At the hub of this tech growth is an AI group, iCog Labs, co-founded in 2012 by a young Ethiopian roboticist, Getnet Aseffa Gezaw, and an American AI pioneer, Ben Goertzel. With a team of twenty five Ethiopian software engineers, iCog pursues full-on'Strong Intelligence,' the conviction that computers can potentially emulate the entire human brain, not just aspects of it. The ambitious lab has a bold mission: to create software that not only simulates the brain, but pushes the envelope of what the brain can do. The lab also focuses on a host of practical applications for clients around the world, including humanoid robots for Hanson Robotics, makers of the renowned Robot Einstein; AI-driven automated pill dispensers and elder-care robots for a Chinese company, Telehealth; and mapping the genetics of longevity for two Californian corporations: Age Reversal Incorporated and Stevia First.

It should be settling into senior citizenship, but the 65-year-old festival is reinventing itself this year. The programme has been mixed up by a host of guest curators – ranging from Gus Van Sant to Jim Jarmusch, and Mike Skinner to Apichatpong Weerasethakul. And as well as the usual core of new international features and documentaries, there are envelope-pushing new strands and events. Of the conventional features, highlights include Romain Gavras's awaited feature debut Our Day Will Come, a French skinhead tale that looks as confrontational as his music video work (which plays beforehand). David Hare presents his new MI5 thriller Page Eight, led by Bill Nighy (who'll also be giving an onstage interview); Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle buddy up in Irish cop comedy The Guard; and festival regular David McKenzie returns with apocalyptic art sci-fi Perfect Sense, starring Ewan McGregor and Eva Green.

When Haldeman returned from Vietnam, with a Purple Heart for the wounds he had suffered, he wrote a story about a pointless conflict that seems as if it will never end. It was set in space, and the enemies were aliens, but 18 publishers decided it was too close to home before St Martin's Press took a gamble. The book that "nobody wants to read" went on to win many prizes. It's not perfect - it's hard to take seriously a future in which hetereosexuality is a perversion - but the anti-war message is as powerful as ever. Known for his intricate short stories and critically acclaimed mountaineering novel Climbers, Harrison cut his teeth on SF. In typical fashion, he writes space opera better than many who write only in the genre. For all its star travel and alien artefacts, scuzzy 25th-century spaceports and drop-out space pilots, Light is actually about twisting three plotlines as near as possible to snapping point. This is as close as SF gets to literary fiction, and literary fiction gets to SF. Jon Courtenay Grimwood Buy this book at the Guardian bookshop Amateur stonemason, waterbed designer, reformed socialist, nudist, militarist and McCarthyite, Heinlein is one of the most interesting and irritating figures in American science fiction.

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Thursday April 22 2004 The seminar at which Stephen Jay Gould was rigorously questioned by Dennett's students was Dennett's seminar at Tufts, not Gould's at Harvard. Dennett wrote Darwin's Dangerous Idea before, not after, Gould called him a "Darwinian fundamentalist". Dan Dennett is a sailor, with a billowing white beard and moustaches that he twiddles when thinking. He uses "salty" as a term of praise and has just bought a 42ft boat that sleeps five and could, if he wished, cross the Atlantic. His passion for sailing may be the best way to approach his philosophy. In both, un-charted and dangerous areas are to be navigated by explorers ingeniously equipped. Like all sailors, he has stories. One concerns a French couple he met when sailing off Greenland. They were on their honeymoon, sailing from France to Iceland, then Greenland, and finally, in one long reach, from Greenland to the Falklands.

Dr Milne, who has already climbed Carstensz Pyramid (Oceania) Vinson Massif (Antarctica), Elbrus (Europe), Kilimanjaro (Africa), Denali (North America) and Aconcagua (South America), will be the first mountaineer to use the IM-PACs (intelligent messaging, planning and collaboration) system. The technology, developed at the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute in the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, has been designed to provide computer support to people and teams performing a range of tasks - not just expedition teams operating in extreme conditions, but also key personnel involved in planning and rescue services responding rapidly to emergencies. IM-PACs' foundations in artificial intelligence planning technologies supply a framework that encourages a methodological approach to any task and allows users to transmit and respond to information in ways that can adapt to the circumstances the expedition team finds itself in. During his ascent, Dr. Milne will be in regular contact with colleagues in base camp who will monitor his progress against his ascent plan. A laptop computer and satellite phone will allow details of his current status and progress to be sent over the internet to a support team in Edinburgh.

