This metal marvel might just be the soldier of the future... but far from being science fiction, this one is real. Affectionately known as Ivan the Terminator, Project Iron Man is a humanoid military robot currently being developed in Russia. For years, the country has been trying to keep up with the U.S. and China, which are building robots, drones and other military hi-tech machines with great success. The aim of the Russian robot soldier is to'replace the person in the battle or in emergency areas where there is a risk of explosion, fire, high background radiation, or other conditions that are harmful to humans', Komosomolskaya Pravda reported. This humanoid military robot is currently being developed in Russia.

Can software identify complex personality traits simply by analysing your face? Faception, a start-up based in Tel Aviv, Israel, courted controversy this week when it claimed its tech does just that. And not just broad categories such as introvert or extrovert: Faception claims it can spot terrorists, paedophiles – and brand promoters. "Using automated feature extraction is standard for face recognition and emotion recognition," says Raia Hadsell, a machine vision engineer at Google DeepMind. The controversial part is what happens next.

This week's top Machine Learning stories, including robots to drive your car, diagnose your medical images, pick up your mess, and more! Machine Learning is one of the most exciting fields in the world. Every week we discover something new, something amazing, something revolutionary. It's incredible, but it can also be overwhelming. That's why we created This Week in Machine Learning!

We accept that to err is human. When our electronic counterparts fail us--whether its baggage screening software or the latest artificial intelligence--we are quick to shun their advice in the future. That has big implications as machines infiltrate the workplace, offering services once provided by human colleagues. University of Wisconsin researchers recently sought to test how we might get along with our future AI coworkers. The researchers asked 160 college undergraduates to forecast scheduling for hospital rooms, an unfamiliar task.

Small drones are inefficient birds. They fly for short bursts of time, and get thrown about in the wind. That's not great for anyone hoping to use a drone as a hovering sentry, but there's a better way: tethers. Put a leash on a drone, and suddenly it's a flexible flying watchdog, able to peek up high and then recharge safely in its mechanical nest. This is Aerovironment's Tether Eye, a quadcopter promising 24 hour surveillance from a height of 150 feet, all in one tidy box.

Supporters of the slain Taliban chief have held funeral prayers across Pakistan for Mullah Akhtar Mansour, killed in a U.S. drone attack last week. Some 400 Jamaat-ud Dawa members held the ceremony Friday in the northwestern city of Peshawar. Similar ceremonies were also held in Quetta, Hyderabad and Karachi. Jamaat-ud Dawa is a terror organization widely believed to be front group for Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for the 2008 attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai. The funeral prayers took place even though Mansour's body is still in the hands of Pakistani authorities for DNA testing.

Designers will succeed programmers as the kings of Silicon Valley, machines will become as smart as humans, and ambient computing will supplant smartphones in the next few years. Those are three of the top 10 trends coming in technology, according to five venture capitalists who made their predictions Wednesday night at a local Silicon Valley institution. The Top 10 Tech Trends event has been held annually for the past 18 years by the Churchill Club, which hosts forums with tech's top executives, financiers, entrepreneurs, and thinkers. The criteria for the trends are that they must not be obvious and that they will take off within five years, though both rules are frequently broken. Few of the predictions directly involved traditional enterprise computing, which customarily is focused on the nearer-term trends, but virtually all of them are enabled by heavyweight enterprise technologies.

The Dogo from General Robotics is a portable, tactical combat robot. The big difference is that the Dogo is armed with a 9mm Glock pistol. Dogo weighs 26 pounds and can to climb stairs and other obstacles. It trundles along at 2.5 miles an hour for at least two hours on one battery charge. The operator gets a 360-degree view of the surroundings via six video cameras, while another two cameras are sighted along the pistol barrel.

Earlier this year, consulting firm Frost & Sullivan predicted that artificial intelligence in healthcare will see a "dramatic market expansion" in the next couple of years, with the potential to reduce the cost of medical treatments by half across the board. "By 2025, AI systems could be involved in everything from population health management, to digital avatars capable of answering specific patient queries," said Harpreet Singh Buttar, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan. With this in mind, we identified companies that are already applying machine learning techniques and predictive analytics to reduce drug discovery times, provide virtual assistance to patients, and diagnose ailments by processing medical images, among other things. We published the market map below in April 2016 and updated it on 5/24/2016, adding over 35 companies to it and removing ones that exited, like MetaMind, which was recently acquired by Salesforce. The startups below have raised more than 870M in aggregate funding since 2011.

Meet Ivan the Terminator - Russia's robotic answer to Iron Man that could be about to change military warfare forever. The terrifying new robot soldier is the latest in the country's list of high-tech weaponry as it competes with the US and China in the artificial intelligence stakes. According to Russian newspaper Komosomolskaya Pravd, the droid is designed "to replace the person in the battle or in emergency areas where there is a risk of explosion, fire, high background radiation, or other conditions harmful to humans. "The development of a special military robot is one of the priorities of military construction in Russia." The Iron Man machines are remotely controlled, but there are fears that they could become completely autonomous in the future.