Most of the autonomous vehicles that you're likely to encounter in the near future are either Level 2 or Level 4 autonomous. Level 2, which you'll find in a Tesla on the highway, means that the car drives itself in specific situations but expects you to be paying attention the entire time. Level 4 y...

An image of a dog created by a deep convolutional generative adversarial network (GAN) algorithm.

In one of the scariest moments in the movie "Jurassic Park," a pair of intelligent Velociraptors, brought back to Earth by man's hubris, defy an assumption about their limitations: They open a kitchen door. Now imagine that the raptors are real, transformed into headless robot dogs that can negoti...

Until very recently, the machines that could trounce champions were at least respectful enough to start by learning from human experience.

Technicians analyze data following the trial of an autonomous self-driving vehicle in a pedestrianised zone, during a media event in Milton Keynes, north of London, on October 11, 2016. Suburbs have largely been dismissed by environmentalists and urban planners as bad for the planet, a form that ne...

In the coming decades, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies are going to transform many aspects of our world. Much of this change will be positive; the potential for benefits in areas as diverse as health, transportation and urban planning, art, science, and cross-cultural understanding are enormous. We've already seen things go horribly wrong with simple machine learning systems; but increasingly sophisticated AI will usher in a world that is strange and different from the one we're used to, and there are serious risks if this technology is used for the wrong ends.

The brain's neural network has long inspired artificial-intelligence researchers.Credit: Alfred Pasieka/SPL/Getty

Life has gotten more convenient since 2012, when breakthroughs in machine learning triggered the ongoing frenzy of investment in artificial intelligence. Speech recognition works most of the time, for example, and you can unlock the new iPhone with your face.

A robot sweeps the floor at the main press center at the Pyeonchang Winter Olympics.