N-Star generated jet of material shot outward at nearly speed of light.

I recently read an article that had me asking, "Is it going to be fashionable to tap into the digital afterlife of an ex-employee?". The write-up referenced a report that stated; for a large organisation, it can take an average of 28 weeks for new workers to reach optimum productivity level. So, therefore, losing an employee can come at a cost. The solution could be for companies to use a kind of technology that would help their new recruits get up to speed via an ex-employee's digital doppelgänger. With costs estimated to be around £30,614 to replace a departing employee, the primary challenge is transferring the knowledge that the ex-employee accumulated in their role at the company to a new, greener employee.

Artificial intelligence will solve Facebook's most vexing problems, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg insists. He just can't say when, or how. Zuckerberg referred to AI technology about 23 times during his five-hour testimony before a joint Senate committee hearing Tuesday, saying that it would one day be smart, sophisticated and eagle-eyed enough to fight against a vast variety of platform-spoiling misbehavior, including fake news, hate speech, discriminatory ads and terrorist propaganda. Over the next five to 10 years, he said, artificial intelligence would prove a champion for the world's largest social network in resolving its most pressing crises on a global scale -- while also helping the company dodge pesky questions about censorship, fairness and human moderation. "We started off in my dorm room with not a lot of resources and not having the AI technology to be able to proactively identify a lot of this stuff," Zuckerberg told the lawmakers, referring to Facebook's famous origin story.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. From 1449–74, an association of market towns and cities along the Baltic coast in Europe known as the Hanseatic League waged an on-again, off-again war with England over maritime trading privileges. Hanseatic man-of-war ships, including the feared Peter von Danzig, raided the English coast. The Anglo-Hanseatic War ended with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1474, which gave the Hanseatic League access to many British ports and ownership of the London Steelyard until it sold the property in 1853. At its zenith in the 15th century, the Hanseatic League boasted about 200 cities across seven countries, flexing its economic might across Europe, imposing blockages to promote its interests, and even waging wars.

The world of autonomous cars is coming. Maybe it's a utopian future where all the vehicles drive themselves, while traffic jams and road rage are made a thing of the past. Or maybe it's just a bunch of fancy robo-taxis (and hopefully buses) that ensure city commuting is less of a pain. No matter how it plays out, it's coming and BMW wants to be prepare, establishing its own autonomous driving campus. In Unterschleißheim (near Munich, Germany) the automaker opened the facility that it says will help with the "systematic development of highly- and fully-automated driving at the BMW Group."

Robots are getting ever closer to outperforming humans in all aspects of life - even when it comes to learning about how the world works. Researchers at Toyota are using artificial intelligence to speed up the discovery of the ideal chemical makeup for electric car batteries. AI-powered robot arms engineered by the team place precise drops of chemical reagents in test tubes under the guise of human supervisors. Over the next few months, the machine intelligence behind the system will take over the planning of experiments as well, according to Toyota. Researchers said the'robot graduate student' will decide how to modify the concentrations of the ingredients it's testing without the need for human assistance.

IN THE gleaming facilities of the Wyss Centre for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, a lab technician takes a well plate out of an incubator. Each well contains a tiny piece of brain tissue derived from human stem cells and sitting on top of an array of electrodes. A screen displays what the electrodes are picking up: the characteristic peak-and-trough wave forms of firing neurons. To see these signals emanating from disembodied tissue is weird. The firing of a neuron is the basic building block of intelligence.

BOSTON – In the five years since the Boston Marathon bombing, medical science has made promising advances in amputations and artificial limbs, in part because of lessons learned from the victims and research dollars made available as a result of the attack. Some of the 17 people who lost limbs in the April 15, 2013, bombing could, like many other amputees, benefit from these developments, since many are coming to a crossroads in their treatment. A number still struggle with pain, and others may be looking to replace their prostheses, which are approaching the end of their useful life. "The collective experience in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing was a very positive one in the medical community because there was a lot of crosstalk between military and civilian surgeons," said Dr. Benjamin Potter, chief of orthopedics at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, where three survivors were treated and doctors are attempting some of the cutting-edge procedures. "That exchange and that dialogue has been one of the silver linings to have come out of this, in that we're hopefully better educated and better prepared for the next one."

Data science and machine learning are having profound impacts on business, and are rapidly becoming critical for differentiation and sometimes survival. Being able to quickly categorize the potential impacts into one of five categories, and communicate their potential, will help data and analytics leaders drive better results. With their ability to frame complex business problems as machine learning or operations research problems, data scientists hold the key to unveiling better solutions to old problems. They may even reveal new problems and approaches that were previously unknown. One example, popularized by the film and book Moneyball, showed how old ways of evaluating performance in baseball were outperformed by the application of data science.

In recent years, the notion of true artificial intelligence (AI) has undoubtedly surpassed merely a scientific abstraction. From driverless cars to healthcare, the technology is now more prevalent in our lives than ever before. It is therefore of the utmost importance that not only those driving progress in the field, but also those responsible for regulating it are able to grapple with the ethical implications of its development. A number of weeks ago, the European Commission announced plans to investigate the ethics of AI via the launch of a new group. Tasked with assessing the benefits of the technology and its potential impact on the future of work, the group's ultimate goal will be to make informed policy recommendations to facilitate the right kind of deployment.