While there has been plenty of conversation over the possibility that robots will replace humans in the work force, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk believes the threat is existential for people. The billionaire warned humans will soon have to learn to communicate with artificial intelligence or face becoming obsolete. "Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence," Musk said while speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, according to a report from CNBC. Musk, who was at the event to announce the launch of Tesla in the United Arab Emirates, suggested that a merger between humans and machines will be necessary for the species going forward, lest it find itself made irrelevant. The founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX pointed to the processing power of a computer compared to that of a person's brain, explaining that computers can communicate at "a trillion bits per second" while humans do so at about 10 bits per second.

The coastal prefecture of Fukushima has faced a difficult road since a devastating earthquake and tsunami rocked the area in 2011, killing tens of thousands and causing its nuclear reactor to melt down, leaking radiation and rendering the surrounding provinces uninhabitable. Since then, the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), has been working to clean and decommission the facility. In January, the company bumped its estimate for a full cleaning to $188 billion, noting it would probably take decades. Radiation levels from the reactors should have faded over time, but TEPCO said Thursday levels inside the Fukushima Daiichi plant reached such astronomical levels, not even a cleaning robot could survive inside. The previous radiation high, measured one year after the disaster, was 73 Sieverts per hour.

Elon Musk thinks we need to become more cyborg-like. At the World Government Summit today in Dubai, Musk foretold of a future that sees humans merging with machines as the next logical step in the evolutionary chain. This evolutionary process, he speculated, requires high bandwidth interfaces that connect the brain directly to that of a machine to solve the "control problem and the usefulness problem." Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence. TNW Conference won best European Event 2016 for our festival vibe.

Yuval Noah Harari might be Silicon Valley's favorite historian. His last book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, which detailed the entirety of human history and how Homo Sapiens came to dominate the Earth, was blurbed by President Barack Obama and Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg recommended it for his book club. And more than 100,000 students have taken Harari's online course. In his new book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Harari looks forward and hazards a few guesses on what comes next for humanity. These next chapters in our history range from the utopian to the horrific, he says.

Does the idea of humanlike machines or machinelike humans freak you out? Maybe, but if we want to stay relevant in the face of the coming robot revolution, Elon Musk says we'll have to become more cyborg-like. Though he stopped short of warning humankind that "resistance is futile," Musk mentioned that we will have to merge with machines somehow. "Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence," Musk told an audience at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he was launching Tesla in the United Arab Emirates, CNBC reports (warning: link contains auto play video). "It's mostly about the bandwidth, the speed of the connection between your brain and the digital version of yourself, particularly output," he added, explaining that he means computers can communicate "a trillion bits per second", while we lumps of meat can only go at about 10 bits per second by typing.

How humanity will meet its end is a an endless source of fascination in science fiction. But scientists claim many of the scenarios depicted in films - such as an asteroid strike and killer robots - may not be as far fetched as you might think. Now researchers at Cambridge University's Study of Existential Risk (CESR) have come up with a list of 10 threats that may some day trigger an apocalypse. Humanity faces an uncertain future as technology learns to think for itself and adapt to its environment. Artificial Intelligence, disguised as helpful digital assistants and self-driving vehicles, is gaining a foothold and it could one day spell the end for mankind if allowed to develop without strict controls.

I suppose that whole idea about "make America great again" was only going to last just so long. It's been several weeks and we're a nation with a critically short attention span so it's probably time to start working on a new catchphrase. How about, "make human beings great again?" That seems to be what tech genius Elon Musk has in mind with his latest brainstorm. Rather than working on super fast trains or putting people on Mars, the entrepreneur has realized that the one thing truly holding the human race back is… human beings.

The future of the driverless car is much closer than people realize, Elon Musk reportedly said in a speech in Dubai Monday. The bad news, he points out, is that there will be a steep price to pay for the "great convenience." The Tesla TSLA, 3.94% and SpaceX CEO, according to CNBC, said the disruption will take place within about 20 years and will ultimately leave up to 15% of the global population without jobs. Musk also touched on one of his favorite topics: artificial intelligence. Specifically, he spoke of humans eventually merging with machines, like something out of a "Terminator" movie.

Like Google, Baidu's core service is also search – Baidu is said to account for 75% of search traffic in its homeland. Here, it has rolled out machine learning algorithms for voice and image recognition, as well as natural language processing, to help it return smarter, more useful and more personalized results. Baidu also makes its technology available to third parties such as other companies which want to benefit from the AI revolution but don't have the resources to develop their own algorithms and applications. Much of its software and systems have been made open source and it also provides access to its technology on an "as-a-service" basis. Businesses and organizations can use Baidu's systems to host their own data and run their own analytics projects in the cloud, paying only for the storage and computing resources which they use.

Russia released drone footage Monday showing new destruction in Syria's historic town of Palmyra, which was recently recaptured by the Islamic State group, and warned that the militants could be planning the further demolition of antiquities. The Russian Defense Ministry says Syrian government forces are advancing toward the town as another battle for the ancient site looms. The video showed that the militants have badly damaged the facade of the Roman-era amphitheater and the Tetrapylon -- a set of four monuments with four columns each at the center of the colonnaded road leading to the theater. The video appears to show that only two of the 16 columns remain standing. IS militants have destroyed ancient sites across their self-styled Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, perceiving them as monuments to idolatry.