There's a point on the Uncanny Valley when a humanoid robot turns from something "friendly" into something terrifying. An example of a robot that would naturally register as non-threatening would be Star Wars' C-3PO. We can still differentiate between computer and human at that level. It's familiar to us, but we know for a fact that it's non-human. Even though we see these robots in such a way, is it possible that we could associate them with a deeper emotional response?

At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, scientists have begun testing IBM's TrueNorth computer chip--a brain-inspired mega chip IBM deems "the largest neurosynaptic chip" to date. IBM's TrueNorth is the first of its kind. A collaboration between IBM and Cornell University via the DARPA SyNAPSE Program, which was granted 100 million in public funding, the idea for the chip was conceived in 2004. In 2015, GE inaugurated a new, Multi-Modal manufacturing facility in Chakan, India. If the company's ambitions for the space are realized, it could drive a massive change in global manufacturing.

A robo-monk called "Xianer" became an internet sensation in China after being shown on the country's internet, the country's People's Daily newspaper reported. The robot monk can talk to humans and answer some basic questions on Buddhist dharma. He was developed by the Buddhist monks of Beijing's Longquan temple. There is currently only one robot monk, with no plans for mass production, according to the newspaper. "After all, this is not a commercial endeavor. We made Xianer to preach Buddhist doctrines in a modern way," temple director Master Xianfan told People's Daily.

Globes, an Israeli business news website, reports that Elon Musk made a secret visit to Mobileye headquarters in Jerusalem last month. Sources say Musk was on hand to personally witness recent technological breakthroughs Mobileye has made in its autonomous driving systems. The company has two Tesla Model S sedans that it uses for test purposes. The timing of the visit is interesting. It occurred just weeks before the high profile launch of the Model 3, a car that appears to be designed for advanced self driving operation.

Earlier this month, headlines were made around the world when Google's artificial intelligence, dubbed AlphaGo, was able to beat the current world champion in four out of five matches of the ancient board game Go. Now the bot may have to face an opponent of its own type: a group of Chinese computer engineers have announced that they plan to challenge Google, pitting AlphaGo against their own AI program. The scientists are part of the China Computer Go team, and the announcement was made at an event hosted by the Chinese Go Association and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence. It was said that the challenge will be made before the end of 2016, but exact details of what that will include weren't mentioned, other that the fact that it will involve the game of Go. AlphaGo's win over 33-year-old Lee Sedol came as a bit of a surprise, as the Go champion was seen as a much stronger opponent and expected to win, despite the fact that the program had become the world's first AI to defeat a human in the game last year when it bested a professional player.

WIRED Health 2016 takes place on 29 April in London. IBM's Watson supercomputer is perhaps best known for winning the gameshow Jeopardy, but its expertise is now being applied to healthcare Kyu Rhee will be speaking at WIRED Health 2016 on 29 April in London. From helping humans live longer to understanding the brain, WIRED Health will hear from the innovators transforming this critical sector. You might know IBM's Watson best for its victory on US game show Jeopardy!, or perhaps for its cookery prowess, or even the campaign to elect it to the US presidency. But IBM hopes that its supercomputer can also change the way doctors diagnose their patients, putting vast quantities of data at a physician's fingertips.

If you've seen the movie Her, or perhaps Iron Man, you'll know what the future of tech looks like. AI is coming and it's coming in a big way. It's here to make our lives easier and simpler, or at least, that's what all the big tech giants would have us believe. AI is nothing new, IBM has been experimenting with Watson for a couple of years. But powerful, enormous tech such as Watson is far removed from the lives of everyday people like you or me.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your fluid-filled Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. MIT has developed a 3D printer that can mix solids and liquids. With "printable hydraulics," an inkjet printer deposits individual droplets of material that are each 20 to 30 microns in diameter, or less than half the width of a human hair.

A senior Egyptian al-Qaida figure fighting in Syria was killed in a U.S. drone strike this week, the latest to be killed in such attacks in Syria, a Syrian opposition monitoring group and relatives said Friday. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Rifai Ahmad Taha was killed in a strike Tuesday in the northwestern Idlib province. Before joining al-Qaida, Taha was a top figure in Egypt's notorious militant group Gamaa Islamiya, which massacred 58 foreign tourists in the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor in 1997. He was also allied with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said several al-Qaida members, including Taha, were killed in Tuesday's strike.

Synopsis: There is more to Text Mining than TDM and TF-IDF. Come explore the world of Sentiment Analysis using Advanced Text Mining techniques with cutting edge tools like Stanford's CoreNLP and analysing it's output using Python. Speaker: Aditya Shankar is a Lecturer in the Intelligent Systems practice at the Institute of Systems Science in the National University of Singapore. He started his career consulting for Microsoft in Redmond, WA, Nike in Portland, OR and T-Mobile in Seattle, WA. He then moved on to work for companies in the Healthcare domain, mostly healthcare providers in Tennessee.