Next year may be the year of the robot lover. While many increasingly fear automation in the workplace, some futurists predict the machines will come for our love lives in 2025. This new year marks the date futurist Dr Ian Pearson anticipated humanity'will start to see some forms of robot sex appearing in high-income, very wealthy households.' And the physics and math PhD, who has boasted of having an 85 percent accuracy rate for his forecasts, argues women might overtake men in the adoption of sex robots by 2025 -- in part, because they already have a technological head start. 'Vibrators have been around for over a century,' Dr Pearson noted, 'but now the vibrant sex toy industry doesn't just make standalone devices, but teledildonic devices that bring all the fun and functionality of computing and networks to sex too.' First conceived in 1975, 'teledildonics' has become the technical term of art for mechanical sex toys that operate remotely, whether via the internet or otherwise.

Interest in the possibilities afforded by algorithms and big data continues to blossom as early adopters gain benefits from AI systems that automate decisions as varied as making customer recommendations, screening job applicants, detecting fraud, and optimizing logistical routes.1 But when AI applications fail, they can do so quite spectacularly.2 Consider the recent example of Australia's "robodebt" scandal.3 In 2015, the Australian government established its Income Compliance Program, with the goal of clawing back unemployment and disability benefits that had been made inappropriately to recipients. It set out to identify overpayments by analyzing discrepancies between the annual income that individuals reported and the income assessed by the Australian Tax Office.

The history of decision-making has always been intrinsically tied to the history of technology. Charts and compasses have guided explorers for centuries, and a level is an indispensable instrument for construction workers. New tools allow us to make more informed choices which, in turn, may positively impact technological advancements. This dependence suggests that a change in the technological landscape will have implications in how we make decisions. The last half-century has seen one of the most radical revolutions: the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI), powered by the ever-increasing data we gather.

The algorithms meant to make life easy could further divide us if we're not paying attention The current moment is asking us to evaluate almost every systemic issue in our society. While it might be uncomfortable, the only way through it is to look at the systems that control who wins and who loses and ask, "are they biased?" It's convenient to think that our work in technology is above these issues. A lot of folks in tech do this work to change the world or help communities in need. But just like the rest of society, we need to take this moment of self-reflection seriously, lest our failures are judged by the next generation as harshly as we're judging our elders now.

Energized by a nearly all-female lineup of researchers and activists, the film condemns the ways racism and classism underpin big data’s design and applications.

Back in 2016, Juan Pablo Torres-Padilla, who has been the CEO of an artificial intelligence (AI) company in France and has held other key positions in the telecommunications and financial investment world, decided to take the opportunity to buy the historic Napa Valley 26 acre Sullivan Rutherford Estate from the Sullivan family, the custodians of that piece of land for over 40 years. It would prove to be a good partnership in terms of handing over the estate to someone who not only wanted to bring this winery more to the forefront of the Napa fine wine world but that the history and legacy would be appreciated and built upon. The estate lies on land that has a deep and rich history which goes back almost two centuries to 1821 when Mexico took over ownership of Napa Valley from Spain. Mexico divided the Napa Valley into two parts: Rancho Carne Humana in the North and Rancho Caymus in the South. Sullivan Rutherford Estate director of winemaking, Jeff Cole, said that they are "essentially in the middle of the heart of Napa Valley vineyards" since the back of the border of their estate is along the Rancho Caymus line as it is right in the middle of where the property lines of Rancho Caymus and Rancho Carne Humana meet.

We humans make sense of the world by looking for patterns, filtering them through what we think we already know, and making decisions accordingly. When we talk about handing decisions off to AI, we expect it to do the same, only better. Machine learning does, in fact, have the potential to be a tremendous force for good. Humans are hindered by both their unconscious assumptions and their simple inability to process huge amounts of information. Artificial intelligence (AI), on the other hand, can be taught to filter irrelevancies out of the decision-making process, pluck the most suitable candidates from a haystack of résumés, and guide us based on what it calculates is objectively best rather than simply what we've done in the past.

Lawmakers in several European countries are passing or considering legislation to keep algorithms in check. How it will be enforced, and by whom, is still unclear. From ensuring that autonomous cars are programmed not to run over pedestrians to preventing recommendations algorithms from radicalizing users, algorithmic accountability is high on the agenda of governments and lawmakers across the world. But legislation is nothing without enforcement. It is clear that street-level police officers will not able to tell a rogue algorithm from a legal one.

Data science consultant Cathy O'Neil helps companies audit their algorithms for a living. And when it comes to how algorithms and artificial intelligence can enable bias in the job hiring process, she said the biggest issue isn't even with the employers themselves. A new Illinois law that aims to help job seekers understand how AI tools are used to evaluate them in video interviews recently resurfaced the debate over AI's role in recruiting. But O'Neil believes the law tries to tackle bias too late in the process. "The problem actually lies before the application comes in. The problem lies in the pipeline to match job seekers with jobs," said O'Neil, founder and CEO of O'Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing.

More women and minorities must work in tech, or else they risk being left behind in every industry. This grim future was painted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) equality experts who spoke at a conference Thursday hosted by LivePerson, an AI company that connects brands and consumers. In that future, if AI goes unchecked, workplaces will be completely homogenous, hiring only white, nondisabled men. "In this bleak depiction of our future, decades of fights for civil rights and equality have been unwritten in a few lines of code," said EqualAI executive director Miriam Vogel at the conference in Brooklyn, N.Y., called "Boundary Breakers: Women Driving The Future of Tech." Women and minorities are not building AI, and therefore, they are not being represented in popular algorithm-based products, according to Vogel.