Establishing an AI code of ethics will be harder than people think

Ethics are too subjective to guide the use of AI, argue some legal scholars. Read more »

Why we can’t quit the QWERTY keyboard

We’ve been using it to type for 144 years. Here’s why it works, and what it would take for us to give it up. Read more »

Neural networks don’t understand what optical illusions are

Machine-vision systems can match humans at recognizing faces and can even create realistic synthetic faces. But researchers have discovered that the same systems cannot recognize optical illusions, which means they also can’t... Read more »

The US military wants to teach AI some basic common sense

Even the best AI programs still make stupid mistakes. So DARPA is launching a competition to remedy the field’s most glaring flaw. Read more »

Waymo’s cars drive 10 million miles a day in a perilous virtual world

A simulation lets autonomous cars experience situations that are too dangerous to try in reality. Read more »

The demise of Rethink Robotics shows how hard it is to make machines truly smart

The company’s easy-to-use robots helped kick-start a big trend. So what happened? Read more »

Even the best AI for spotting fake news is still terrible

It should be possible to automatically identify dubious news sources—but we’ll need a lot more data. Read more »

New autonomous farm wants to produce food without human workers

Down on a new robot farm, machines tend rows of leafy greens under the watch of software called “The Brain”. Read more »

The US is hastening its own decline in AI, says a top Chinese investor

The White House should worry less about China’s progress, and invest heavily in artificial intelligence breakthroughs, according to Kai-Fu Lee. Read more »

Three robot advances that’ll be needed for DARPA’s new underground challenge

What kind of robot could handle this impossible-seeming cave mission? Read more »