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Apple's recent acquisition of UK-based speech recognition company VocalIQ was done in as mysterious a manner as any of their other acquisitions, with no overt explanation from Apple, and no open reply from the acquired team.

Episode Summary: After receiving her PhD in Computer Science from the University of New York in 2002, Dr. Sheryl Brahnam's research interests steered her toward studying human abuse and misuse with computers, specifically conversational agents such as Siri, phone-based auto agent systems, and even chat support. Her research yields questions in relative new territory: Are AI prone to receiving misuse?; why do people misuse these agents in ways that they would not treat a human?; and, what types of regulations will we need as AI improves and becomes more intelligent?

 
 1 - Google Reveals Its New "RankBrain" Artificial Intelligence System

If you could fill your home with customizable, instantly change-able virtual decorations that looked completely real, would you ever buy physical home goods?

Episode Summary: Dr. Joscha Bach is a software developer and researcher, who is currently developing a cognitive AI framework at  MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. In this episode, he speaks about the troubles in projecting when strong AI may be developed, and sheds light on the trends taking us there, including deep and reinforcement learning.

1 - A Google researcher said that we’ll become ‘highly dependent’ on artificial intelligence in the near future

Ever since Star Wars depicted its heroes on holograms, the 3D images have been a staple to popular (albeit sci-fi) culture. Then in 2012 when rapper Tuac was resurrected as a hologram to perform at Coachella a wave of interest in holographic technology spread from sci-fi buffs to hip hop fans and beyond. This interest saw a sudden surge of hologram projects – even ones letting you create holograms with your smart phone.

Controlling your feelings, adding or removing memories at will, and controlling our devices telepathically... is this purely the world of science fiction? Evidently not:

Episode Summary:
Is it possible to make AI friendly to humans via software or will we have to hardwire consideration for humanity into an advanced AI? Louis Del Monte, best-selling author and expert in the field of Artificial Intelligence, argues the latter. In this discussion, Del Monte talks about how he came to these conclusions and wrote a book on the topic, in part inspired by a particular AI study that provoked his grave concern for where AI may take us in the future.

There's hardly any theme more played out than the Skynet scenario when it comes to robotics. While military robots (and the AI required to provide them with the kind of autonomy) is likely an impossibility at least in the next decade, the last decade of  AI and robotics are impressive, and worth checking out.