The U.S. Air Force now has the capability to use facial recognition on drones that could target specific people. Special operations forces can use the drones to gather intelligence and to aid in other missions, according to a contract first spotted by New Scientist. It's part of a growing movement to develop automated weaponry that raises legal and ethical questions. The drone software maker, Seattle-based firm RealNetworks, claims the uncrewed craft will use artificial intelligence (AI) to fly itself and discriminate between friend and foe. The company has said that its software can also be used for rescue missions, perimeter protection, and domestic search operations.

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. In just a short number of years, deep learning algorithms have evolved to be able to beat the world's best players at board games and recognize faces with the same accuracy as a human (or perhaps even better). But mastering the unique and far-reaching complexities of human language has proven to be one of AI's toughest challenges. Could that be about to change? The ability for computers to effectively understand all human language would completely transform how we engage with brands, businesses, and organizations across the world.

The human brain seems to care a lot about faces. It's dedicated a specific area to identifying them, and the neurons there are so good at their job that most of us can readily recognize thousands of individuals. With artificial intelligence, computers can now recognize faces with a similar efficiency -- and neuroscientists at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research have found that a computational network trained to identify faces and other objects discovers a surprisingly brain-like strategy to sort them all out. The finding, reported March 16 in Science Advances, suggests that the millions of years of evolution that have shaped circuits in the human brain have optimized our system for facial recognition. "The human brain's solution is to segregate the processing of faces from the processing of objects," explains Katharina Dobs, who led the study as a postdoc in the lab of McGovern investigator Nancy Kanwisher, the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT.

In addition to new outfits and backpacks, face masks are now an essential addition to kids' back-to-school gear. According to new guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, all students and staff should wear masks inside schools, regardless of vaccination status. But kids used to virtual learning may not have much experience interacting or communicating with their peers or teachers while masked. And parents and child development experts alike are wondering how that will affect children as they return to school. For instance, to assess whether kids can accurately interpret a masked person's emotions, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Child Emotion Lab showed children ages seven to 13 pictures of people displaying different emotions.

In just a short number of years, deep learning algorithms have evolved to be able to beat the world's best players at board games and recognize faces with the same accuracy as a human (or perhaps even better). But mastering the unique and far-reaching complexities of human language has proven to be one of AI's toughest challenges. Could that be about to change? The ability for computers to effectively understand all human language would completely transform how we engage with brands, businesses, and organizations across the world. Nowadays most companies don't have time to answer every customer question.

It's been ten years since Microsoft launched the Kinect camera and it lived quite a life. The Xbox 360 peripheral became a key part of the whole Xbox platform and then years later, almost just as quickly, faded into obscurity. It may not have been the enduring success Microsoft was hoping for, but its legacy is bigger than you might first think. Kinect launched in 2010 and seven years and two versions later, Microsoft stopped making the gear. A year later and the company stopped offering the accessory for newer Xbox consoles.

Their lifeless eyes peer from building facades, lampposts and streetlight poles. They never sleep, never even blink. And now, enabled by advances in computing power and artificial intelligence, surveillance cameras can do more than just watch. They can recognize, and they can remember. The district attorney for Pennsylvania's second-most-populous county has assembled a network of advanced surveillance cameras in and around Pittsburgh and has enlisted colleagues in four surrounding counties to extend its reach into their jurisdictions.

Algorithms modeled loosely on the brain have helped artificial intelligence take a giant leap forward in recent years. Those algorithms, in turn, have advanced our understanding of human intelligence while fueling discoveries in a range of other fields. MIT founded the Quest for Intelligence to apply new breakthroughs in human intelligence to AI, and use advances in AI to push human intelligence research even further. This fall, nearly 50 undergraduates joined MIT's human-machine intelligence quest under the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). Students worked on a mix of projects focused on the brain, computing, and connecting computing to disciplines across MIT.

Anki's new robo-assistant is no Alexa or Google Home – and that's exactly what gives Vector its charm. The firm released its adorable bot this month after a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, which raked in over $1,800,000 from thousands of backers. Unlike other home AI on the market, which make efforts to mask their robotic personalities in sleek packaging, Vector fully embraces its sci-fi inspiration to give you an emotive, free-roaming helper that goes out of its way to stand out. Anki has released its adorable bot this month after a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, which raked in over $1,800,000 from thousands of backers. Vector is capable of taking on many of the basic tasks you might ask of Siri; the $250 robot can tell you the weather, set timers, and look up the answers to your questions, be it the date of the upcoming full moon or the amount of calories in a given snack.

The facial-recognition cameras installed near the bounce houses at the Warehouse, an after-school recreation center in Bloomington, Indiana, are aimed low enough to scan the face of every parent, teenager and toddler who walks in. The center's director, David Weil, learned earlier this year of the surveillance system from a church newsletter, and within six weeks he had bought his own, believing it promised a security breakthrough that was both affordable and cutting-edge. Since last month, the system has logged thousands of visitors' faces – alongside their names, phone numbers and other personal details – and checked them against a regularly updated blacklist of sex offenders and unwanted guests. The system's Israeli developer, Face-Six, also promotes it for use in prisons and drones. "Some parents still think it's kind of '1984,' " said Weil, whose 21-month-old granddaughter is among the scanned.