's-quality research. It's very good stuff," said Vincent Chan, the Joan and Irwin M. Jacobs Professor of Electrical Engineering and Aeronautics and Astronautics, who is advising two SuperUROP students this year. "We are creating a community of scholars. As they are exposed to the breadth of research in EECS, their excitement and enthusiasm to engage in research and innovation is contagious," said Anantha Chandrakasan, the Joseph F. and Nancy P. Keithley Professor of Electrical Engineering and EECS department head, who launched the year-long SuperUROP research program in 2012 to expand the experience familiar to many through MIT's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP).