Huawei's slice of the worldwide mobile pie isn't as big as it used to be, but hey -- at least it keeps getting better at making big phones. We didn't know it would be the last Nexus phone, but the 6P was a solid sendoff. Then came the enormous Mate 8, which was incredibly well built (even if the company's EMUI interface sometimes made me want to jam a fork in my eye). With the new Mate 9, however, Huawei is trying to do things a little differently. Case in point: the phone will eventually launch in the US, a first for the company's flagship phablets.

The Snasci Logo comprises of three smaller rings, intersected by a large ring. Symbolically, this represents an adaptation of the Three Laws of Robotics by the science fiction author Isaac Asimov. The rules first appeared in his short story "Runaround" (1942). Quoting from the "Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.", the laws are: Whilst these laws are broadly acceptable for a robot, they are too narrow for an Artificial General Intelligence. An artificial General Intelligence must deal with scenarios that go beyond physical interaction with humans.

Emerging technology may help wildlife officials beat back traffickers. Antipoaching patrols like this team at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya may soon use AI technology to stay one step ahead of criminals. Poachers kill an estimated 96 African elephants every day, causing conservationists to warn that the iconic animals could disappear in our lifetime if the tide doesn't turn. But now scientists hope a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool could help wildlife officials get a leg up against poachers. PAWS, which stands for Protection Assistant for Wildlife Security, is a newly developed AI that takes data about previous poaching activities and outputs routes for patrols based on where poaching is likely to occur.

They're not driven by the unknown, but by the present. Let's look at the last epoch-changing technological development: the internet. The tech utopians of the late 20th century saw the incoming digital revolution as a liberating force, one that would dismantle the old power structures that oppress us and help humanity build a new, more perfect society. It's painfully clear now that their hypothesis was laughably naive. Who, exactly, has the internet liberated? Silicon Valley tech tycoons and advertisers aside, it has decimated the music, film and publishing industries, slashed the earnings of musicians, writers, photographers, and just about every other professional whose product can be digitized, shrinking their industries, killing off job openings, and maiming job security.

"What is it like to be a bat?" the philosopher Thomas Nagel wondered in 1974. But something essential about the experience was off limits to his imagination. "I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task." Nagel's famous essay considered a sticky problem: what is the relationship between our body and our mind? The question of what it's like to be someone, or something, else, has continued to tantalise. Now, research into making telerobotics happen may offer a weird and cool possibility – that of beginning to understand, if only a little, the experience of entities that are not at all like us.

Hollywood gets A.I. all wrong. Silver screen depictions often feature a robot impersonating a human, a prospect that's about as likely, and about as abused in screenwriting, as discovering humanoid extraterrestrial life. That's why I found Lucas Carlson's new technothriller novel, Big Data, so refreshing. Carlson combines an engineer's view on the future of A.I. with a cast of characters that can't stop until the dark secret brooding at the heart of the tale is revealed. It's a perfect summer read that you'll burn through in a day or two, and will leave you with a disturbing vision of what tomorrow might look like.

A young elephant was saved from drowning in a manmade structure in a Zimbabwe national park by a team that is using drones to deter poaching. An anti-poaching team saved a young elephant from drowning this month, and it was caught on video. The rescue was made by the Air Shepherd team in Zimbabwe's vast Hwange National Park. Air Shepherd is a partnership between the Lindbergh Foundation and the company UAV and Drone Solutions, which is working to deter poachers in Hwange and other parks around Africa. During an early morning scouting mission, Air Shepherd drone pilots Tom Lautenbach and Gift Kgadima were driving in Hwange, getting a feel for the land that they have been flying their drones over for the past few weeks.

So many works of film and fiction are hooked on the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and what it might mean for humanity. They are often apocalyptic tales – Blade Runner, Alien, Terminator – where mankind comes off badly. But now that AI is being spearheaded by internet giants such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, and our daily lives are increasingly affected by AI systems – chat bots, purchase prediction, news generation – what will really happen? In 2015 the UK media widely picked up on American media organisation NPR's calculator that could predict which jobs are susceptible to computerisation. The calculator, using research by the University of Oxford, said accountants have a 95% chance of losing their jobs as machines take over the number crunching and data analysis.

Spending on cognitive systems and artificial intelligence (AI) across a broad range of industries will drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8.0 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020. In its Worldwide Semiannual Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide IDC said the market for cognitive/AI solutions will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55.1 per cent over the 2016-2020 forecast period. According to David Schubmehl, research director, Cognitive Systems and Content Analytics at IDC, "Software developers and end user organizations have already begun the process of embedding and deploying cognitive/artificial intelligence into almost every kind of enterprise application or process" "Recent announcements by several large technology vendors and the booming venture capital market for AI startups illustrate the need for organizations to be planning and undertaking strategies that incorporate these wide-ranging technologies," he said. Schubmehl said identifying, understanding, and acting on the use cases, technologies, and growth opportunities for cognitive/AI systems will be a differentiating factor for most enterprises and the digital disruption caused by these technologies will be significant. The ability to recognize and respond to data flows using algorithms and rule-based logic enables cognitive/AI systems to automate a broad range of functions across many industries.

The three men who anchored the massively successful "Top Gear" automotive TV show will bring their large personalities back to the small screen Nov. 18, when Amazon Prime debuts the new series "The Grand Tour." Starring Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, the first season will include 12 one-hour episodes, shot in exotic locations, where the three men drive, discuss and destroy various motor vehicles to comic effect. As in "Top Gear," which ended a 12-year syndicated run when the BBC declined to renew Clarkson's contract following a series of friction-causing incidents involving the outspoken former auto journalist, "The Grand Tour" features globe-trotting hi-jinks laced with boyish jibes. It will be different from "Top Gear," the men said during a visit to The Times -- but not much. "Well, it has us three hosting it," Clarkson said. "(May) is slow and lost and (Hammond) is short and I am bombastic and tall, and fat," Clarkson concluded.