Each week on a Wednesday Nikolas Badminton, Futurist highlights the top stories from the past week relating to the incredible rise of artificial intelligence and its application in society, the workplace, in cities, and in our lives.
In Artificial Intelligence Bulletin – Kurzweil, Cybersecurity, and Jobs we see stories about Ray Kurzweil sharing his thoughts, machines involved in cybersecurity, jobs being replaced by AI, and cars with emotion.

Ray Kurzweil Interviewed By Steven Chu

Here’s a great discussion on AI, the Singularity, transhumanism, nanorobotics, and ethical values with Ray Kurzweil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfChAecXzQI

Machines v. hackers: Cybersecurity’s artificial intelligence future

Read more at CS Monitor

10 jobs that A.I. and chatbots are poised to eventually replace

If you’re a web designer, you’ve been warned.
Now there is an A.I. that can do your job. Customers can direct exactly how their new website should look. Fancy something more colorful? You got it. Less quirky and more professional? Done. This A.I. is still in a limited beta but it iscoming. It’s called The Grid and it came out of nowhere. It makes you feel like you are interacting with a human counterpart. And it works.
Artificial intelligence has arrived. Time to sharpen up those resumes.
Today, A.I. researchers can mine a mountain of Internet usage data. In the past, technological leaps primarily sent blue-collar workers packing. Recent progress with artificial intelligence, however, has put a shocking amount of professional, salaried careers on the chopping block.
Studies show that almost every other thing professionals do on an average workday can already be automated by A.I. The BBC even predicted that nearly half of the most commonly held careers are above a 50 percent risk of automation before 2035.
What follows are 10 of the professions A.I. is already gearing up to take down. Is there a target on your forehead?

1. Web Designer/Web Developer. Tech that will replace it: The Grid
2. Online Marketer. Tech that will replace it: Persado
3. Office Manager. Tech that will replace it: Betty
4. Accountant. Tech that will replace it: Smacc
5. HR Professional. Tech that will replace it: FlatPi
6. Journalist. Tech that will replace it: Wordsmith
7. Editor. Tech that will replace it: Bold
8. Lawyer. Tech that will replace it: Ross
9. Doctor. Tech that will replace it: Babylon
10. Psychologist/Therapist. Tech that will replace it: Ellie

Read more at Venturebeat

Honda, SoftBank begin joint AI research for ‘emotion’ cars

Honda aims to equip its cars with an “emotion engine,” a piece of AI technology developed by a company under the SoftBank umbrella. The engine will be a practical application of AI that can “read” a person’s emotions and hold a conversation with them and express its own feelings.
“We can make a product that people can feel affection for,” Honda R&D Co. President Yoshiyuki Matsumoto said at an event held by SoftBank in Tokyo on Thursday. Honda R&D is a development subsidiary of the Japanese automaker.
At the recent event, images showed AI being used to understand the preferences and emotions of a female driver, offering her advice on suitable clothes for the weather and cheering her up when she felt unlucky in love.
Other major automakers have also showcased their technological capacities through engine development and other advances. However, they have not made significant advancements with self-driving software that, for example, avoids accidents by predicting the movement of oncoming vehicles and pedestrians.
Read more at The Nation

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Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.