Month: December 2015

1. The Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment In January, Citibank helped establish this programme, to be led by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, authors of a famous paper on AI-driven automation. The programme is monitoring changes in the labour market, and watching for signs of irreversible technological unemployment. 2. Google open-sources Tensor Flow In September, Google announced an important change in strategy. Having built a very lucrative online advertising business based on algorithms and hardware which produced better AI than anyone else, it was open sourcing its current best AI software – a deep learning engine called...

Sorry, but I couldn't resist sharing this.  "Surviving AI" is the Christmas Number One.* A very Merry Christmas to you, and a Happy New Year! * On Amazon's top 100 new releases in AI and Machine Learning.  (On Christmas Eve, anyway.)  

It's great news that the Leverhulme Trust is granting £10m to Cambridge University's Centre for the Study of Existential Risks (CSER).  The money will fund an important new interdisciplinary research centre, the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, to explore the opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence, both short and long term. Dr Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh. CSER's Executive Director, says that the Centre will look “at themes such as different kinds of intelligence, responsible development of technology, and issues surrounding autonomous weapons and drones." Prominent figures associated with CSER include professor Stuart Russell, a world-leading AI researcher at the...