Lifeboat Foundation

AI-powered robots may soon be doing some procedures faster, more accurately and with fewer complications than humans.

• By Sandip S. Panesar on December 27, 2018

In factories across the world, machines are beginning to work more intimately with humans without sending them to the unemployment line—or the grave.

Behind the broad, swift market slide of 2018 is an underlying new reality: Roughly 85% of all trading is on autopilot—controlled by machines, models, or passive investing formulas, creating an unprecedented trading herd that moves in unison and is blazingly fast.

The majority of trades come from machines, models, or passive investing formulas that move in unison and blazingly fast. This quarter’s sharp declines are symptoms of the modern market’s sensitivities, the same ones that drove gains through the first three-quarters of the year.

The stunning success of AlphaZero, a deep-learning algorithm, heralds a new age of insight — one that, for humans, may not last long.

Facial recognition is going mainstream. The technology is increasingly used by law-enforcement agencies and in schools, casinos and retail stores, spurring privacy concerns. In this episode of Moving Upstream, WSJ’s Jason Bellini tests out the technology at an elementary school in Seattle and visits a company that claims its algorithm can identify potential terrorists by their facial features alone.

This working document constitutes a draft of the AI Ethics Guidelines produced by the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI HLEG), of which a final version is due in March 2019.

Software makers offer more transparent machine-learning tools—but there’s a trade-off.

A bug’s life doesn’t seem half bad, if you can overlook the super-short lifespan or the threat of getting eaten by lizards or swatted at by humans. Flying is nice, as is being able to walk on ceilings. The versatility is enviable, which is why roboticists are on a quest to imbue machines with the power of the bug.

But to harness the powers of nature, roboticists are resorting to very un-biological means. The latest insect-inspired robot tackles the problem of walking upside down using not glue, or a material that mimics the pad of a gecko’s foot as past bot builders have done, but electricity. Specifically, electroadhesion.

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Disney’s wall-riding robot.