One of the four pillars of good conversation is levity. You needn't be a comedian, you can but have some fun Conversation lies at the heart of our relationships – yet many of us find it surprisingly hard to talk to others. We may feel anxious at the thought of making small talk with strangers and struggle to connect with the people who are closest to us. If that sounds familiar, Alison Wood Brooks hopes to help. She is a professor at Harvard Business School, where she teaches an oversubscribed course called "TALK: How to talk gooder in business and life", and the author of a new book, Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves.

Artificial Intelligence systems are rapidly evolving, integrating extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. While these frameworks offer benefits, they risk misalignment at the algorithmic level while appearing superficially aligned with human values. In this paper, we argue that an intrinsic motivation for kindness is crucial for making sure these models are intrinsically aligned with human values. We argue that kindness, defined as a form of altruism motivated to maximize the reward of others, can counteract any intrinsic motivations that might lead the model to prioritize itself over human well-being. Our approach introduces a framework and algorithm for embedding kindness into foundation models by simulating conversations. Limitations and future research directions for scalable implementation are discussed.

In human societies, people often incorporate fairness in their decisions and treat reciprocally by being kind to those who act kindly. They evaluate the kindness of others' actions not only by monitoring the outcomes but also by considering the intentions. This behavioral concept can be adapted to train cooperative agents in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning (MARL). We propose the KindMARL method, where agents' intentions are measured by counterfactual reasoning over the environmental impact of the actions that were available to the agents. More specifically, the current environment state is compared with the estimation of the current environment state provided that the agent had chosen another action. The difference between each agent's reward, as the outcome of its action, with that of its fellow, multiplied by the intention of the fellow is then taken as the fellow's "kindness". If the result of each reward-comparison confirms the agent's superiority, it perceives the fellow's kindness and reduces its own reward. Experimental results in the Cleanup and Harvest environments show that training based on the KindMARL method enabled the agents to earn 89\% (resp. 37\%) and 44% (resp. 43\%) more total rewards than training based on the Inequity Aversion and Social Influence methods. The effectiveness of KindMARL is further supported by experiments in a traffic light control problem.

I want to share an experiment with you. The latest posts have been a streak of not-so-good news, non-optimistic takes, and anti-hype arguments. I think it's paramount to talk about all that, but it's as important to let a positive vibe out every so often. Otherwise, we risk burning out--and I don't want that! That's why today I bring you a different perspective on AI.

Albert Einstein once said: "The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty and Truth." You don't often hear these words in the digital world. How do we integrate these life essentials in technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, edge computing, internet of things (IoT) and data at scale? Technology, after all, makes things less personal, right? One company is working hard to disprove this assumption.

Do you have any favorite internal affirmations or mantras you like to offer students to help them feel confident in the face of potential bullies or put-downs? I'm trying to help out my elementary schooler. Right now I'm thinking of sayings along the lines of "I am awesome just as I am," or "I will not let others define me." Additionally, if there are any great all-purpose verbal comebacks or responses that might be applied generally, those would be helpful and welcome as well. Really, I welcome any suggestions you have for helping my child muster up confidence (with kindness). I speak to my students about this all the time.

If, through biotechnology, we could drastically enhance ourselves--such that our ability to absorb and manipulate information was unlimited, we experienced no disquiet, and we did not age--would we? For advocates of radical enhancement, or "transhumanism," answering "yes" is a no-brainer. Accordingly, they press for the development of technologies that, by manipulating genes and the brain, would create beings fundamentally superior to us. Transhumanism is far from a household term, but, whether or not they use the word publicly, its adherents are in places of power, especially in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk, the world's richest person, is devoted to boosting "cognition" and co-founded the company Neuralink toward that end.

Picture yourself driving on a narrow road in the near future when suddenly another car emerges from a bend ahead. It is a self-driving car with no passengers inside. Will you push forth and assert your right of way, or give way to let it pass? At present, most of us behave kindly in such situations involving other humans. Will we show that same kindness towards autonomous vehicles?

Humans expect that AI is benevolent and trustworthy. A new study reveals that at the same time humans are unwilling to cooperate and compromise with machines. Picture yourself driving on a narrow road in the near future when suddenly another car emerges from a bend ahead. It is a self-driving car with no passengers inside. Will you push forth and assert your right of way, or give way to let it pass?

Suzanne is a global expert and proven strategic marketing and communications lead on strategic initiatives for corporations, start-ups, non-profits, and the community. Suzanne's most recent project is Mindful Mornings Miami, the hottest new one-hour talk show on independent JoltRadio. With a reach of over 200,000, the show focuses on what it means to wake up and live in the world today. We have the pleasure of welcoming Suzanne Jewell to our interview series, I am Aishwarya Jain from the peopleHum team before we begin just a quick introduction of peopleHum, peopleHum is an end-to-end, one-view, integrated Human Capital Management automation platform, the winner of the 2019 global Codie Award for HCM that is specifically built for crafted employee experiences and the future of work with AI and automation technologies. We run the peopleHum blog and video channel which receives upwards of 200,000 visitors a year and publish around 2 interviews with well-known names globally, every month. We're thrilled to have you on our series. Awesome to be here and welcome to everyone, and my first wish is that everyone is awake, aware and well, today! Thank you so much for that. You know, my experience of living in one place and working on pretty much every other continent on the planet really made me aware that I was always in, kind of autopilot. The media tends to do that, both in the way that it bombards us. And I find that I personally was really being the same way, and so, in that regard for me, mindfulness became a way to really get present to what was going on wherever I happen to be on the planet for my GPS location, but also where my head and my mind and my body is located. The most recent Harvard study actually shows that 47% of the time that we're out of bed and awakened vertical, our mind and our body are actually not in the same place.