An autonomous research ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean — with a few pit stops to address challenges along the way. Built by IBM and marine research nonprofit ProMare, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship 400 (MAS400) last week completed a voyage from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Officials in charge of protecting children stopped using a machine learning model designed to help them make decisions in difficult cases. The U.S. state of Oregon halted its use of an algorithm intended to identify children who may benefit from intervention.

Marketers are using fake social media personas — enhanced by AI-generated portraits — to expand their reach without busting their budgets.

Your next coworker may be an algorithmic teammate with a virtual face. WorkFusion unveiled a line of AI tools that automate daily business tasks. One thing that sets them apart is the marketing pitch: Each has a fictitious persona including a name, face, and professional résumé.

Industrial gauges are often located on rooftops, underground, or in tight spaces — but they’re not out of reach of computer vision. The Okinawa startup LiLz Gauge provides a system that reads analog gauges and reports their output to a remote dashboard.

Research challenges long-held assumptions about how automation will affect employment. Studies in various countries found that automation is associated with more jobs, fewer working hours , and higher productivity.

Workers can operate a forklift in their pajamas and never leave their bedrooms, thanks to a new generation of AI-assisted robots. Companies are pairing semi-autonomous vehicles with remote human operators to execute tasks that the vehicles can’t handle on their own.

Amazon’s first brick-and-mortar clothing store is getting ready to deliver automated outfit recommendations. The ecommerce giant announced plans to open a flagship Amazon Style location at a Los Angeles-area mall this year.

There’s a reason why artificial intelligence is sometimes referred to as “software 2.0”: It represents the most significant technological advance in decades. Like any groundbreaking invention, it raises concerns about the future, and much of the media focus is on the threats it brings.

Legislators worldwide wrote new laws — some proposed, some enacted — to rein in societal impacts of automation.What happened: Authorities at all levels ratcheted up regulatory pressure as

Deep learning can predict how patients will respond to two antidepressant medicines.

A system from California startup SewerAI analyzes videos of underground pipes to prioritize those in need of repair.

Flippy 2, a robotic fry station from California-based Miso Robotics, has been newly deployed in a Chicago White Castle location.

The government of South Korea is supplying personal data to developers of face recognition algorithms.

The cost of training top-performing machine learning models has grown beyond the reach of smaller companies.