Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Using machine-learning and sensory hardware, Alberto Rodriguez, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and members of MIT's MCube lab have developed a robot that is learning how to play the game Jenga. The technology could be used in robots for manufacturing assembly lines.

He weighs a little over 100 pounds, has auburn dyed hair, and wears a hoodie emblazoned with the words "Dope Shit." But in China's rise to superpower status, the 20-year-old student is a foot soldier playing a vital role. Yin works at Bainiaohe Digital Town, a tech hub set deep in the tree-covered hills of China's southwestern province of Guizhou. The region is traditionally known for growing tea and producing fiery Moutai liquor, but today it's luring Yin, and hundreds of young Chinese like him, to work in the booming sector of Artificial Intelligence or AI. For eight hours each day, they sit at computer terminals on brightly colored swivel chairs and help refine the reliability of facial and voice recognition software, driverless car programs, and even mobile apps that are used to identify plants and insects.

Apple has apologised over a major FaceTime bug that let people listen in on others' iPhones. A fix has now been developed and rolled out on Apple's servers, and will be with users through an iOS update next week, it said. That will arrive as a normal iPhone software update. Until then, users are safe because Apple has turned off the affected group FaceTime feature entirely, stopping anyone conferencing calling. The apology comes days after it emerged that an issue with group FaceTime calls allowed people to listen in on other phones.

Samsung appears to have accidentally leaked a short video clip of its forthcoming foldable smartphone, expected to be called the Galaxy X or Galaxy F. A teaser video posted by Samsung Vietnam was posted online before being swiftly deleted, though not before a copy of it was ripped and reuploaded to YouTube. The video appears to be a showcase of forthcoming technology from the South Korean electronics giant, including a three-panelled augmented reality mirror and a tattoo robot. Two separate shots also showed a woman using a folding phone, featuring screens on both the inside and outside of the device. Samsung previously teased the foldable smartphone at an event in November, though it was difficult to see what the hybrid handset looks like as the unveiling took place with the lights turned down. Uber has halted testing of driverless vehicles after a woman was killed by one of their cars in Tempe, Arizona.

As the world around us becomes smarter and more connected, the need for sophisticated systems to facilitate these connections, and support the technology that powers them, is more important than ever. At the recent Oracle Open World event in London, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd laid out his company's aims of enabling new business tools and services using cutting-edge technologies such as AI, which Oracle says can bring a range of benefits across the board. Yet concerns about the effect of AI persist among some in the technology space, who doubt the potential advantages it can bring. At the event, ITProPortal spoke to John Abel, vice president, cloud and innovation for UK, Ireland and Israel at Oracle, who told us how AI is set to play a major role in the company's work going forward. Abel describes how the technology space is going through, "a cultural shift from being an industrial workforce to becoming a creative workforce."

Micron worked with Forrester to put out a white paper on the role of digital storage and memory in artificial intelligence (AI). They make the point that AI will be an important part of modern society and that memory and storage must change to reap the rewards of better AI, and in particular Machine Learning (ML). You can see the report yourself here. The report is based upon an August 2018 survey of 200 IT and business professionals that manage architecture of strategy for complex data sets at large enterprises in the US and China. The chart below gives further details on the industries, company sizes, and IT job functions of the respondents.

Bangkok, Thailand - The small park in Bangkok's Rama III district is mostly popular with runners circling its neatly trimmed garden track to the sound of birdsong. But on Thursday, they were joined by a convoy of fire trucks and half a dozen military drones, drawing dozens of curious onlookers. After an hour setting up, the drones and water cannon were pumping thick plumes of water into the empty sky above. Speakers blared warnings about the operation and instructed runners to keep their distance. The odd display was the Thai government's latest attempt at curbing the alarmingly high levels of pollution that have been plaguing the capital for weeks.

Our existence as a species is, in all likelihood, limited. Whether the downfall of the human race begins as a result of a devastating asteroid impact, a natural pandemic, or an all-out nuclear war, we are facing a number of risks to our future, ranging from the vastly remote to the almost inevitable. Global catastrophic events like these would, of course, be devastating for our species. Even if nuclear war obliterates 99% of the human race however, the surviving 1% could feasibly recover, and even thrive years down the line, with no lasting damage to our species' potential. There are some events that there's no coming back from though.

If you get into a car accident in China, you can simply pull out your smartphone, take a photo, and file an insurance claim with an AI system. That system, from Ant Financial, will automatically decide how serious the ding was and process the claim accordingly with an insurer. It shows how the company--which already operates a hugely successful smartphone payments business in China--aims to upend many areas of personal finance using machine learning and AI. The e-commerce giant Alibaba created Ant in 2014 to operate Alipay, a ubiquitous mobile payments service in China. If you have visited the country in recent years, then you have probably seen people paying for meals, taxi rides, and a whole lot more by scanning a code with the Alipay app.

NEW DELHI: It faces threats from rising protectionism, data flow curbs and fast-changing technological shifts, but the Indian IT industry is keeping its hopes high for the new year with plans afoot for big investments in automation and artificial intelligence. For the industry body Nasscom, 2018 has been the year of'Digital at Scale' as IT firms focussed on leveraging new technologies and ensuring sustainability by creating right skills with help from innovation, policies and partnerships. The year ahead is "punctuated with several transformative opportunities", Nasscom President Debjani Ghosh said. The industry body has projected exports to grow at 7-9 per cent for 2018-19, almost same as the previous fiscal, but domestic revenue may grow faster at 10-12 per cent and this may make the new year transformative with overseas funds accounting for a lion's share so far. Over years, the industry has graduated from being the back office of the world to being at the forefront of change, helping clients optimise operations and stay ahead of competition.