The U.S. unveiled the prototype of an autonomous, experimental warship Thursday that would drastically reduce the cost of operations at sea and mark progress in the move toward robotic warfare. It comes as the military has increasingly aimed to boost unmanned technology to counter Chinese and Russian investments. "This is an inflection point," Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Work told Reuters in an interview. "This is the first time we've ever had a totally robotic, trans-oceanic-capable ship." Work said he hoped unmanned ships would be stationed in the western Pacific within as few as five years.

The US has officially christened its experimental self-driving warship designed to hunt for enemy submarines for months at a time. The 132ft-long (40-metre) unarmed prototype, dubbed Sea Hunter, is the naval equivalent of Google's self-driving car, designed to cruise on the ocean's surface without a crew. The ship's projected 20 million ( 14.2 million) price tag and its 15,000 ( 10,650) to 20,000 ( 14,300) daily operating cost make it relatively inexpensive for the navy. The 132ft-long (40-metre) unarmed prototype, dubbed Sea Hunter, is the naval equivalent of Google's self-driving car, designed to cruise on the ocean's surface without a crew. The ship's projected 20 million ( 14.2 million) price tag and its 20,000 ( 14,300) daily operating cost make it relatively inexpensive for the navy The vessel was unveiled by Deputy US Defense Secretary Robert Work and has been developed by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

In an age when technology companies routinely introduce new forms of everyday magic, one problem that remains seemingly unsolved is that of long-form transcription. Sure, voice dictation for documents has been conquered by Nuance's Dragon software. Our phones and smart home devices can understand fairly complex commands, thanks to self-teaching recurrent neural nets and other 21st century wonders. However, the task of providing accurate transcriptions of long blocks of actual human conversation remains beyond the abilities of even today's most advanced software. When solved on a broad scale, it is a problem that might unlock vast archives of oral histories, make podcasts easier to consume for speed-readers (tl;dl), and be a world-changing boon for journalists everywhere, liberating precious hours of sweet life.

In what they called a milestone achievement for artificial intelligence, scientists said on Wednesday they have created a computer program that beat a professional human player at the complex board game called Go, which originated in ancient China. The feat recalled IBM supercomputer Deep Blue's 1997 match victory over chess world champion Garry Kasparov. But Go, a strategy board game most popular in places like China, South Korea and Japan, is vastly more complicated than chess. "Go is considered to be the pinnacle of game AI research," said artificial intelligence researcher Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, the British company that developed the AlphaGo program. "It's been the grand challenge, or holy grail if you like, of AI since Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess."

In an age when technology companies routinely introduce new forms of everyday magic, one problem that remains seemingly unsolved is that of long-form transcription. Sure, voice dictation for documents has been conquered by Nuance's Dragon software. Our phones and smart home devices can understand fairly complex commands, thanks to self-teaching recurrent neural nets and other 21st century wonders. However, the task of providing accurate transcriptions of long blocks of actual human conversation remains beyond the abilities of even today's most advanced software. When solved on a broad scale, it is a problem that might unlock vast archives of oral histories, make podcasts easier to consume for speed-readers (tl;dl), and be a world-changing boon for journalists everywhere, liberating precious hours of sweet life.

Sea Hunter has the capability to hunt stealthy foreign submarines -- China's and Russia's navies both have big submarine fleets -- and follow them for two to three months at a time. Deputy US Defense Secretary Robert Work clarified to Reuters during the event, though, that the drone doesn't have weapons. If the military decides equip it with any, Work said the decision to use them would be made by human personnel. We're guessing they'd be controlled remotely, since the ship wasn't designed to house a crew on board. The ship is slated to start its open-ocean tests this summer off the California coast.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

"YOU are a developer and you've just spent two weeks writing this amazing app. Your dream is to get it in front of every iPhone user." That was how Steve Jobs, then Apple's boss, introduced an online shop for smartphone apps eight years ago. At first few paid it much heed, but it launched one of the fastest-growing software markets ever. Since then over 100 billion apps have been downloaded, generating 40 billion in revenues for developers and billions more in subscriptions and other fees.

Right now, the New Economic Summit (NEST) 2016 Conference is going on in Tokyo, Japan. One of the keynote speakers is Andy Rubin. Rubin was in charge of Google's robotics program in 2013, when the company (now Alphabet) acquired a fistful of some of the most capable and interesting robotics companies in the world. One of those companies was SCHAFT, which originated at the JSK Robotics Laboratory at the University of Tokyo and is best known for winning the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials by an absurd amount. We haven't heard anything at all from SCHAFT over the past three years, and as far as we know, they're still part of Google.

After serving the tech giant Google for 15 years, Singhal retired in February this year. While speaking to ET, Singhal revealed that he had also invested in the Vishal Gondal-founded firm as an angel investor in 2014. Being the master head of Google's ranking algorithm, he expected to use his experience and expertise in building artificial intelligence and machine learning of GOQii. Jhansi-born Singhal added that he hopes to bring a lot of learning from his past work at Google which included deploying artificial intelligence and machine learning to make search better and faster, reports ET. Elaborating on the idea, he said, "The idea that is most intriguing about GOQii is having a human being working with artificial intelligence to motivate the user. It is not just some bit of learning but there will be a lot of artificial intelligence going in the background. The interface to these things has not evolved to a point where a human being is fully comfortable with it, especially in an area like health and wellness so a lot of science has to be worked upon. The world needs good health and it needs to be motivated about it."