In this post we conclude our summaries of the NeurIPS invited talks from the 2020 meeting. In this final instalment, we cover the talks by Marloes Maathuis (ETH Zurich) and Anthony M Zador (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory). Marloes began her talk on causal learning with a simple example of the phenomenon known as Simpson's paradox, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined. She also talked about the importance of considering causality when making decisions based on such data. Marloes went on to explain the difference between causal and non-causal questions. Non-causal questions are about predictions in the same system, for example, predicting the cancer rate among smokers.

Children are the best examples when it comes to someone learning new things on their own. As whatever they learn is unsupervised and mostly learned by themselves without expecting rewards, children are the best teachers for artificial intelligence. Louisa May Alcott said, "I am not afraid of storms for I am learning to sail my ship." It seems like in today's era, artificial intelligence (AI) is sailing in the same boat with us. However, considering the recent advancements artificial intelligence is having, it looks like, it still has many things to learn before coming close to humans. When we say close to humans, many think about mimicking human behaviour, but that not really is the case.

Elbowing your way through crowds can be slow going, but our ability to weave and dodge through a throng of people comes almost as second nature. For robots, however, this simple task can prove a major obstacle that currently limits their usefulness in public places. But now, a team from Stanford University says it has managed to create droid which is able to navigate down streets without mowing down people walking in the opposite direction, which make them better at making deliveries. The Jackrabbot is a robot designed by a team from Stanford University. It takes its name from the nimble yet shy Jackrabbit, which is often found on the university's campus.

Earlier this year a US tourist in Iceland drove 226 miles (364km) too far because he was following his sat nav. While tourists in Wales looking for the beautiful falls in Neath Valley often end up in a nearby cul-de-sac because the two locations share the same postcode. Although these stories are amusing, for everyone apart from those involved, they represent a worrying trend of people'over-relying' on GPS. Now an expert warns that it is not only making us lazy, this dependence could rob us of our innate navigation skills. Our increasing reliance on satellite navigation is coming at a cost and is harming our own ability to navigate, says satellite communication and navigation consultant Roger McKinlay.