More than 100 of the world's top robotics experts wrote a letter to the United Nations recently calling for a ban on the development of "killer robots" and warning of a new arms race. But are their fears really justified? Entire regiments of unmanned tanks; drones that can spot an insurgent in a crowd of civilians; and weapons controlled by computerised "brains" that learn like we do, are all among the "smart" tech being unleashed by an arms industry many believe is now entering a "third revolution in warfare". "In every sphere of the battlefield - in the air, on the sea, under the sea or on the land - the military around the world are now demonstrating prototype autonomous weapons," says Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence at Sydney's New South Wales University. "New technologies like deep learning are helping drive this revolution. The tech space is clearly leading the charge, and the military is playing catch-up."

Uber has had their fair share of press, both good and bad. This August 5, 2014 file photo shows then General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. He's said to be in the running to lead Uber. SAN FRANCISCO -- Uber's search for a new chief executive to replace ousted co-founder Travis Kalanick echoes with one name: former General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt. The 61-year-old careerist announced in June plans to retire after 16 years at GE's helm, staying on as chairman until Dec. 31.

Convolutional dictionary learning (CDL or sparsifying CDL) has many applications in image processing and computer vision. There has been growing interest in developing efficient algorithms for CDL, mostly relying on the augmented Lagrangian (AL) method or the variant alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). When their parameters are properly tuned, AL methods have shown fast convergence in CDL. However, the parameter tuning process is not trivial due to its data dependence and, in practice, the convergence of AL methods depends on the AL parameters for nonconvex CDL problems. To moderate these problems, this paper proposes a new practically feasible and convergent Block Proximal Gradient method using a Majorizer (BPG-M) for CDL. The BPG-M-based CDL is investigated with different block updating schemes and majorization matrix designs, and further accelerated by incorporating some momentum coefficient formulas and restarting techniques. All of the methods investigated incorporate a boundary artifacts removal (or, more generally, sampling) operator in the learning model. Numerical experiments show that, without needing any parameter tuning process, the proposed BPG-M approach converges more stably to desirable solutions of lower objective values than the existing state-of-the-art ADMM algorithm and its memory-efficient variant do. Compared to the ADMM approaches, the BPG-M method using a multi-block updating scheme is particularly useful in single-threaded CDL algorithm handling large datasets, due to its lower memory requirement and no polynomial computational complexity. Image denoising experiments show that, for relatively strong additive white Gaussian noise, the filters learned by BPG-M-based CDL outperform those trained by the ADMM approach.

Small convoys of partially driverless lorries will be tried out on major British roads by the end of next year, the government has announced. A contract has been awarded to the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) to carry out the tests of vehicle "platoons". Up to three lorries will travel in formation, with acceleration and braking controlled by the lead vehicle. But the head of the AA said platoons raised safety concerns. The TRL will begin trials of the technology on test tracks, but these trials are expected to move to major roads by the end of 2018.

Ubisoft Montreal and Square Enix will be collaborating to bring special content for players of "Assassin's Creed" and "Final Fantasy XV." Their partnership was announced at Gamescom this week, and a couple of details about the DLC they will be releasing together have been disclosed as well. The union between the developing teams behind "Assassin's Creed" and "Final Fantasy XV" is going to bear fruits that many fans of both action games have been craving for. The developers have prepared a free DLC and special items that are bound to arrive at the end of this month, UbiBlog Communications Senior Manager Giancarlo Varanini indicated in a blog post. Come Aug. 30, "Final Fantasy XV" players will receive the first installment of free content as part of the collaboration. However, this will only be available to those who have successfully obtained the Dream Egg from the Moogle Chocobo Carnival event.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk recently emphasized the threat Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses on the human race. In an open letter to the United Nations, Musk and other robotic experts, said artificial super intelligence would lead to "lethal autonomous weapons" that would bring the "third revolution in warfare". The letter was signed by 115 robotic experts who feel the need to raise the alarm on artificially intelligent robots – which they state, are a present danger and not necessarily a threat coming in the distant future. If you're not concerned about AI safety, you should be. The letter states that this Pandora's box will be hard to close, once it is opened.

"Tell me now, I know that it just won't stop / You will find your flow when you go robot / I want to thank you and spank you upon your silver skin / Robots don't care where I've been" –Red Hot Chili Peppers An avid science fiction reader from a young age, I remember reading Tanith Lee's classic The Silver Metal Lover when it was first published in 1981. Going beyond sex, Lee explores the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence, telling the story of a lonely young girl who, in spite of herself, falls in love with a robot minstrel. The robot, in turn, becomes seemingly more human through her love of him--though the question of whether the robot is truly alive, or if consciousness is merely an illusion, is never resolved. This highlights an important question about the modern-day evolution of sexbots: How far can the attachment to an inanimate, more and more human-like machine go? Will we relinquish relationships with other human beings for the convenience of an unreal partner, and is reality in the eye of the beholder?

In recent weeks, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has said artificial intelligence (AI) is riskier than North Korea and he has called on the United Nations to ban autonomous weapons before they turn into killer robots. Musk has also reportedly called for AI regulation, saying AI is a "fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization" and he said Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's rosier spin proves "his understanding of the subject is limited." It is a decidedly grim view of a technology infiltrating the marketing industry via channels like customer service, search and data analysis. So how worried are marketers exactly? For her part, Jenna Niven, creative director at ad agency R/GA, noted AI has been around for a long time and is already integrated into processes we use every day, like Gmail sorting spam or Netflix recommending content, but only now are we starting to see AI in the forefront of user experiences like Alexa and self-driving cars, which means it is assuming a more obvious role in our lives.

In the blog "From Autonomous to Smart: Importance of Artificial Intelligence," we discussed the two critical artificial intelligence (AI) challenges in creating "smart" edge devices: In the blog "Reinforcement Learning to the Rescue," we talked about how Moore's Law isn't going to bail us out of because the problem space is getting more complex, even for relatively easy environments like playing checkers and chess: By the way, the commonly accepted answer for the number of particles in the observable universe is 1080. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Maybe our only hope to solve these uber-complex, life-impacting analytic problems like autonomous vehicles, smart cities and precision medicine lies in a new approach – quantum computing. Quantum computing differs from traditional binary computing in that takes advantage of the strange ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at any time (it's like your children, where you can both love and hate them at the same time). In classical digital computing, a bit is a single piece of information that can exist in two states – 1 or 0. Quantum computing uses quantum bits, or'qubits' instead.

The iPhone has been my primary smartphone for well over a decade, and therefore I've had Siri on my phone ever since its introduction in 2011. But I never really found a reason to use it. I've always felt self-conscious when talking to my phone -- I find people who use voice commands in public really annoying -- so I wanted to avoid doing it myself. I have Bluetooth in my car so I don't have to use my phone while driving, and when I'm at home, I have my trusty fingers instead. So I imagined that being forced to use Siri for a whole week was going to be a nightmare.