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Episode Summary: Few astrophysicists are as decorated as Martin Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, who was a primary contributor to the big-bang theory and named to the honorary position of UK's astronomer royal in 1995. His work has explored the intersections of science and philosophy,  as well as human beings’ contextual place in the universe. In his book "Our Final Century", published in 2003, Rees warned about the dangers of uncontrolled scientific advance, and argued that human beings have a 50 percent chance of surviving past the year 2100 as a direct result. In this episode, I asked him why he considers AI to be among one of the foremost existential risks that society should consider, as well as his thoughts around how we might best regulate AI and other emerging technologies in the nearer term.

From Silicon Valley to South Korea, artificial intelligence has been one of the hottest tech topics of the year. In fact, 2016 was meant to be “the year that virtual reality becomes reality”, and yet AI seems to be dominating the discussion. Now, top business schools around the world – from University of California, Berkeley to National University of Singapore – are turning to AI to help bolster their programs and train MBA students to apply machine learning processes to business problems.

Episode Summary: When we think about AI, we often think about optimizing some particular task. In most circumstances through computation there is an optimal chess move, or an optimal way to determine pattern in data, or solve a math problem, or route info through servers. Most of us are aware of these uses, but what about creative tasks? Can these also be optimized? If we want to give a computer information and tell it to create powerpoint slides, is there an optimal way to create such slides? Dr. Philippe Pasquier’s computational research is focused on artificial creativity. In this episode, we talk about how to define a very new field, train machines in this area, and also discuss trends and developments that might permit such technology to thrive in the next 10 years.

If you’re sick of selfie sticks, Boston-based software company Neurala may have an alternative for you. The Selfie Dronie is a paid mobile application compatible with Parrot Bebop drones that offers users a relatively hands free way to record selfies and dronies (those aerial shots often associated with extreme sports and Redbull advertisements).

In the first week of 2016, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced in a post that his goal for the year was to “build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work.” He clarified, "You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man.” Zuckerberg went on to describe his plan to explore presently available smart home technologies, implement them into his home, and train the system to coordinate with his family life and workaday. (Interestingly, Zuckerberg’s AI may utilize a number of devices, but he refers to the technology as a singular system, implying that he intends to develop a unified AI to oversee the many individual devices.)

Wall Street, venture capitalists, technology executives - all have important reasons to understand the growth and opportunity in the artificial intelligence market, but the inherent vagueness of the term makes any single valuation extremely difficult. Indeed, the term "artificial intelligence" is notorious for having a relatively amorphous definition.

Episode Summary: There’s a small lab in Pennsylvania that may know your gender, age, and understands facets about your personality, whether you’re introverted or extroverted, for example…and it's using machine learning to help make conclusions from social media information. For those who are raising an eyebrow, know that they’re not tapping into people’s accounts without permission. The described study is happening at University of Pennsylvania and is led in part by Dr. Lyle Ungar. In this episode, we talk about the focus of his work - on finding patterns between users and their language on social media content, and building an understanding for how this information might help individuals and communities in the future.

1 - Rebranding Artificial Intelligence: IBM Watson partners with Ogilvy & Mather

Before we welcome a new technology into our lives, it’s wise to consider what effect it will have on us as human beings. What might a technologically disruptive app do to our innate empathy or self-esteem? When that technology is so sophisticated to actually resemble human beings, this forethought is that much more important. Robots and artificial intelligence will disrupt the very fabric of society, and dramatically change the way we relate to technology and to each other. (In fact, they already are.) So preparing for this change is perhaps as important – if not more important – than the development of the technology itself.
In this vein, Brown University recently put their support behind the Humanity-Centered Robotics Initiative (HCRI), a faculty-lead effort to explore, uncover, and report on the many facets of integrating robotics into our everyday lives. As anyone who’s read Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke can attest, even if we’re very cautious, this integration has the potential to augment or destroy. HCRI hopes to anticipate this disruption and help engineers, researchers, and social scientists steer robotics in the most reasonably right direction.
“We want to leverage the atmosphere, interests, and talent at Brown University with the goal of creating robotic systems that work with people for the benefit of people,” computer science professor Michael Littman told Emerj. "And we’re dedicated to understanding what the actual problems are – not just to create fancy technology, but actually to try to understand where the difficulties and short comings are and to focus on those.”
HCRI’s focus will be split into six, collaborative research focuses: robots for scientific research; motion systems science; design and making; perception and decision-making; robots for independent living; and ethics, policy, and security. Combining elements of design and making with ethics, policy, and security, one DARPA-funded project plans to explore ways of engineering robots that have some awareness of social norms. 
Littman co-founded HCRI with Professor Bertrand Malle three years ago, with the intent to focus a number of academic perspectives on robotics and collaborate in the process. Brown’s recent support now allows Littman and Malle to bring an associate director and a postdoctoral researcher on board, as well as offer seed funds to new robotics research and symposia. Already, two HCRI-sponsored symposia have brought more than 60 Brown faculty members from 20 teams together in the interest of a better robotic future. 

In the ongoing "pop culture" debate as to whether or not the pursuit of AI will result in Terminators that destroy humanity, there are many other more informed and nuanced discussions occurring in academic and business circles about the consequences and implications of continued advances in AI. A surprising number of legitimate AI researchers are of the belief that many of us will live to see "conscious" artificial intelligence in our lifetime.