Google's Alphabet has a new walking robot that wouldn't look out of place in Interstellar or science-fiction homes of the future. The reportedly as-yet-unnamed robot was shown off at the New Economic Summit in Tokyo by Alphabet-owned Japanese robotics company Schaft. It has a very different design to Alphabet's other robots made by Boston Dynamics, with a compact two-leg design and central body that can be moved up or down to cope with different tasks. Unlike Alphabet's larger bipedal robots designed either to interact in a human-like fashion with the world - the humanoid Atlas - or to be a robotic packhorse for the US military or dog's plaything, the Schaft robot is designed to be lower cost, lower power and be used by civilians, carrying up to 60kg over uneven terrain and stairs. The robot was demonstrated dealing with unsure footing, compensating for standing on a moving pipe in one instance and walking on shingle in another.

Researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China on Friday revealed a realistic robot they've been working on for the past three years. Called, Jia Jia, the robot is said to be capable of human-like facial expressions, along with talking and interacting with people nearby. While its creators describe it as looking similar to a "real woman," at least it's a step up from that nightmarish home-made Scarlett Johansson robot. Among the details the researchers have incorporated into Jia Jia are the way its eyes will glance around a room in a natural way, as well as mouth movements that align with its speaking. Not only can it respond to humans, but it can recognize when someone is taking a picture and make appropriate comments, such as warning not to stand too close for fear of making her face "look fat."

Picture the scenario - a sentient machine is "living" in the US in the year 2050 and starts browsing through the US constitution. Having read it, it decides that it wants the opportunity to vote. Oh, and it also wants the right to procreate. Pretty basic human rights that it feels it should have now it has human-level intelligence. "Do you give it the right to vote or the right to procreate because you can't do both?" asks Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington.

The University of Science and Technology of China on Friday officially launched the robot "Jiajia" it invented for interactive experience. HEFEI, April 15 (Xinhua) -- A new interactive robot, named Jia Jia, was unveiled Friday by the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, capital of east China's Anhui Province. Welcome!" the eye-catching robot said as it greeted the audience at the university's multi-media center. "Don't come too close to me when you are taking a picture. It will make my face look fat," Jia Jia said. Jia Jia was developed by a robot research and development team at the USTC, which also developed the model service robot "Kejia." It took the team three years to research and develop this new-generation interactive robot, which can speak, show micro-expressions, move its lips, and move its body, according to team director Chen Xiaoping. Compared to previous interactive robots, Jia Jia's eyeballs roll naturally and its speech is in sync with its lip movements, in addition to her human-like form, Chen said. Jia Jia can not cry or laugh and these are areas to be developed, Chen added. "We hope to develop the robot so it has deep learning abilities.

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY – Last month, AlphaGo, a computer program specially designed to play the game go, caused shock waves among aficionados when it defeated Lee Sidol, one of the world's top-ranked professional players, winning a five-game tournament by a score of 4-1. Why, you may ask, is that news? Twenty years have passed since the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and we all know computers have improved since then. But Deep Blue won through sheer computing power, using its ability to calculate the outcomes of more moves to a deeper level than even a world champion can. Go is played on a far larger board (19 by 19 squares, compared to eight by eight for chess) and has more possible moves than there are atoms in the universe, so raw computing power was unlikely to beat a human with a strong intuitive sense of the best moves.

It has been a nightmare of a PR week for Microsoft. It started with the head of Microsoft's Xbox division, Phil Spencer, having to apologise for having scantily clad female dancers dressed as school girls at a party thrown by Microsoft at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). He said that having the dancers at this event "was absolutely not consistent or aligned to our values. That was unequivocally wrong and will not be tolerated". The matter was being dealt with internally and so we don't know who would have been responsible and why they might have thought this was going to be a good idea.

The University of Science and Technology of China has recently unveiled an eerily realistic robot named Jia Jia. While she looks more human-like than that creepy ScarJo robot, you'll probably still find yourself plunging head first into the uncanny valley while looking at her. Jia Jia can talk and interact with real humans, as well as make some facial expressions -- she can even tell you off if she senses you're taking an unflattering picture of her. "Don't come too close to me when you are taking a picture. It will make my face look fat," she told someone trying to capture her photo during the presscon.

With black hoods over their heads, five people trapped in a chain-link enclosure listen to an ominous monologue. "Hello, my delicious friends," the voice purrs. "I've lived here for five years, and I've spent much of that time collecting delicate morsels like yourselves to help me with my little experiments." Edward Tandy, the homicidal cannibal who has caged this group in his basement, lays out the rules of his game: They have 45 minutes to solve the puzzles inside and escape. Once time runs out, gas will be pumped in, putting the captives to sleep.

If you spent any amount of time online in the past few days, you'll have noticed plenty of chatter about chat bots, tiny little computer programs that live inside messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger, Skype, or Slack that are designed to spit out useful bits of data like weather forecasts or the latest headlines using an interface--chat!--that requires little or no training to understand. It's a nice idea, maybe, but you know what's the single most obvious thing to me in the days since Mark Zuckerberg took the stage in San Francisco to proclaim the beginning of the Chat Bot Era? Brands and developers are feverishly trying to figure out in real time, right before our very eyes, where this whole chat bot thing is going. "There's no question that bots are more suited for some kinds of interactions than others," Sam Mandel, CEO of weather app Poncho, which released a weather bot for Facebook Messenger earlier this week, told Motherboard. "We think of it as really a conversation: When we built Poncho we wanted him to be your friend, and that's why we think weather is just a great starting point in the sense that that's a conversation that everyone has with their friends." Unlike my friends, however, Poncho doesn't quite understand the nuances of the Attitude Era: As Mandel explains it, Poncho decided to go all-in with a Facebook Messenger bot because people "have already voted with their time."

Confident about continuing growth opportunities for the Indian job market, United States-based consultancy giant Korn Ferry Hay Group feels the outsourcing story is no more about cheap labour and the key drivers going forward will be value addition and technology. "There would continue to be opportunities for the Indian job market for sure. But substitution of certain jobs by technology would mean that the role of labour and labour arbitrage is not that important. "So I think the technology solutions to issues has an impact. I think technology is going to play a role in what those opportunities is going to be in the future," Korn Ferry Hay Group CEO Stephen D. Kaye told PTI in an interview. Kaye, who heads one of the world's largest management consultancies and was on a visit to India, said outsourcing was a response to a particular situation where companies were looking for cheap labour but the situation is now changing with the advent of technology and artificial intelligence. Many global leaders, including United States President Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner in the presidential race, have voiced concerns about outsourcing in their bid to save local jobs. This has led to fears about loss of business for back-office service providers from India. Experts believe advances in the field of automation and robotics are expected to radically change the job market and to survive this period, employees are required to re-skill to remain relevant in the job market. With the increasing levels of sophistication and artificial intelligence, I don't think it is cheaper labour that is going to be the driver," Kaye said.