That new technologies could actually be bad for us, by sapping our attention or ruining our memories, is an argument that goes back to Socrates. It's tempting to summarily dismiss these concerns, but such tech-doomsaying is actually an important part of economic discovery. Our societies are organised by rules, embedded in our collective knowledge, about the proper way to behave and interact with each other. These rules are worked out over a long, often bitter process of debate and competition between rival ideas about society. Some of the most important rules we need to discover are about how to use technology and, just as importantly, how not to use it.

Amazon is making it easier for those with hearing and speech impairments to utilize Alexa. Starting today, the Echo Show will have an option to toggle on a new feature called "Tap to Alexa," which will let users tap the device's screen to access the digital assistant. The feature includes shortcuts to common Alexa items like weather, timers, news and traffic, and users can also type out Alexa commands. Additionally, while Amazon launched its Alexa captioning feature in the US a few months ago, it's now releasing that feature to users in the UK, Germany, Japan, India, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. To activate Tap to Alexa, head over to the Echo Show's device settings, select the accessibility settings and switch the feature on.

A newly-discovered glitch in Google Translate is causing the online tool to transform gibberish suggestions into doomsday warnings and prophesies about Jesus. The AI that powers Google Translate starts to produce the nonsensical warnings about the end of the world when asked to translate the phrase'dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog dog' from Hawaiian to English. The nonsense sentence, when translated, throws up references to the doomsday clock and the second coming of Jesus Christ. Once the glitch was discovered, Google Translate fans quickly flooded social media with variations on the phrase, mocking the bizarre results thrown-up by the AI. Google Translate has been malfunctioning recently, spouting prophetic verses from gibberish.

Dubai: In a bid to curb the rising incidence of diabetes, the Dubai Diabetes Centre (DDC) plans to introduce Artificial Intelligence to detect retinopathy, start tele-monitoring of patients who miss their appointments and also introduce obesity clinics in the emirate. Elaborating on the use of Artificial Intelligence Dr M Hamed Farooqi, director of the multidisciplinary centre said: "As per international diabetes standards, we need to have 14 retinal images per diabetic. The estimated number of diagnosed diabetics in the UAE exceeds one million. To interpret 14 million images per year, we need more than 50 eye specialists working full-time. Deep learning system (DLS) using Artificial Intelligence are capable of identifying diabetic retinopathy and related eye diseases using retinal images with a high degree of accuracy. Thus using AI cannot only help provide retinopathy screening for a large number of diabetics but also lead to better utilisation of resources and time of ophthalmologists."

Leveraging robotics to undertake dangerous missions has obvious benefits for mankind, and space travel is no exception. In 2011, NASA sent its dexterous assistant'Robonaut 2' on a trip to the International Space Station (ISS) with the objective of working alongside presiding astronauts. Now a "source in the rocket and space industry" tells RIA Novosti that a Russian android duo could be following suit as early as next year. According to Defense One, the FEDOR androids will, in an unprecedented move, fly on the unmanned Soyuz spacecraft not as cargo, but as crew members. The Roscosmos space agency has reportedly given the flight its preliminary approval.

Snapchat has dropped a feature that let users receive cash through the app. The tool – known as Snapcash – will now be removed from the app. It is just one of a wide variety of features that owner Snap has been gradually introducing to the app. Those have included addition as diverse as glasses and videos that can live outside of Snapchat. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

Many technology companies are working on artificial intelligence systems that can analyze medical data to help diagnose or treat health problems. Such systems raise the question of whether this kind of technology can perform as well as a human doctor. A new study from MIT computer scientists suggests that human doctors provide a dimension that, as yet, artificial intelligence does not. By analyzing doctors' written notes on intensive-care-unit patients, the researchers found that the doctors' "gut feelings" about a particular patient's condition played a significant role in determining how many tests they ordered for the patient. The researchers describe their findings in "How is the Doctor Feeling? ICU Provider Sentiment is Associated with Diagnostic Imaging Utilization," presented at the IEEE's 40th International Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference.

In the future, AI will affect the nature and distribution of jobs and these non-profit bodies bring together a cross-section of industry leaders such as robotics, computing. Even though there has been recent AI wins in terms of self-driving cars, DeepMind's Go victory, we still need to charge ahead for breakthroughs in a slew of public sector areas. An area of interest has been integrative AI approach -- how to combine capabilities in image recognition, speech recognition, computer vision and natural language to explore tougher problems. For example, we are seeing a number of startups that use emerging technologies to tackle social problems in India. Case in point, Fasal an IoT startup gives ML-powered insights to farmers, giving rise to precision agriculture.

NAGOYA – Toyota Motor Corp. said Monday its e-Palette autonomous electric vehicles will transport athletes at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. The boxy battery-powered vehicle with no driver seat, unveiled in January as future transportation for use in a broad range of services such as ride hailing and package delivery, will operate in the athletes' village, Toyota said. As Japan's largest automaker by volume is accelerating the development of green and safer vehicles, it will provide a fleet of over 3,000 passenger vehicles for official use in the Olympics, including the Mirai, the world's first mass-produced fuel-cell car, and the Sora, a fuel-cell bus. Fuel-cell vehicles are powered by electricity generation through a chemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen, a green system that Toyota has long been focusing on as a promising future technology. The automaker also plans to offer connected cars with its hybrids, plug-in hybrids and other electrified vehicles.

The Chinese military is developing a fleet of new submarines that will navigate the ocean without a human crew, according to scientists involved in the project. The submarines will be powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), allowing them to navigate independently and work alongside existing fleets. The crew-less submersibles will be relatively large and low-cost compared to other military watercrafts, according to scientists working on the project. The AI submarines are rumoured to be fitted with diesel-electric engines to enable them to stay at sea for several months without returning to dock. China will use these unmanned subs for intelligence gathering missions, planting sea mines, and'kamikaze'-style attacks on high-value targets, the scientists said.