Japan's Sony said it plans to build up its artificial intelligence (AI) business and eventually turn it into a major revenue source, beginning with an investment in a U.S. startup. The electronics maker has invested an undisclosed sum in California-based Cogitai. The year-old firm, founded by three researchers, focuses on technology that allows machines to learn continually and autonomously from interaction in the real world. The move comes a time when major technology companies such as Facebook, Apple, and Alphabet's Google are spending aggressively on AI ventures. "From an objective perspective, we are lagging behind," Hiroaki Kitano, chief executive of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, said in an interview.

The Taliban has denied reports that a US military drone strike had killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansoor and another fighter in Pakistan. Earlier on Saturday, a US official said that the drone attack "likely killed" Mansoor inside Pakistani territory. Authorised by US President Barack Obama, the strike took place at about 6 am EDT (1000 GMT), the official said, which would have placed it late on Friday night in the target area. Multiple US drones targeted the men as they rode in a vehicle in a remote area in Pakistan along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal, the official added. The Pentagon confirmed that the US targeted Mansoor in a statement released on Saturday.

U.S. special operations forces launched an airstrike Saturday against Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in a remote town in Pakistan, U.S. military officials said, and initial evidence suggested Mansour was killed. U.S. military and intelligence officers were still assessing the results of the strike by multiple armed drones, they cautioned. The operation, which was authorized by President Obama and took place around 3 p.m. local time (3 a.m. Pacific time), hit Mansour as he traveled in a vehicle with another man along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal. Mansour has emerged as the leader of a resurgent Taliban that in recent months has mounted a powerful insurgency against the Afghan government in a string of attacks that have killed civilians, Afghan forces and U.S. military personnel.

Robots can paint, but when it comes to writing, they shouldn't quit their day jobs. That's the combined conclusion from results of two contests announced this week. On the upside, artificial intelligence created some pretty impressive works for RobotArt.org's The contest challenged artists and engineers to create a robot that painted like a real artist. Essentially, the aim was to get "as many teams as possible to set up a robot that can do any sort of painting," the contest site explains.

On Thursday, we asked Google about its new custom-made chip for artificial intelligence called a Tensor Processing Unit, or TPU. Google politely declined to answer Recode's questions, saying only that "more information is coming later." Later in the day, after we posted our questions, Google changed its mind and gave us some short answers to a few -- but not all -- of our questions, via an email from a spokesperson. This is a big one that Google did not answer. It probably is pre-trained, but we don't know for sure.

Today, Google convened 7,000 developers and journalists at a popular outdoor concert venue in Silicon Valley and gave a two-hour state of the union on the future of arguably the most powerful and ambitious company in the world. In front of a packed crowd and tens of thousands watching via live stream, the company brought its best and brightest minds on stage and unveiled to the world that Google is playing catch-up with a slew of products and services we've already seen before from other companies. There's Google Assistant, a conversational AI chat and search bot (Facebook's M/Microsoft's bot projects/Apple's Siri/Viv/literally everyone has a bot these days); Google Home, a voice-powered home entertainment and task hub (Amazon's dreadfully popular and beloved Echo); Allo and Duo, two mobile messaging and mobile video apps (Facebook's Messenger goliath with nearly 1 billion users); and Daydream, Google's Android-powered virtual reality platform, headset, and multimedia content hub (Oculus). But make no mistake, Google, led by its fresh-faced, immaculately tailored blue jacket–wearing CEO, Sundar Pichai, didn't tiptoe around the stage today. Quite the opposite, Google's 2016 I/O keynote address was confident, enthusiastic, and more than just a little impressive.

Paul Herzlich works in Google's legal department and helped develop a special sensor for "pressure sores" by those who use wheelchairs. Paul Herzlich works in Google's legal department and helped develop a special sensor for "pressure sores" by those who use wheelchairs. For most of us, eye tracking technology sounds interesting. Eye tracking allows users to move a cursor around a computer or mobile device simply by moving your eyes and head. Oded Ben Dov initially used eye tracking technology to develop a video game that he showed off on Israeli TV.

These last few months have presented some complicated security stories, and this week we took steps to untangle them. We looked at the many, many ways in which the FBI hacks people, revelations of which have been trickling out for decades. And we broke down just how hackers were able to lift 81 million from a Bangladeshi bank in a matter of hours--well short of their billion-dollar goal, but still a hefty sum, cleverly obtained. In the world of software, Google has finally offered end-to-end encryption in its messaging products. It's Allo and Duo, new chat and video apps that use the stalwart end-to-end encryption known as Signal. On Allo, end-to-end kicks in only when you're in incognito mode, which we guess is better than nothing.

Google is announcing a new messaging app today. It's called Allo and its main feature is a Google assistant that's built right in. Google says it'll be available later this summer -- for free -- on both iOS and Android. Allo (pronounced like "Aloe" and not like "'allo, guv'nor!") is a mobile-only app that you might think is meant to replace Google's other messaging app, Hangouts. Allo is explicitly meant to be a fresh start for Google's new communication's division (which also runs Hangouts and Project Fi). "It's really liberating to start from scratch sometimes," says Erik Kay, director of engineering, communications products.

By rights, Yuval Noah Harari should be an anonymous academic buried in an obscure university department somewhere toiling away on his somewhat dusty discipline – medieval military history. He's a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and there is almost nothing in his background to suggest that he would write a book that has become one of the most talked about non-fiction bestsellers of the year – Sapiens. Or that he'd join the globetrotting TED-ocracy: the academic superstars who travel the world delivering keynotes on zeitgeisty topics, in Harari's case, the not inconsiderable subject of the history of the whole of mankind. When I meet him, he's just been the star turn at Penguin Random House's global sales conference. In May, he packed out Hay. Earlier this month, he delivered a TED talk.