The Samsung Galaxy S8 has been subject to so many leaks over the past few months that we already have a strong idea of its capabilities and features. However, until now we haven't had any indication of how much it could cost. UK retailer MobileFun has revealed what it believes to be the right figures for the smartphone, and the numbers are unsurprisingly lofty. 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, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

One of the most consequential pieces of news from the US in early 2017 was not from the White House, or even the Twitter feed of Donald Trump. Rather, it was hidden in a report filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles and made available on the DMV's website. It details the efforts of Google (or more precisely its Waymo subsidiary) to make autonomous driving a reality. According to the report, in 2016 Google's self-driving cars clocked 635,868 miles (1,023,330km), and required human intervention 124 times. That is one intervention about every 5,000 miles (8,047km) of autonomous driving.

Artificial intelligence advertising firm LoopMe has won an additional $10m funding, a total of $17 million to date, as machine learning becomes a vital part of digital marketing. The new funding was received from Impulse VC and Harbert European Growth Capital to support global growth and continued investment in artificial intelligence technology. Existing investors Holzbrinck Ventures and Open Ocean Capital also participated in the round. LoopMe now counts investment from UK, Germany, Finland, North America, China and Russia, signaling global support for its AI technology. LoopMe's AI technology learns how people feel about and react to advertising, and changes their advertising experience based on their individual feedback loop. Since receiving its previous round of funding in 2015, LoopMe reached profitability for the full year 2016, more than doubled its sales revenue and team size, opened offices in LA, Bangalore, Johannesburg and Moscow, and invested heavily in its technology.

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, ...