If you've ever gone hiking, you know trails can be challenging and unpredictable. A path that was clear last week might be blocked today by a fallen tree. Poor maintenance, exposed roots, loose rocks, and uneven ground further complicate the terrain, making trails difficult for a robot to navigate autonomously. After a storm, puddles can form, mud can shift, and erosion can reshape the landscape. This was the fundamental challenge in our work: how can a robot perceive, plan, and adapt in real time to safely navigate hiking trails?

In March 2025, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), published a report on the Future of AI Research . The report, which was led by outgoing AAAI President Francesca Rossi covers 17 different AI topics and aims to clearly identify the trajectory of AI research in a structured way. As part of this project, members of the report team, and other selected AI practitioners, are taking part in a series of video panel discussions covering selected chapters from the report. In the third panel, the AI experts tackle the topic of AI reasoning. They consider the definition of reasoning, what reasoning is and what it should be in our AI models, planning techniques, model training, making smart (and not to smart choices) about which AI products to use, guarantees, why we shouldn't imitate human reasoning in AI models, thinking about the future, and more.

The 33rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-24) will be held in Jeju Island, South Korea from 3-9 August. The programme will feature keynote talks, panel discussions, tutorial, workshops, and oral and poster presentations. There will also be three special tracks, focussing on: AI, arts and creativity, AI for social good, and human-centred AI. There are six invited keynotes at this year's conference. These will be delivered from 6-9 August.

Hosted by The Alan Turing Institute, AI UK is a yearly event that brings together representatives from government, academia and industry to showcase data science and AI research and innovation in the UK. This year, the two-day conference (which took place on 19-20 March) featured talks, panel discussions, and hands-on workshops, and participants could attend in-person or remotely. Recordings from many of the sessions at the conference are now available to watch on the AI UK YouTube channel.

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has recently made remarkable progress in several application domains, such as games, finance, autonomous driving, and recommendation systems. However, the black-box nature of deep neural networks and the complex interaction among various factors raise challenges in understanding and interpreting the models' decision-making processes. This workshop brought together researchers, practitioners, and experts from both the DRL and the explainable AI communities to focus on methods, techniques, and frameworks that enhance the explainability and interpretability of DRL algorithms. The responsible language models (ReLM) workshop focused on the development, implementation, and applications of LMs aligned with responsible AI principles. Both theoretical and practical challenges regarding the design and deployment of responsible LMs were discussed, including bias identification and quantification, bias mitigation, transparency, privacy and security issues, hallucination, uncertainty quantification, and various other risks associated with LMs.

Luke Bryan speaks during the signing of the ELVIS Act to Protect Voice & amp; Likeness in Age of AI event at Robert's Western World on March 21, 2024, in Nashville, Tennessee. 'AMAZING PRECEDENT': Luke Bryan is celebrating new protections from artificial intelligence for musicians in Nashville. Luke Bryan has high praise for the Tennessee state government over its new AI regulation law. ELECTION THREAT: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described herself as a victim of election disinformation during a panel discussion on Thursday, and warned that the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) will make her experience "look primitive." LEVEL UP: Google has developed an artificial intelligence system that can play video games like a human and take orders from players and could eventually even have real-world implications down the line.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described herself as a victim of election disinformation during a panel discussion on Thursday, and warned that the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) will make her experience "look primitive." Clinton was taking part in a Columbia University event titled, "AI's Impact on the 2024 Global Elections." She discussed her own experience in 2016 when she lost to former President Donald Trump, pointing out that the internet was populated with memes, fake content and conspiracies about her in the lead-up to Election Day. "I don't think any of us understood it. I did not understand it. I can tell you, my campaign did not understand it. Their, you know, the so-called'Dark Web' was filled with these kinds of memes and stories and videos of all sorts…portraying me in all kinds of… less than flattering ways," Clinton said.

Hosted by The Alan Turing Institute, AI UK is a yearly event that brings together representatives from government, academia and industry to showcase data science and AI research and innovation in the UK. This year, the two-day conference featured talks, panel discussions, and hands-on workshops, and participants could attend in-person or remotely. One of the sessions focussed on an on-going case study in a London borough whereby the local council is using data and AI to help inform their decision making, and to improve what they do. Tariq set the scene by describing the borough of Camden, an area that not only houses institutions such as University College London and the Francis Crick Institute, and companies such as Google, but also some of the poorest communities in Europe. The council wants to tackle inequality and sees the use of data as one potential avenue.

The sixth AAAI/ACM Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, and Society (AIES) took place in Montreal, Canada, from 8-10 August 2023. The three-day event included keynote talks, contributed talks and poster sessions. There were also two panel discussions. The session was moderated by Alex John London (Carnegie Mellon University), and the panellists were: Roxana Daneshjou (Stanford), Atoosa Kasirzadeh (University of Edinburgh), Kate Larson (University of Waterloo) and Gary Marchant (Arizona State University). The panellists began by talking about some of their hopes for large languages models.

This year's Swiss Robotics Day – an annual event run by the EPFL-led National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Robotics – will be held at the Beaulieu convention center in Lausanne. For the first time, this annual event will take place over two days: the first day, on 4 November, will be reserved for industry professionals, while the second, on 5 November, will be open to the public. Visitors at this year's Swiss Robotics Day are in for a glimpse of some exciting new technology: a robotic exoskeleton that enables paralyzed patients to ski, a device the width of a strand of hair that can be guided through a human vein, a four-legged robot that can walk over obstacles, an artificial skin that can diagnose early-stage Parkinson's, a swarm of flying drones, and more. The event, now in its seventh year, was created by NCCR Robotics in 2015. It has expanded into a leading conference for the Swiss robotics industry, bringing together university researchers, businesses and citizens from across the country.