Dozens of contract journalists at Microsoft's MSN and Microsoft News organizations are being phased out in favor of artificial intelligence, according to multiple reports this week. Between Wednesday and Thursday, roughly 50 staffers received the news that their contracts would not be renewed after their June 30 expiration date. All are employed through outside agencies, including 27 writers with the UK's PA Media Group, according to a Guardian report. "Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement via the Seattle Times. "This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time to time, re-deployment in others. These decisions are not the result of the current pandemic."

Microsoft will not renew the contracts for about 50 news production contractors, who were told that they would no longer be needed beyond June 30, multiple sources told the Seattle Times. The workers are tasked with identifying trending news stories from publishing partners, and optimizing content by rewriting headlines or improving accompanying images. The manual curation of articles allowed for clear and appropriate headlines, while avoiding unreliable sources and highlighting content from smaller outlets. Full-time news producers who are performing the same functions will be retained, but all contracted news producer jobs were eliminated. Some of the contractors, who wish to remain anonymous, told the Seattle Times that A.I. will take over their responsibilities at MSN.

Hear experts tackle some of the most important questions of our time in an interactive symposium that explores whether artificial intelligence (AI) will make the work of tomorrow better or worse. Attendees from a wide range of industries will brainstorm solutions that could ease the transition into a working world with a greater reliance on AI. Are you worried artificial intelligence (AI) technology is coming for your job? Do you work in tech and wonder why people fear AI? On Nov. 6, The A.I. Age, a reporting project of The Seattle Times, will host a discussion that explores whether AI will make the working world better or worse. This is your chance to share those existential quandaries that Amazon's Alexa couldn't answer.

On a recent afternoon at the NVIDIA robotics research lab in Seattle's University District, researchers use a simulated kitchen to test robots' ability to perform simple tasks such as grabbing objects. A 5-feet 7-inch tall white robot, basically a spindly arm affixed with a claw of the sort customarily found in an arcade vending machine, glided around the kitchen on its two Segway wheels. Following the command of a research scientist sitting at a nearby computer, the robot grabbed a Cheez-It box on the counter and extended its limb to gently place the snacks inside a cabinet. "What's deceptive is that what's simple to us in the kitchen is challenging for a robot," said University of Washington Computer Science and Engineering Professor Dieter Fox, who also serves as the lab's senior director of robotics research. The Silicon Valley-based technology company opened the robotics lab last fall to harness the UW's talent in a sector where Seattle plays a central role. Still, paranoia around the capabilities of AI technology persist.

The sprawling Amazon fulfillment center in DuPont, Washington, seems more like the set of a science fiction flick than a warehouse crammed with consumer goods. Thousands of bright orange robots haul heavy stacks of pallets and packages across the slick concrete floor, while hulking yellow robotic arms retrieve and return inventory to sky-high shelves. Yet human workers still roam the DuPont center, fulfilling tasks too complex or granular for the center's fleet of automatons. Around 500 full-time employees help decide which boxes go where and how to arrange products. Unlike the robots, the humans have two key tools -- hands -- for essential warehouse operations like packaging and stowing goods.

Since 1995, Sapp said, MILA has invested $50 million in a software system that relies on artificial intelligence to automate the underwriting process. Mortgage brokers use the program to enter a borrower's income, length of employment and other financial data up to 250 parameters in all to get a commitment on a loan within 10 seconds.

Amazon has added more soldiers to its robot army over the past year. The e-commerce giant now has 45,000 robots shuffling products around 20 distributions centers. This is a 50 percent increase from the 2015 holiday season when the company reported 30,000 robots were working side-by-side with 230,000 human employees. Amazon has added more soldiers to its robot army over the past year. The e-commerce giant now has 45,000 robots shuffling products around 20 distributions centers.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, neuroscience and robotics have stimulated the birth and growth of a new research field, known as computational autonomous mental development. Although human mental development is a wellknown subject of study, e.g., in developmental psychology, computational studies of A brief discussion of the subject is available in an article appeared in Science, available electronically at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/dl/SciencePaper.pdf. More than 11.2 Man and Machine Take the Field, red eye, behind which lurked an unfathomable million trucks entered the United David Olson, The Seattle Times (August intelligence. "The soccer games may be the computer has become more alien Service. But help is at hand, just for fun, but the technology used still. Kubrick had no inkling of the thanks to a maturing computer technology to create and operate the players could networked computer, with its potential with the capability of finding also help build robots to rescue victims for massively distributed intelligence. Known as machine learning president of the RoboCup Federation." of the grander design, just as a or neural networks, such technology Robots Scour WTC Wreckage, Leander single ant has no comprehension of uses the power of computer processing Kahney, Wired News (September the intelligence of the colony.