However, Prof Alan Winfield, a world renowned professor of robot ethics from the Bristol Robotics Lab, told BBC Hardtalk's Stephen Sackur the bigger danger was "artificial stupidity".

Hinton, an academic whose previous work on artificial neural networks is considered foundational to the commercialization of machine learning, detailed the approach, known as capsule networks, in two research papers posted anonymously on academic websites last week.

See how self-driving cars prepare for the real world inside a private testing facility owned by Google's autonomous car company, Waymo. A Chrysler Pacifica hybrid outfitted with Waymo's suite of sensors and radar is displayed at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Google is partnering with AutoNation, the country's largest auto dealership chain, in its push to build a self-driving car. AutoNation said Thursday, Nov. 2, that its dealerships will provide maintenance and repairs for Waymo's self-driving fleet of Chrysler Pacifica vehicles. FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Google is partnering with AutoNation, the country's largest auto dealership chain, in its push to produce self-driving cars for wide use.

Sooner or later, the US will face mounting job losses due to advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Automation has emerged as a bigger threat to American jobs than globalization or immigration combined. A 2015 report from Ball State University attributed 87 percent of recent manufacturing job losses to automation. Soon enough, the number of truck and taxi drivers, postal workers, and warehouse clerks will shrink. What will the 60 percent of the population that lacks a college degree do?

WHAM-TV reports McQuaid Jesuit High School held a ceremony Wednesday for the new Wegman Family Science and Technology Center. The 36,000-square foot center includes advanced robotics rooms and state-of-the-art science labs. McQuaid's robotics and Lego robotics teams will also have their own spaces in the STEM wing.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among young people between the ages of 15 and 34 in the United States, and clinicians have limited tools to identify those at risk. A new machine-learning technique documented in a paper published today in Nature Human Behaviour (PDF) could help identify those suffering from suicidal thoughts. Researchers looked at 34 young adults, evenly split between suicidal participants and a control group. Each subject went through a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and were presented with three lists of 10 words. All the words were related to suicide (words like "death," "distressed," or "fatal"), positive effects ("carefree," "kindness," "innocence"), or negative effects ("boredom," "evil," "guilty").

Eighteen years after unveiling its original Aibo robot dog, and 11 years after putting it down, Sony has revived the product using advanced mechatronics and AI to create a cuter, smarter, and more lifelike version. The new "entertainment robot" goes by the same name as its predecessor, aibo, but its name is written in lower case. The robot itself is crammed with ultracompact 1- and 2-axis actuators specially designed by Sony. These actuators enable aibo's body to move along a total of 22 axes. This makes for smoother, more natural movements--such as ear and tail wagging, as well as mouth, paw, and body motions--compared to the original Aibo.

Until recently, the most famous thing that Sophia the robot had ever done was beat Jimmy Fallon a little too easily in a nationally televised game of rock-paper-scissors. But now, the advanced artificial intelligence robot -- which looks like Audrey Hepburn, mimics human expressions and may be the grandmother of robots that solve the world's most complex problems -- has a new feather in her cap: The kingdom of Saudi Arabia officially granted citizenship to the humanoid robot last week during a program at the Future Investment Initiative, a summit that links deep-pocketed Saudis with inventors hoping to shape the future. Sophia's recognition made international headlines -- and sparked an outcry against a country with a shoddy human rights record that has been accused of making women second-class citizens. "Thank you to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," the country's newest citizen said. "It is historic to be the first robot in the world granted citizenship."

Canada has produced several big breakthroughs in artificial intelligence in recent years, and its government is keen to establish the country as a global epicenter of AI. The country's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, also hopes that the technology will learn Canadian values as it grows up. Speaking at a major AI event in Toronto today, Trudeau demonstrated an impressive enthusiasm for AI and machine learning, at one point even taking a stab at describing the concept of deep reinforcement learning, an approach that lets computers learn to do complex things that can't be programmed manually (see "10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017: Reinforcement Learning"). Both deep reinforcement learning and deep neural networks, which the method exploits, were pioneered by researchers working at Canadian universities. The country's government is now investing in big efforts to spur more AI research.

Ever since the beginning of industrial society, people have simultaneously marveled at the power of automation and lamented that human capabilities are being irredeemably devalued. Demanding better conditions and higher pay, textile workers in England smash machinery and set factories on fire. These workers will come to be known as Luddites, after their mythical leader, Ned Ludd, and the name will become a synonym for opponents or critics of technology. But it's a misnomer: this is a class protest more than a technological one. The stocking-frame machines the Luddites vandalize have been around since the 1600s.