Yesterday, the UK government announced their budget plans to invest in robotics, artificial intelligence, driverless cars, and faster broadband. "The UK understand the very real positive impact that RAS [robotics & autonomous systems] will have on our society from now, of all time. It continues to see the big picture and today's announcement by the Chancellor is a clear indication of that. We can have better roads, cleaner cities, healthier oceans and bodies, safer skies, deeper mines, better jobs and more opportunity. That's what machines are for."

A number of Twitter users are reporting that the site has started hiding their accounts behind a warning message. People visiting their pages are instead being shown a greyed-out version of their profile, with their pictures and tweets hidden from view. A message in the middle of the screen reads, "Caution: This profile may include potentially sensitive content. Do you still want to view it?" Many of the users affected by the barrier appear to be baffled as to why their profiles are being targeted by the site.

Whether an A.I. ought to be granted patent rights is a timely question given the increasing proliferation of A.I. in the workplace. One might argue that Intellectual Property (IP) laws and IP Rights were designed to exclusively benefit human creators and inventors[7] and thus would exclude non-humans from holding IP rights. However, many IP laws were drafted well before the emergence of A.I. and in any case, do not explicitly require that a creator or inventor be'human.' The World Intellectual Property Organization's (WIPOs) definition of Intellectual Property talks about creations of the mind[9] but does not specify whether it must be a human mind. Similarly, provisions in laws promoting innovation and IP rights, such as the so-called Intellectual Property Clause of the U.S. Constitution[10], also do not explicitly mention a'human' requirement.

Google's AI-powered health tech subsidiary, DeepMind Health, is planning to use a new technology loosely based on bitcoin to let hospitals, the NHS and eventually even patients track what happens to personal data in real-time. Dubbed "Verifiable Data Audit", the plan is to create a special digital ledger that automatically records every interaction with patient data in a cryptographically verifiable manner. This means any changes to, or access of, the data would be visible. DeepMind has been working in partnership with London's Royal Free Hospital to develop kidney monitoring software called Streams and has faced criticism from patient groups for what they claim are overly broad data sharing agreements. Critics fear that the data sharing has the potential to give DeepMind, and thus Google, too much power over the NHS.

For the cognitively ambitious among us, there are always new debates to win, tests to ace, and feats of intellect to accomplish. And just as for the athletically gifted, the lure of performance-enhancing drugs is hard to resist. The question is, can drugs boost intellectual performance? New research shows that for tournament-level chess players, they can. In a series of experiments, researchers found that caffeine, the stimulant Ritalin and the stay-awake drug modafinil ever-so-slightly improved players' chances of winning a game against a computer program set to their skill level.

Over the past seven days, Nissan has welcomed media from all over Europe to sit inside its prototype Leaf and see for themselves how it fares on a pre-set route around east London. I was there to ride shotgun with Tetsuya Iijima, General Manager of Autonomous Drive Development at Nissan, through the streets of Beckton, onto the A13 dual carriageway and back to the ExCel, a short distance from London City Airport and across the river from The O2. It's not the first time the company has conducted a trial with the car -- they've tested it in Japan and Silicon Valley before -- but European roads pose a unique challenge thanks to an abundance of pedestrian (zebra) crossings, roundabouts and the unpredictable nature of London's drivers. Before fully autonomous Leafs can be sold in glitzy showrooms, Nissan needs to prove it can master each of these obstacles without error. From a distance, the autonomous Leaf looks like any other Leaf you'd see on London's roads. Dotted around the car are four lasers, five radars and 12 cameras, most of which have been seamlessly integrated into the bodywork, that provide the car with 20 centimetre accuracy.

WhatsApp is working on a new feature that businesses can use to contact customers directly, according to a new report. The feature, which is being tested by a number of Y Combinator startups, is designed as a way for the the messaging app to make money. Businesses could end up paying WhatsApp for the ability to get in touch with potential customers, according to Reuters, which adds that the Facebook-owned firm is wary of spam potentially becoming an issue. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, ...

Ex Machina has a simple story dealing with a deeply complex and philosophical topic: namely what makes humans human. The increasingly omnipresent Oscar Isaac plays billionaire Nathan Bates, genius creator of'Google' - my mistake - 'BlueBook', the world's "leading search engine". Bates lives in the middle of the American wilderness (in reality, a very picturesque Norway) and in a property that actually exists (BlueBook the Juvet Hotel). He is leading a one-man research project into the development of an Artificial Intelligence. Leading neatly on from the recent Cumbur-busting "The Imitation Game" the eccentric and erratic Nathan needs to share his work with someone external in order to perform'The Turing Test' - the test to determine if a machine can genuinely pass itself off as human to another human.

My wife used to love reading but since her stroke has aphasia, no speech, limited vision and limited dexterity in her left hand only. She can select TV channels on a remote but she cannot read a short news story let alone a novel, so she listens to the radio and watches a lot of TV. I thought of getting her a Kindle e-reader but they don't seem to do text to speech any more. A shop assistant suggested a tablet with a text-to-speech app. It needs a really simple interface or my wife will not be able to use it without assistance.

NEW YORK; Mar. 8, 2017 – Rentokil, a global pest control company based in the UK, is piloting an Artificial Intelligence app developed by Accenture to help its almost 5,000 pest control technicians fight bugs faster for customers. The solution utilizes a partnership announced last year, when Accenture and Google joined forces to bring to market industry-specific solutions that help clients use cloud, mobility, machine learning and analytics to advance their digital transformation agenda and improve business performance. Rentokil technicians are some of the best trained in the industry but even they come across unusual insects that they can't identify. As part of a larger rollout of new Android mobile devices and apps to its field service workers, Rentokil took advantage of Accenture's alliance with Google to solve their business challenge through an innovative mobile app that identifies pests and automatically presents information, customer recommendations, and treatment plans. The Android app, called PestID and built by Accenture Mobility, part of Accenture Digital, uses Google's CloudML image classification technology to help field technicians identify and treat pest problems quickly and efficiently.