Russia

Russia's space agency Roscosmos is about to send a humanoid robot to the International Space Station. Skybot F-850 will be sent to the ISS on August 22 on board the Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft, and will spend over two weeks there before returning to Earth on September 7. The robot, also known as Fedor, made headlines in 2017 when Dmitry Rogozin, director general of Roscosmos, shared a video of it shooting guns. Shortly after he clarified they "are not creating a Terminator, but artificial intelligence that will be of great practical significance in various fields." Fedor was created to replicate the movement of a remote operator.

Russia's space agency has released eerie footage of its human-like android which will board the International Space Station next week. Nicknamed Fedor - which stands for Final Experimental Demonstration Research - the anthropomorphous machine was seen undergoing a battery of stress-tests at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Dubbed Putin's robo-naut, the machine can be seen determining targets and honing in on specific points, such as steering wheels, which will surely come in handy while they're in orbit. The scenes come ahead of its inclusion on the unmanned Soyuz MS-14 spacecraft on 22 August 2019. 'MMA fighter' loses temper and battles two revellers at once In action: Dubbed Putin's robo-naut, the machine can be seen determining targets and honing in on specific points, such as steering wheels, which will surely come in handy while they're in orbit On time: Putin's deputy premier, Dmitry Rogozin, claimed the war in Syria had shown Russia the importance of robots in difficult environments, and promised Fedor would make its space debut in five years - a deadline it will soon meet Fedor stands 6-foot tall, weighs no less than 233 pounds depending on extra equipment, and can lift up to 44 pounds of cargo.

Israeli retail analytics insight company Anagog has won the X5 Retail-Tech Challenge competition for retail innovation. The competition was held this week in Tel Aviv by the Israel-Russia Chamber of Commerce, for the X5 retail group, Russia's largest retail chain. Anagog's management are traveling to Moscow to make a pitch to the retail chain's senior executives for a major contract from the chain. Evigence Sensors finished second in the competition and Varcode and Tarritech tied for third place. Anagog was founded in 2010 by Gil Levy and Yaron Aizenbud.

Over the last few days the #faceappchallenge has taken over social media. This "challenge" involves downloading a selfie-editing tool called FaceApp and using one of its filters to digitally age your face. You then post the photo of your wizened old self on the internet and everyone laughs uproariously. You get a small surge of dopamine from gathering a few online likes before existential ennui sets in once again. On Monday, as the #faceappchallenge went viral, Joshua Nozzi, a software developer, warned people to "BE CAREFUL WITH FACEAPP….it Some media outlets picked this claim up and privacy concerns about the app began to mount. Concern escalated further when people started to point out that FaceApp is Russian. "The app that you're willingly giving all your facial data to says the company's location is in Saint-Petersburg, Russia," tweeted the New York Times's Charlie Warzel. And we all know what those Russians are like, don't we? They want to harvest your data for nefarious ...

BCI: Science&Practice is the only annual international conference in Russia with the focus on direct brain-machine interaction. Since October 2015 it is annually organized by Samara State Medical University and IT Universe Ltd in Samara, where a wide range of healthcare technologies, including brain-computer interfaces, virtual reality and other modern IT applications are developed . The conference is supported by Department of Information Technologies of Samara Region and Neuronet Industrial Union. The organizing and program committees members are leading scientists, representatives of state and non-commercial organizations, innovative companies. Attendance is free of charge.

The race to incorporate artificial intelligence in modern weapons threatens to outstrip the technology's capabilities -- and the world's ability to control them. The Commander-in-Chief of Russia's air force, Viktor Bondarev, has told a gathering at the MAKS-2017 international airshow his aircraft would soon be getting cruise missiles with artificial intelligence capable of analysing their environment and opponents and make "decisions" about altitude, speed, course -- and targets. "Work in this area is under way," Russian news agency TASS reports Tactical Missiles Corporation CEO Boris Obnosov as adding. "As of today, certain successes are available, but we'll still have to work for several years to achieve specific results." While neither indicated which missiles were slated to get such enhanced artificial intelligence, there are two apparent contenders among the "super weapons" President Vladimir Putin bragged about last year: the "Avangard" hypersonic glide vehicle and the "Burevestnik" nuclear-powered cruise missile.

The Commander-in-Chief of Russia's air force Viktor Bondarev has told a gathering at the MAKS-2017 international airshow his aircraft would soon be getting cruise missiles with artificial intelligence capable of analysing its environment and opponents and make "decisions" about altitude, speed, course -- and targets. "Work in this area is underway," Russian news agency TASS reports Tactical Missiles Corporation CEO Boris Obnosov as adding. "As of today, certain successes are available, but we'll still have to work for several years to achieve specific results." While neither indicated which missiles were slated to get such enhanced artificial intelligence, there are two apparent contenders among the "super weapons" President Vladimir Putin bragged about last year: the "Avangard" hypersonic glide vehicle and the "Burevestnik" nuclear-powered cruise missile. RELATED: Why the world's most holy place sends people crazy RELATED: Earth's magnetic pole is on the move and we don't know why Much modern weaponry is already capable of making choices -- such as the automated Gatling guns designed to react and shoot-down incoming missiles in the blink of an eye.

In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin famously stated that whoever becomes the leader in artificial intelligence "will become the ruler of the world." Most experts on technology and security would agree with Putin about the importance of AI, which will ultimately reshape healthcare, transportation, industry, national security, and more. Nevertheless, Moscow's recognition of AI's importance will not produce enough breakthroughs to obtain the technological edge that it so deeply desires. Russia will ultimately fail in its quest to become a leader in AI because of its inability to foster a culture of innovation. Russia's anxieties about competing in the information age are far from new.

Researchers at the Samsung AI Center in Moscow, Russia have quite amazingly turned Mona Lisa and other famous subjects of photos and art into realistic talking heads. When an image is presented, the matching landmark features are located and put to work. Such examples include The Mona Lisa, Albert Einstein, and Salvador Dali. The results are spooky, to say the least. We present a system for learning full-body neural avatars, i.e. deep networks that produce full-body renderings of a person for varying body pose and camera position.