Coping with harsh conditions, rather than social challenges, was chiefly responsible for boosting the size of our brains, a new study has found. The research found'ecological' challenges like finding food and lighting fires boosted the capacity of our ancestors to think ahead. The finding may settle a decades-long debate on the origins of human intelligence and our social relationships, scientists said. The human brain got so big because life was tough on the African savannah around two million years ago, according to new research. The human brain has tripled in size compared to the white matter of our ancestor Australopithecus afarensis, which roamed the Earth more than 3 million years ago.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's highly anticipated testimony in front of European Union Parliament came and went Tuesday. Initially a private session, Zuckerberg agreed to let the event be livestreamed at the last minute, but transparency concerns lingered due to a question-and-answer format that ultimately left parliament members unsatisfied. Zuckerberg gave an opening statement before parliament members provided lists of questions on various topics. He was then given time to answer whatever questions he felt like answering after they had all been asked, with no opportunity for follow-up questions from the 12 Parliament members. Parliament member Udo Bullman of Germany called the meeting's format a "farce" in a statement.

It seems that there is always a study or analyst op-ed that warns us of the jobs that will be overtaken by artificial intelligence (AI). Oxford University predicted that nearly half of all positions will likely be automated by 2033. And perhaps, even scarier (or encouraging, depending on how you look at it), statics agree that only a fraction of these job losses will happen over the next three years – anywhere between 4%–9%. Leading strategy consultancies confirm the prediction in several studies as well. While such predictions may seem to be riddled with doom and gloom, sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the vast potential for innovation.

Two key characteristics of artificial intelligence (AI) will help us address the challenges we face, says Celine Herweijer, Partner, Innovation and Sustainability, at PwC UK. First, AI helps increase productivity, and second, it speeds up the process of learning and understanding, which enables scientific discovery. Last week's AI for Good Global Summit at ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland gathered top minds across various sectors to discuss the potential of AI to solve some of the most urgent challenges and transform our future. For Ms. Herweijer, the health of our planet is one of the most pressing issues this generation faces. "Our planet has never been under so much strain, whether it's climate change, oceans, air and water quality or the extinction crisis with 1 in 5 species facing extinction." She then posed the question, "How can we transform our human systems, our cities, our transport networks, using technologies so that we don't create the negative impacts that past industrial revolutions have created?"

In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles. Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot is one of new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the $100 billion pesticides and seeds industry by reducing the need for universal herbicides and the genetically modified (GM) crops that tolerate them. Dominated by companies such as Bayer, DowDuPont, BASF and Syngenta, the industry is bracing for the impact of digital agricultural technology and some firms are already adapting their business models. Herbicide sales are worth $26 billion a year and account for 46 percent of pesticides revenue overall while 90 percent of GM seeds have some herbicide tolerance built in, according to market researcher Phillips McDougall. The company said it is close to signing a financing round with investors and is due to go on the market by early 2019.

Rise of the Machines The Ministry of Defence wants to compile a list of AI boffins with UK security clearance that can be hired to help build Britain's inevitable robotic military future. The ministry's latest publication on artificial intelligence and the armed forces, titled Human-Machine Teaming sets out its vision for what the Rise of the Machines could look like in practice. While it ruled out weaponised AI, if only because of perceived problems with agreeing "a common definition" for lethal autonomous weapon systems*, the "concept note" did set out the MoD's view of how Britain is falling behind in the race to militarise self-thinking robots. "The impact is a shift in the relative rates of innovation from defence to commercial firms with the best systems already, and remaining, in the civilian sector. Military access to the best technologies will become a challenge, except in national crisis situations," wailed the note's authors, who hail from the MoD's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre at Shrivenham, the Wiltshire location where the armed forces' future strategic thinkers are hothoused.

Back and forth he walks across the polished hardwood floors of a barge anchored in a fjord off the southwestern coast of Norway. The barge sits alongside one of the world's largest salmon farms. It's November and the sky is cloudless, the mountains are snow-capped, the water is a clear sapphire blue. The control room has the feel of a W Hotel lobby with its elegant lighting and spare Scandinavian design. On one wall are huge monitors streaming video from nine underwater cages nearby. Aarskog scans the footage--masses of salmon swimming in circles like glittering cyclones--and mutters what I take to be Norwegian profanities.

The arrests spurred a splash of publicity from state media, who are crowning Mr. Cheung--one of the Hong Kong megastars known as the "Four Heavenly Kings"--with a new title: "The Nemesis of Fugitives." China's police departments have been openly touting their use of technology to nab lawbreakers--a campaign that rights activists say is aimed at winning public support for growing state surveillance. This is the first widely reported indication that Chinese police are using facial-recognition at major musical events. Concert organizers in China have also increasingly deployed facial-recognition systems to curb scalping by verifying the identities of ticket-holders. Surveillance companies and local security agencies have experimented with deploying the technology at events around the country in recent years.

This animation shown to school children asks, which robot goes missing? You can learn an important lesson about artificial intelligence from the GIF above. The picture starts off with 17 robots, yet when the pieces have finished moving around, it shows just 16. Where is the missing robot?* Paul Curzon thinks you should. The professor of computer science at Queen Mary, University of London says that Silicon Valley has become so good at making technology invisible and "just work" as Steve Jobs used to quip, that it can seem like magic. That could become a problem for kids, the next generation of technology users.

The image of the angry man holding a little girl in one arm while violently abusing Yiannis Boutaris, the 75-year-old mayor of Thessaloniki with the other, shocked Greeks. Boutaris was attacked by a crowd at a Sunday commemoration of what is known as the genocide of the Pontians, a Christian ethnic group from the highlands of the southern Black Sea speaking a dialect of Greek, who escaped Ottoman Turkish persecution and emigrated to the newly-formed Greek nation-state. It is the latest in a series of violent attacks on Greek politicians by a public expressing outrage and impotence at collapsing living standards. But Boutaris, the tattooed septuagenarian ecologist and scion of a Vlach winemaking family, is not a typical representative of the establishment politicians Greeks blame for imposing increasing levels of austerity on a fractured society. The twice-elected mayor of Thessaloniki is a resolute cosmopolitan who worked to collapse the walls between Greece and Turkey, free his city from the segregating Greek creation myth, and make its troubled past more inclusive of former resident minorities, including Jews and Turks.