A robot that is claimed to be so intelligent it can think for itself is set to be scrapped because it keeps escaping from the laboratory it lives in. Last week the Promobot IR77 made a bid for freedom through the streets of the Russian city of Perm where it was developed. The bot, who I'll call Roger, was only captured after he ran out of battery life after escaping through a gate from the exercise yard he was exploring. He had caused chaos as the traffic was forced to swerve to avoid him. Roger is part of a series of robots that have been equipped with artificial intelligence, meaning they learn from their experiences and surroundings.

With a wide base that tapers and expands to a fat midsection, upon which is perched a tiny head, the Russian robot named Promobot IR77 is no C-3PO. It evokes nothing so much as an artificially intelligent snowman, down to the machine's white-as-fresh-powder paint job. Like another famous snowman and itinerant – Frosty – the robot seems to have acquired a taste for skipping town, too. On June 16 the robot fled its creators, as The Washington Post reported. The story goes that an engineer working at Promobot Laboratories, in the Russian city of Perm, had left a gate open.

Robots in Europe may soon be classified as "electronic persons" if the European Union adopts a recently submitted proposal. Owners of these robots would be liable to paying social security on each robot in an unprecedented step meant to address the rising presence of robotic workers in the EU. The proposal calls for "the creation of a European Agency for robotics and artificial intelligence in order to provide the technical, ethical and regulatory expertise." Robots are being used in exponentially greater numbers in factories and also taking on tasks ranging from surgery to manufacturing and even personal care. Robots are becoming so ubiquitous that there are growing fears over unemployment, wealth inequality and alienation.

The Trolley Problem is an ethical brainteaser that's been entertaining philosophers since it was posed by Philippa Foot in 1967: A runaway train will slaughter five innocents tied to its track unless you pull a lever to switch it to a siding on which one man, also innocent and unawares, is standing. Pull the lever, you save the five, but kill the one: what is the ethical course of action? The problem has run many variants over time, including ones in which you have to choose between a trolley killing five innocents or personally shoving a man who is fat enough to stop the train (but not to survive the impact) into its path; a variant in which the fat man is the villain who tied the innocents to the track in the first place, and so on. Now it's found a fresh life in the debate over autonomous vehicles. The new variant goes like this: your self-driving car realizes that it can either divert itself in a way that will kill you and save, say, a busload of children; or it can plow on and save you, but the kids all die.

Despite apparently being up for sale, Alphabet's Boston Dynamics has revealed its latest robot creation. The robotics firm is best known for Atlas, its 5 foot 9 humanoid robot, and spot, a four legged'dog robot'. Now, a new mini version of spot with a strange extendable neck has been shown off helping around the house. The robor has an extenable neck and is shown helping around the house in a new video from Alphabet's secretive firm. 'SpotMini is a new smaller version of the Spot robot, weighing 55 lbs dripping wet (65 lbs if you include its arm.)' the secretive firm said.

Over the past year, questions about how emerging technologies will impact employment have taken on a new tenor. Will robots take over our jobs? One thing is indisputable: automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will displace workers in the IT and business process outsourcing services industry. Such tectonic shifts have occurred every few decades over the last two centuries. With each wave of new technology and each accompanying paradigm shift, jobs have disappeared.

WIRE)--Ipswitch, the leader in easy to try, buy and use IT management software, today announced the findings of an independent global study, carried out by analyst firm Freeform Dynamics. The survey examines the attitudes and readiness of IT decision makers with regard to intelligent machines and business systems (machines with decision making and learning capabilities). Exploring the fast-paced adoption of these systems, the report looks at the positive impacts already being observed in the commercial world and the potential barriers to even further mainstream adoption over the next decade. According to the research, investment in intelligent business systems and automation is well underway across the globe. Top current application deployment areas cited by respondents include digital customer engagement systems (55 percent), process automation and workflow systems (52 percent) and automated risk monitoring and management solutions (50 percent).

One day in January 2013, I found myself wasting time on the internet. This wasn't a good idea: I was as busy as anyone 2.5 years into their PhD. I had to finish a presentation on some yeast genetics research, I was months behind on a paper with an NYU collaborator and even farther behind on some leftover undergraduate research. I was also busy in my personal life--I had returned from a trip to Israel and had just taken up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and jogging. But this one day, I was wasting time by answering a stranger's question about the beta distribution. The question was on Cross Validated, the statistics sister site of developer Q&A site Stack Overflow.

SITTING IN AN office in San Francisco, Igor Barani calls up some medical scans on his screen. He is the chief executive of Enlitic, one of a host of startups applying deep learning to medicine, starting with the analysis of images such as X-rays and CT scans. It is an obvious use of the technology. Deep learning is renowned for its superhuman prowess at certain forms of image recognition; there are large sets of labelled training data to crunch; and there is tremendous potential to make health care more accurate and efficient. Dr Barani (who used to be an oncologist) points to some CT scans of a patient's lungs, taken from three different angles.

Promobot RI77 escaped its high-tech lab and evaded Russian scientists for the i second /i time this month. LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Promobot, short for "promotional robot," was equipped with artificial intelligence, allowing it to learn through ... continue reading In another sign the U.S. is slipping internationally, China has unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer, that is five times more powerful that the fastest U.S. supercomputer. It is also built with all Chinese microprocessors. LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - ... continue reading Security robots have gone to work in a Silicon Valley mall and designers are shocked at the reactions they're getting from the public. The mixed response means the robots have to be capable of protecting themselves if needed.