It had always been Katherine Goble's great talent to be in the right place at the right time. In August 1952, 12 years after leaving graduate school to have her first child, that right place was in Marion, Virginia, at the wedding of her husband, Jimmy Goble's, little sister Patricia. Pat, a vivacious college beauty queen just two months graduated from Virginia State College, was marrying her college sweetheart, a young army corporal named Walter Kane. Jimmy's other sister and brother-in-law, Margaret and Eric Epps, had journeyed from Newport News, and the newlyweds planned to accompany the Eppses back to the coast, hitching a ride to their honeymoon at Hampton's segregated Bay Shore Beach resort. "Why don't y'all come home with us too?" Eric asked Katherine. "I can get Snook a job at the shipyard," he said, using Jimmy's family nickname. "In fact, I can get both of you jobs." There's a government facility in Hampton that's hiring black women, Eric told Katherine, and they're looking for mathematicians. It's a civilian job, he told her, but attached to Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory--the oldest outpost of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA. Katherine listened intently as her brother-in-law described the work, her thumb cradling her chin, her index finger extended along her cheek, the signal that she was listening carefully. She and Jimmy made a living as public school teachers, but their paychecks were modest. The needs of their three growing daughters seemed greater by the day, and the couple could only just cover their basics and squeeze out a little extra for piano lessons or Girl Scouts. Deft with a sewing machine, Katherine bought fabric from the dry goods store and stayed up nights making school outfits for the girls and dresses for herself.

A recent McKinsey study suggests that 45 percent of on-the-job activities can be automated by deploying artificial intelligence. That includes file clerks, whose jobs can become 80 percent automated, or CEOs' jobs that can be 20 percent automated because AI systems radically simplify and target CEOs' reading of reports, risk detection or pattern recognition. There is understandable consternation about the unbridled power that machines may have over human decision-making. Elon Musk has called AI "our biggest existential threat." On the other side are enthusiasts eager for smart machines to improve our lives and the planet's health.

The experiment with having a robot in my home was going well – useful exchanges, mutual learning, some bonding – right up until the robot thought I told it to "fuck off". But the robot was convinced. It flashed its blue light and scolded me in a tone mixing hurt, disappointment and reprimand: "That's not very nice to say." Or bristled, saying it had erred and should pay more attention before leaping to conclusions. I could have unplugged the thing. Instead, worried at hurt feelings and a vague possibility of retribution, I apologised.

Maria and Bob Hickerson saw their first lionfish on a diving trip in Jamaica in 2009. When they spotted it, they hurried over before this unfamiliar specimen could swim away. But instead, the fish seemed to pause. They took photos and told the dive operator about the fish. He asked for details about where they spotted it.

Europe's Schiaparelli Mars lander crashed last month after a sensor failure caused it to cast away its parachute and turn off braking thrusters more than two miles (3.7 km) above the surface of the planet, as if it had already landed, a new report has revealed. The error stemmed from a momentary glitch in a device that measured how fast the spacecraft was spinning, the report by the European Space Agency said. The spacecraft activated its ground systems, even though it was still about 2.3 miles off the surface, the ESA said. The new image of Schiaparelli and its hardware components was taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, on 1 November. A number of the bright white spots around the dark region interpreted as the impact site are now confirmed as real objects – they are not likely to be imaging'noise' – and therefore are most likely fragments of Schiaparelli.

Peter Drucker was prescient about most things, but the computer wasn't one of them. "The computer ... is a moron," the management guru asserted in a McKinsey Quarterly article in 1967, calling the devices that now power our economy and our daily lives "the dumbest tool we have ever had." Drucker was hardly alone in underestimating the unfathomable pace of change in digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). AI builds on the computational power of vast neural networks sifting through massive digital data sets or "big data" to achieve outcomes analogous, often superior, to those produced by human learning and decision-making. Careers as varied as advertising, financial services, medicine, journalism, agriculture, national defense, environmental sciences, and the creative arts are being transformed by AI.

Passengers embark on the U.S. side of the last hand-pulled ferry at Los Ebanos, Texas on the Mexico-U.S. border in 2008. LOS EBANOS, Texas -- All along the winding Rio Grande, the people who live in this bustling, fertile region where the U.S. border meets the Gulf of Mexico never quite understood how Donald Trump's great wall could ever be much more than campaign rhetoric. Erecting a concrete barrier across the entire 1,954-mile frontier with Mexico, they know, collides head-on with multiple realities: the geology of the river valley, fierce local resistance and the immense cost. An electronically fortified "virtual wall" with surveillance technology that includes night-and-day video cameras, tethered observation balloons and high-flying drones makes a lot more sense to people here. If a 30- to 40-foot concrete wall is a panacea for illegal immigration, as Trump insisted during the campaign, the locals are not convinced.

TOKYO SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son showed me a photo on his iPhone and said, "I will never forget this scene for the rest of my life." The photo showed a group of white yachts in a bay under an endless blue sky in Marmaris, a port town in southern Turkey. Son swiped the screen, and a selfie photo of him in chino pants and a casual shirt appeared. Several hours before the photos were taken on July 4, Son met Simon Segars, CEO of ARM Holdings, and Stuart Chambers, chairman of the British computer chip design company, on the second floor of a restaurant overlooking the bay. Chambers had arrived in Marmaris, a popular resort town, after receiving an unexpected phone call from Son while yachting with his family in the Mediterranean Sea.

Peter Drucker was prescient about most things, but the computer wasn't one of them. "The computer ... is a moron," the management guru asserted in a McKinsey Quarterly article in 1967, calling the devices that now power our economy and our daily lives "the dumbest tool we have ever had." Drucker was hardly alone in underestimating the unfathomable pace of change in digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI). AI builds on the computational power of vast neural networks sifting through massive digital data sets or "big data" to achieve outcomes analogous, often superior, to those produced by human learning and decision-making. Careers as varied as advertising, financial services, medicine, journalism, agriculture, national defense, environmental sciences, and the creative arts are being transformed by AI.

The'Stone Age Atlantis': Stunning video reveals the 9,000-year-old settlement found submerged under the sea off Sweden Researchers found 9,000-year-old pick axe made from elk antlers covered in'very interesting inscriptions' Also found numerous fish traps made of braided hazel rods in what was once a lagoon environment Team say inhabitants who lived there part of the year had'good lives' with food and warm weather Researchers found 9,000-year-old pick axe made from elk antlers covered in'very interesting inscriptions' Team say inhabitants who lived there part of the year had'good lives' with food and warm weather Just off the coast of southern Sweden, researchers have discovered what's thought to be the submerged remains of an ancient Stone Age lagoon community. How AI will take over the world: Researchers reveal the... From your travels to your diet, the molecules left on your... The app that lets the colorblind see the world in a new... The AI that could tell you how long your flight is REALLY... How AI will take over the world: Researchers reveal the... From your travels to your diet, the molecules left on your... The app that lets the colorblind see the world in a new...