In the EXPONENTIAL MINDS’ Artificial Intelligence Bulletin – Don’t Hate Watson we see a critique of IBM Watson, how raising the minimum wage ushers in automation of human work, space systems changing, safe jobs, and quotes about AI.

Why Everyone Is Hating on IBM Watson—Including the People Who Helped Make It

You’ve probably seen the Watson commercials, where what looks like a sentient box interacts with celebrities like Bob Dylan, Carrie Fisher, and Serena Williams; or doctors; or a young cancer survivor. Maybe you caught the IBM artificial intelligence technology’s appearance in H&R Block’s Super Bowl commercial starring Jon Hamm. “It is one of the most powerful tools our species has created. It helps doctors fight disease,” Hamm says. “It can predict global weather patterns. It improves education for children everywhere. And now we unleash it on your taxes.”
In the commercial, which advertises what is essentially a smart tax prep service, Watson is portrayed as a glowing sci-fi cube that holds the key to humankind’s greatest problems. But it’s not a wizard. And lately, several experts from Silicon Valley and Wall Street have spoken up, criticizing the people behind the curtain—asking if Watson is a joke or a savior for IBM. So why is everyone being so tough on Big Blue and its golden child?
Read more at Gizmodo

Robots Will be the Surprising Ripple Effect of a Minimum Wage Hike

The minimum wage is a controversial economic question, but a new study has found that raising it could have a ripple effect on the economy that would have been hard to predict a few years ago: Robots.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and while some states pay more per hour, a 2015 Economic Policy Institute study showed that it’s next to impossibleto raise an average American family — two parents, two children — on minimum wage salaries. Because of this, workers across the nation want a higher wage, but according to a new study published Tuesday, the higher the minimum wage gets, the more likely low-income workers are to find their job has been taken by a robot or automated system.

Read more at Inverse

Beyond HAL: How artificial intelligence is changing space systems

Mars 2020 is an ambitious mission. NASA plans to gather 20 rock cores and soil samples within 1.25 Mars years, or about 28 Earth months — a task that would be impossible without artificial intelligence because the rover would waste too much time waiting for instructions.
It currently takes the Mars Science Laboratory team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory eight hours to plan daily activities for the Curiosity rover before sending instructions through NASA’s over-subscribed Deep Space Network. Program managers tell the rover when to wake up, how long to warm up its instruments and how to steer clear of rocks that damage its already beat-up wheels.
Mars 2020 will need far more autonomy. “Missions are paced by the number of times the ground is in the loop,” said Jennifer Trosper, Mars Science Laboratory mission manager. “The more the rover can do on its own, the more it can get done.”
Read more at Space News

Four jobs artificial intelligence (AI) won’t destroy

Given the trajectory that artificial intelligence is on, machines will soon do everything that people do today. In a world of increasingly powerful technology, which in aggregate will make the world a better, richer place but at the micro, personal level will make a lot of skills less relevant and less valuable, it is smart to try to figure out how to “beat the bot”. These are four areas and skills that are “AI-proof” – well, at least for a little while…

• Data science
• Cybersecurity
• Design
• Strategy

Read more at the Telegraph

28 Best Quotes About Artificial Intelligence

When it comes to the possibilities and possible perils of artificial intelligence (AI), learning and reasoning by machines without the intervention of humans, there are lots of opinions out there. Only time will tell which one of these quotes will be the closest to our future reality. Until we get there, it’s interesting to contemplate who might be the one who predicts our reality the best.
“The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race….It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete, and would be superseded.”— Stephen Hawking told the BBC
Read more at Forbes