Do you recall this paper (which is also summarised in this article in the Conversation) about which a YouTube video was made?

Well it's just gone and won the journal's best paper award.

I continue to think one should be wary of indulging in futurism and remain glad I managed to keep the words "Rogue AI" out of it.

The work I'm involved with on the CRADLE Project involves trying to put together an assurance case for an automonous robot to be deployed... somewhere. At the moment the various bodies like HSE, The Office for Nuclear Regulation, The Civil Aviation Authority and so on, don't really want to be drawn on what evidence they would need to be certain due diligence had been performed for the deployment of an autonomous robot. We're therefore trying to produce some evidence that a robot is safe and see if they might at least admit they wouldn't throw such evidence out immediately.

We're also interested in how the production of such evidence could be made more stream-lined to avoid having to come up with new processes each time a different robot is considered. Hence Towards Patterns for a Reference Assurance Case for Autonomous Inspection Robots (which doesn't appear to be Open Access even though it should be, but I'm pretty sure anyone reading this here knows how to contact one of the authors and request a copy, should they be interested)

B. bought me a Lego flower set - out of which three different models could be made.
( Pictures below the cut )