PALO ALTO, Calif.--At a shopping mall here one recent Friday, six-year-old Ruby Dowling made friends with a friendly egg-shaped robot. "This robot is nice," said Ruby, as a group of children encircled it. It wasn't surprising that the bot, named K5, inspired this response--it had been designed to look approachable. When it was surrounded and needed to return to work as the mall's security guard, though, the K5 did something its small admirers never expected. It let out a screech that scattered them in all directions.

Pepper, the humanoid robot programmed to "understand" human emotions, is to take a new job - as a receptionist in two Belgian hospitals. It will be the robot's first foray into healthcare after previous deployments in shopping centres, banks and train stations. Some experts have questioned the usefulness of social robots such as Pepper. Softbank, the company behind Pepper, and partner French robotics firm Aldebaran have seen huge success with the creation, with each batch of 1,000 selling out fast in Japan. The hospital-based robots will be significantly more expensive than the 1,850 basic model with a 34,000 ( 24,000) price tag.

Where does true power reside? Is it waving at you from a stage-lit, Presidentially-sealed podium? Or tucked away inside a billionaire's wallet? Can you smell it in a mahogany-clad clubroom at Yale in the smoke of a Bonesman's cigar, or catch a glimpse of its dark feathers perching on the advisory council of a transnational bank? One thing we know for sure: the nature and location of power is changing, and the agents of that change are the Californian technology companies that have the taken the 21st century by the throat.

Olli, a 3D printed, self-driving minibus, to hit the road in US A new maker of self-driving vehicles burst onto the scene Thursday in partnership with IBM's supercomputer platform Watson, and it's ready to roll right now. The vehicle -- a 3D-printed minibus called "Olli" capable of carrying 12 people -- was unveiled by Arizona-based startup Local Motors outside the US capital city Washington. Napster's improbable journey This week the Rhapsody music service announced that it will retire the Rhapsody name and re-brand its service (and the company) under the Napster brand. The Napster name has endured a long journey in the 17 years since Shawn Fanning first created the service in early 1999. I thought it might be helpful to put together a short history tracing that path.

There's been a lot of handwringing about the algorithms driving what we see related to political news. First, a month ago, there was concern that Facebook's news feed results were biased against conservative news, and this week, there's concern that Google favors Hillary Clinton in its autocomplete suggestions in its search engine. The video shows that Google seems to have suppressed the appearance of "Hillary Clinton indictment" in favor of "Hillary Clinton India," even though data shows people search for information on Clinton's indictment more than information on Clinton and India. It points out that the executive chairman of Google's parent company, Eric Schmidt, is a big Clinton supporter and that Google has many ties to her as well.) Search engines and algorithms decide what's relevant on these sites in very complicated ways, and the public generally doesn't know when it gets tweaked. Generally speaking, people want artificial intelligence.

Large-scale brain-like machines with human-like abilities to solve problems could become a reality, now that researchers have invented microscopic gadgets that mimic the connections between neurons in the human brain better than any previous devices. The new research could lead to better robots, self-driving cars, data mining, medical diagnosis, stock-trading analysis and "other smart human-interactive systems and machines in the future," said Tae-Woo Lee, a materials scientistat the Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea and senior author of the study. The human brain's enormous computing power stems from its connections. Previous research suggested that the brain has approximately 100 billion neurons and roughly 1 quadrillion (1 million billion) connections wiring these cells together. At each of these connections, or synapses, a neuron typically fires about 10 times per second.

Lam Wing Kee, 61, a Hong Kong bookseller who was imprisoned in China has told the BBC he considered taking his own life while in custody. Mr Lam was one of five booksellers targeted by officials for selling material critical of the Chinese leadership. Speaking to the BBC's Juliana Liu, he said: "You can stand up against tyranny."

It was a dark, overcast day, with clouds hovering low. The room was kept at the most appropriate temperatures and humidity, as usual. Yoko sat on a couch in an untidy manner, killing time with a silly game. But she would not talk to me. So begins a short story titled "A day when a computer writes fiction."

If you follow me on Snapchat (msuster) you might already know that I've been looking at and investing in a number of companies in the computer vision space. My thesis is that it will become a major I/O computing metaphor or as this field is sometimes referred to HCI (human-computer interaction). Today I am so excited to announce our latest investment in the category -- Nanit -- which is a smart baby monitor. The objective behind Nanit is to help parent "sleep more and monitor less." By using computer vision Nanit is able to better help parents understand how well a child is sleeping and if they're having difficulties what the causes may be (sound, ambient light, temperature or even, gasp, too much parental interference).

The 22nd annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, or "E3" – the world's largest video gaming convention held each June in Los Angeles – once again served as a glimpse into the future of the multibillion dollar interactive entertainment industry. An estimated 50,000 industry-only attendees from more than 100 countries swarmed the Los Angeles Convention Center and surrounding areas to play games not yet commercially available. Another 20,000 fans showed up. While some of the buzz at the show surrounded new hardware, such as Microsoft's surprise announcement of a new console available in 18 months (codenamed "Project Scorpio"), it was the many hundreds of upcoming games that dominated the discussion. Yours truly spent three thumb-numbing days playing tomorrow's titles, and the following are some highlights from my vantage point. Feel free to share the games you're most excited about in the Comments section.