Cars that drive themselves would mean a revolution in how people get around. But they might arrive just as much by evolution, with everyday cars getting gradually smarter, as by sudden shifts to fully self-driving vehicles. Autonomous driving -- and its potential for sweeping change -- was much on the minds of top auto executives at the Geneva International Motor Show. The exhibit space in Geneva was mostly used for the show's primary purpose: showing off product to the news media and the public in order to boost sales. The display stands were dominated by expensive sports and luxury cars for the rich and new SUVs for more middle-class buyers.

Google's Go-playing program AlphaGo will take on world champion Lee Sedol in a series of games in Korea next month with a $1 million prize for the winner. Go is a 2,500-year-old game that was mentioned by Confucius. Players take turns placing black or white stones on a grid, capturing opponents' stones or surrounding spaces to take territory. AlphaGo has already bested a ranking Go master in Europe. AlphaGo, developed by Google's London-based artificial intelligence team DeepMind, trounced the best Go-playing AI programs in a series of matches, as reported by Nature last month.

In physics, a singularity is a black hole, a rip in the fabric of space and time where the conventional laws of physics cease to apply. A group of scientists and technologists, many based in Silicon Valley, believe a similar phenomenon is about to take place in human society, thanks to incredibly accelerated technological change. The "singularity" they fear involves the emergence of brilliant machine intelligence, possibly within the next 30 years. When that happens, the basic laws that govern human affairs could be upended. While trekkies may see similarities to the plot of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture," researchers associated with Palo Alto's Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence say the prospect of this technology-fueled transformation is no Hollywood invention – and a happy ending is by no means guaranteed.

Science fiction writer David Brin calls it "a tsunami of lights" -- a future where tiny cameras are everywhere, lighting up everything we do, and even predicting what we'll do next. Unlike George Orwell's novel "1984," where only Big Brother controlled the cameras, in 2015, cheap, mobile technology has turned everyone into a watcher. A snowboarder with a GoPro can post a YouTube video of a friend's 540-degree McTwist in the halfpipe. But also -- as happened recently -- a Penn State fraternity can upload Facebook photos of partially naked, sleeping college women. A San Jose homeowner cowers behind a locked door while she watches an intruder stroll through her home on a surveillance video.

And Pepper, the new companion robot from Tokyo-based technology company Softbank, delivers cuteness like you've never seen. What's striking is the absolutely ardent attention it gives you -- frankly a lot better than some real-life people. "You look a bit thin," it coos in a soft childlike voice, free of any rigid mechanical accent. "You should watch what you eat." The 4-foot-tall white machine-on-wheels was disarmingly charming and definitely intriguing when I spent half a day with it, ahead of its delivery to its first customers later this month.

Today: Google strikes deal with Johnson & Johnson to make robots that can assist surgeons, launching a new challenge to Sunnyvale's Intuitive Surgical. Also: Intel, Altera soar after reports of merger. Google's newest push into health care technology involves surgical robots, a partnership with a pharmaceutical giant and competition with one of Silicon Valley's largest medical-device companies. Google and a Johnson & Johnson unit announced Friday that they will be working together to make robots that can assist in surgeries, a strategic collaboration with no price tag announced. The aim of the project appears to be similar to the da Vinci robots manufactured and sold by Sunnyvale's Intuitive Surgical, the third largest public Silicon Valley company in the biotech/health care sector.

This ScienceLives article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Nancy J. Nersessian's research is driven by the question "How do scientists think?" Nersessian's research focuses on how the cognitive and learning practices of scientists and engineers lead to creative and innovative outcomes. She is a Regents' Professor of Cognitive Science at the Georgia Institute of Technology with joint appointments in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts School of Public Policy and the College of Computing School of Interactive Computing. Her research supports the insight that scientists think not only with ideas, but also with the artifacts they create to investigate nature.

The captain s mission: To obtain information about the local medical facilities. On the computer screen in front of me, an animated Army captain is attempting to speak with an Iraqi hospital receptionist. This is a fictional scenario in a state-of-the-art military training game. On the other side of the virtual room, the receptionist listens politely as the captain explains that he has come with supplies and he would like to speak to the hospital director. The receptionist seems to hesitate, but then responds that he will be happy to assist.

The Planetary Society's LightSail, funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, will aim to demonstrate that controlled solar sailing is possible. The Planetary Society's LightSail, funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, will aim to demonstrate that controlled solar sailing is possible. The Planetary Society's LightSail, funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, will aim to demonstrate that controlled solar sailing is possible. When it comes to incredible science, 2015 will be hard to top. Among a number of notable events, we got our first, thrilling look at Pluto, found evidence that liquid water still flows on Mars and began facing the reality that human gene editing is closer than ever thanks to the CRISPR system.

FORTY years ago, at the height of the race between the United States and the Soviet Union to lay claim to the cosmos, a much-anticipated science-fiction movie made its debut, and sci-fi was never the same again. Kids whose parents dragged them along to the theater were alternately bemused, disturbed and mesmerized. We knew we'd seen a grown-up movie, even if we couldn't completely make sense of it all. We were being initiated into a cultural dialogue that was, after all, about our future. The movie, of course, was Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and many critics and much of the public instantly recognized it as a landmark. It was, wrote L.A. Times film critic Charles Champlin, "the picture that science-fiction fans of every age and in every corner of the world have prayed (sometimes forlornly) that the industry might some day give them."