Humanity's got itself a problem. As Homo sapiens balloons as a species--to perhaps nearly 10 billion by 2050--the planet stubbornly stays the same size, meaning the same amount of land must support way, way more people. Add the volatility of global warming and consequent water shortages, and the human race is going to have some serious trouble feeding itself. Perhaps it's serendipitous, then, that the machines have finally arrived. Truly smart, truly impressive robots and machine learning algorithms that may help usher in a new Green Revolution to keep humans fed on an increasingly mercurial planet.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi has announced its first drone, pricing it significantly lower than a comparable model by the market leader DJI. The Mi Drone can stay airborne for nearly half an hour and will be sold with a choice of stabilised cameras. The move gives Xiaomi the chance to target a fast-growing market, at a time when it has failed to meet its own sales targets. One expert said the firm now had to win over potential buyers' trust. "The feature set between the Mi Drone and DJI's Phantom 3 is almost identical - they can both be made to return home and circle around a point of interest - but Xiaomi's product is so competitively priced you have to wonder if it can make much profit," Engadget's Chinese editor-in-chief Richard Lai told the BBC. "So, the new drone will probably appeal to beginners.

There is a difference between knowledge and understanding. Knowledge typically comes down to knowing facts while understanding is the application of knowledge to the mastery of systems. You can know a lot while understanding very little. Just as an example, IBM's Watson artificial intelligence system that defeated the TV Jeopardy champs a few years ago knew all there was to know about Jeopardy questions but didn't really understand anything. Ask Watson to apply to removing your appendix its knowledge of hundreds of medical questions and you'd be disappointed and probably dead.

IMAGE: Dr. Ben Choi, associate professor of computer science at Louisiana Tech University, will present his research on a groundbreaking new technology that has the potential to revolutionize the computing industry... view more RUSTON, La. - Dr. Ben Choi, associate professor of computer science at Louisiana Tech University, will present his research on a groundbreaking new technology that has the potential to revolutionize the computing industry during a keynote speech next month at the International Conference on Measurement Instrumentation and Electronics. Choi will present on a foundational architecture for designing and building computers, which will utilize multiple values rather than binary as used by current computers. The many-valued logic computers should provide faster computation by increasing the speed of processing for microprocessors and the speed of data transfer between the processors and the memory as well as increasing the capacity of the memory. This technology has the potential to redefine the computing industry, which is constantly trying to increase the speed of computation and, in recent years, has run short of options. By providing a new hardware approach, the technology will push the speed limit of computing using a progressive approach which will move from two values to four values, then to eight values, then to 16 values, and so on. Future computers could be built using this many-valued approach.

Robots are taking over iPhone manufacturer Foxconn: the world's biggest contract fabricator has successfully replaced as many as 60,000 factory workers with sophisticated machines that use artificial intelligence to perform elaborate assembly work more efficiently than humans do, a government official told the South China Morning Post. One Foxconn plant has "reduced employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000 thanks to the introduction of robots" and "more companies are likely to follow suit," said Xu Yulian, head of publicity for the Kunshan region in the Jiangsu province, which is a manufacturing hub for the electronics industry. About 600 major companies in Kunshan are planning to tap artificial intelligence to replace workers with robots. Foxconn Technology Group confirmed to the BBC that it was automating "many of the manufacturing tasks associated with our operations." Still, Foxconn insists that using robots does not entail long-term job losses.

What do you think of when you hear the word "technology"? Do you think of jet planes and laboratory equipment and underwater farming? Or do you think of smartphones and machine-learning algorithms? When a grave-faced announcer on CNBC says "technology stocks are down today," we all know he means Facebook and Apple, not Boeing and Pfizer. To Thiel, this signals a deeper problem in the American economy, a shrinkage in our belief of what's possible, a pessimism about what is really likely to get better. Our definition of what technology is has narrowed, and he thinks that narrowing is no accident. "Technology gets defined as'that which is changing fast,'" he says. "If the other things are not defined as'technology,' we filter them out and we don't even look at them." He founded PayPal and Palantir, was one of the earliest investors in Facebook, and now sits atop a fortune estimated in the billions. We spoke in his sleek, floor-to-ceiling-windowed apartment overlooking Manhattan -- a palace built atop the riches of the IT revolution.

The Afghan Taliban named an Islamic legal scholar who was one of former leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour's deputies to succeed him Wednesday after confirming Mansour's death in a U.S. drone strike over the weekend. Within an hour of the announcement, a Taliban suicide bomber attacked a shuttle bus carrying court employees west of the Afghan capital of Kabul, killing as many as 11 people and wounding several others, including children. New Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada was named in a United Nations report last year as former chief of the Sharia-based justice system under the Taliban's five-year rule over Afghanistan, which ended with their ouster in 2001. Sirajuddin Haqqani, head of a feared network blamed for many deadly bomb attacks in Kabul in recent years, and Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar, will serve as deputies. The announcement, following a meeting of the Taliban's main shura, or leadership council, ended days of confusion during which the Taliban declined to confirm the death of Mansour in a drone strike in Pakistan on Saturday.

Xiaomi, the world's second-most-valuable startup, launched its first consumer drone on Wednesday and it didn't disappoint. The Mi Drone can capture 4K video, automatically avoids any obstacles and costs 300 less than the best-selling comparable product on the market. It seems like a sure-fire hit and a way for Xiaomi to recoup losses from slowing smartphone sales. The only problem is that Xiaomi's drone may never be seen outside China and the company's inability to scale globally continues to hinder growth. Consumer drones are arguably the first consumer electronics category where Chinese companies are defining the market and dominating sales.

The figure comes from a local government official, who said employee numbers at one of Foxconn's factories in Kunshan, near Shanghai, have been drastically slashed in recent months. Foxconn is headquartered in Taiwan, but has 12 factories in China, where it produces popular devices like the iPhone and iPad, along with a number of others. The official told the South China Morning Post: "The Foxconn factory has reduced its employee strength from 110,000 to 50,000, thanks to the introduction of robots. It has tasted success in reduction of labour costs." "More companies are likely to follow suit," the official added.

The Mi Drone carries a ball-shaped 4K camera beneath it, that quadcopter-buffs might think looks similar to the built-in shooters found on Yuneec's Typhoon series. To be specific, the camera uses a Sony 12.4-megapixel sensor that can capture video at up to 3,840 x 2,160 at 30 fps; and as you'd expect, it can take RAW photos. Its detachable gimbal does 3-axis stabilization which corrects itself 2,000 times per second, and this is assisted by an optical flow sensor positioned between the camera and the battery bay on the back. Indeed, the sample clip we saw during the livestream looked satisfactory (at one point, Lei said well over 2 million viewers tuned in), so hopefully it's just as good once the drone lands in consumers' homes. While the drone itself looks a bit too familiar, its controller comes with a cute appearance that somewhat assembles a bunny -- the company's mascot -- from afar.