Squse Inc., a maker of robotic hands that can handle food, plans an initial public offering in Tokyo as early as next year to fund overseas expansion, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Kyoto-based Squse, partly owned by state-backed Innovation Network Corp. of Japan, is considering seeking a valuation of at least 50 billion ( 455 million), the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. INCJ, set up in 2009 to help make Japan's technology industry more competitive, agreed in 2014 to spend as much as 500 million to buy a minority stake in Squse, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The IPO and expansion plans coincide with a rapid increase in demand globally for industrial robotics technology. Chinese appliance maker Midea Group Co. said last week it was seeking to increase its stake in German industrial robot maker Kuka AG.

While the world's great artists have all been humans so far, robots may soon give the old masters a run for their money. Participants in the first annual Robot Art competition showed just how far our silicon counterparts have come in creating great artwork. The robots took a variety of approaches, with some coming up with their own compositions, or challenging themselves to work with a limited palette. "The results of this competition show a significant step in the advancement of robotics and artificial intelligence to create beauty. In addition to being geographically diverse, the approach to creating art that these robots took varied significantly, sometimes in unexpected exciting ways. Some robots concentrated on mastering traditional painting techniques, others experimented with artificial creativity, while others explored the nature of human/robot collaboration. I am excited to see how new teams take in this year's results, and try to top them in next year's competition," RobotArt.org

Learning machines are capable of working ever more autonomously on ever more complex tasks. In this blog, Muz Janoowalla explores whether it would be smart for humankind to develop an'intelligent gun'. There are an estimated 875 million civilian, law-enforcement, and military firearms in the world, of which 650 million are in the hands of civilians, either legally or illegally. Given the plethora of high-profile gun attacks in recent months and years – particularly in the US, but also in France, Norway, Pakistan and Tunisia, to name but a few – it is disturbingly easy to imagine gunmen on the loose in a school or at a public event, shooting indiscriminately and leaving casualties in their wake. Imagine how different things could be if a gun had artificial intelligence built into it, turning it into an intelligent gun.

WASHINGTON – The death of the Taliban's leader in a U.S. drone strike has scrambled discussions between the U.S. military and the White House over whether to let U.S. forces once again conduct offensive operations against the insurgent group in Afghanistan. The American military wants presidential permission to use airpower to blunt the group's threatened advances this summer, according to several U.S. officials. The White House first wants to see what effect the death of Mullah Akhtar Mansour in Pakistan over the weekend will have on the Taliban, senior administration officials said. President Barack Obama confirmed Mansour's death on Monday. The death came amid indications of an impending Taliban offensive.

Imagine you're sitting in a coffee shop. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a stranger pointing his phone in your direction. The next day, you get an email from someone claiming to have seen you at the coffee shop. You have no idea how he got your contact information, let alone how he identified you. The power to identify total strangers on the street is the advertising pitch for a new wave of startups hoping to capitalize on rapidly advancing facial recognition technology.

There is a rhythm in the affairs of the Association for Computing Machinery and June marks our annual celebration of award recipients and the biennial election of new officers. I will end my final year as past president, Alex Wolf will begin his first year in that role, and a new president and other officers will take their places in the leadership. June also marks Bobby Schnabel's first appearance at our annual awards event in his role as CEO of ACM. I am especially pleased that two former Stanford colleagues, Martin Hellman and Whitfield Diffie, are receiving the ACM A.M. Turing Award this year. Nearly four decades have passed since their seminal description of what has become known as public key cryptography and in that time the technology has evolved and suffused into much of our online and offline lives.

It was time to begin teaching my class. The children were in their seats, laptops turned on, ready to begin. I scanned the doorway, hoping for one more girl to arrive: there were nine boys in my class and just two girls. I was conducting free coding classes, but young girls were still reluctant to attend. As a 15-year-old computer enthusiast, I was baffled by this lack of interest.

Professor Yale Patt, the Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin has been named the 2016 recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science by the Franklin Institute. Patt is a renowned computer architect, whose research has resulted in transformational changes to the nature of high-performance microprocessors, including the first complex logic gate implemented on a single piece of silicon. He has received ACM's highest honors both in computer architecture (the 1996 Eckert-Mauchly Award) and in education (the 2000 Karl V. Karlstrom Award). He is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Derek Chiou, an associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, conducted an extensive interview of Patt, covering his formative years to his Ph.D. in 1966, his career since then, and his views on a number of issues. Presented here are excerpts from that interview; the full interview is available via the link appearing on the last page of this interview. DEREK CHIOU: Let's start with the influences that helped shape you into who you are. I have often heard you comment on your actions as, "That's the way my mother raised me." YALE PATT: In my view my mother was the most incredible human being who ever lived. Born in Eastern Europe, with her parents' permission, at the age of 20, she came to America by herself. A poor immigrant, she met and married my father, also from a poor immigrant family, and they raised three children. We grew up in one of the poorer sections of Boston. Because of my mother's insistence, I was the first from that neighborhood to go to college. My brother was the second. My sister was the third. You have often said that as far as your professional life is concerned, she taught you three important lessons. Almost everyone in our neighborhood quit school when they turned 16 and went to work in the Converse Rubber factory, which was maybe 100 yards from our apartment. She would have none of it.

Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett is still listing "ending two wars" as one of the major accomplishments of the Obama administration, despite deepening U.S. involvement overseas – including the recent U.S. drone strike that took out Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour. Jarrett, one of President Obama's closest aides, made the remarks in an interview aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." Asked whatever happened to the president's call for "hope and change," she cited a slew of changes during Obama's two terms: "Just look at what's happened in the last seven years. While the interview may have been conducted before the official Pentagon announcement, her comments coincided with the news that a drone strike had taken out Taliban leader Mansour in the Pakistan province of Baluchistan – the latest sign of the prolonged fight in the Middle East and South Asia. Even before those comments, the administration was taking criticism for efforts to downplay U.S. military actions against terror and insurgent groups.

China will boost growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) sector in the next three years, said a statement issued by the National Development and Reform Commission on Monday. By 2018, China shall build platforms for fundamental AI resources and innovation and make breakthroughs on basic core technology, said the three-year implementation program for "Internet Plus" AI. The country shall be in line with global AI technology and industries by 2018, it said. The program will involve key projects such as intelligent home appliances, smart automobiles, intelligent wearable devices and robots. Government departments shall map out supportive fiscal policies for the sector and boost international cooperation, it said.