A new Twitter bot shows that not all them are bigots -some just want to make you smile. '@smilevector' was recently unleashed on Twitter and, unlike its Hitler supporting predecessor Tay, this bot manipulates faces by turning their frown upside down. Using neural networks, this algorithm can plant unsettling smiles on celebrities with what seems to be impressive accuracy. '@smilevector was unleashed on Twitter and, unlike its Hitler supporting processor Tay, this bot manipulates faces by making them smile. Created by Tom White, a lecturer at the Victoria University of Wellington School of Design in Wellington, New Zealand, this algorithm uses a generative neural net to manipulate faces.

If you were already concerned that robots may one day take your job, the latest results from MIT may make difficult reading. An artificial intelligence system called ConceptNet recently took an IQ test designed for children and scored higher than an average four-year-old. After five tests focusing on word reasoning and vocabulary, ConceptNet achieved a total score of 69 while a comparable pre-schooler achieved 50 - and the system is expected to get smarter. An artificial intelligence system called ConceptNet recently took an IQ test designed for children and scored more than an average four-year-old. ConceptNet is an open-source project run by the MIT Common Sense Computing Initiative.

Satellites are best known for helping smartphones map driving routes or televisions deliver programs. But now, data from some of the thousands of satellites orbiting Earth are helping track things like crop conditions on rural farms, illegal deforestation, and increasingly, poverty in the hard-to-reach places around the globe. As much as that data has the potential to provide invaluable information to humanitarian organizations, watchdog groups, and policymakers, there is too much of it to sift through in order to draw insights that could influence important decisions. A team of researchers from Stanford University, however, says it has developed an efficient way. By creating a deep-learning algorithm that can recognize signs of poverty in satellite images – such as condition of roads – the team sorted through a million images to accurately identify economic conditions in five African countries, reported the scientists in the journal Science on Thursday.

Later this month Valerie will go on duty behind the reception desk at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Sciences. Besides doling out information and directions, she'll chat about her ever-changing personal life. If you introduce yourself, she'll remember you. If you ask about the weather, when she meets you again she may bring up the subject. Valerie, in case you haven't guessed, is a robot - one in a long line of increasingly sophisticated machines.

Ray Kurzweil, the acclaimed inventor and futurist, believes that humans and technology are merging Kurzweil on portentous sci-fi fears about computers: "I don't see it as them vs. us" He spoke to a crowd of more than 3,000 at the South by Southwest Interactive conference Kurzweil on portentous sci-fi fears about computers: "I don't see it as them vs. us" Any author or filmmaker seeking ideas for a sci-fi yarn about the implications of artificial intelligence -- good or bad -- would be smart to talk to Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil, the acclaimed inventor and futurist, believes that humans and technology are blurring -- note the smartphone appendages in almost everyone's hand -- and will eventually merge. "We are a human-machine civilization. Everybody has been enhanced with computer technology," he told a capacity crowd of more than 3,000 tech-savvy listeners Monday at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. "They're really part of who we are. "If we can convince people that computers have complexity of thought and nuance ... we'll come to accept them as human." A pioneer in the field of speech recognition, Kurzweil is perhaps best known for his bestseller, "The Singularity is Near," which predicts that in the future we will augment our bodies with technology, including robotics and artificial intelligence. "We created these tools to extend our reach," he said -- something we've been doing as humans "ever since we first picked up a stick to reach a tree branch." Asked by interviewer Lev Grossman whether artificial intelligence will lead to malevolent machines that will come to dominate humans, he said he was more concerned about what humans will do to themselves. "I don't see it as'us vs. them.'