IBM recently announced that it reached a new industry record in conversational speech recognition, which could have big implications for the future of artificial intelligence (AI). The IBM team's system achieved a 5.5% word error rate--down from 6.9% last year. The benchmark was measured on a difficult speech recognition task, with the machine deciphering recorded conversations between humans discussing day-to-day topics such as buying a car. This recording is known as SWITCHBOARD, and has been used for more than two decades to test speech recognition systems, according to a blog post by George Saon, a principal research scientist at IBM. IBM used deep learning technologies to reach the 5.5% record.

Students of artificial intelligence are getting recruited like star athletes, but could a rush to get new technology on the field cause ethical lapses? You walk into a gigantic auditorium. Folding chairs are lined up in evenly spaced rows, with a cold black awning behind the stage and uniform white or yellow lights pouring down on the sea of seats below. A couple of huge screens are to either side of the stage with a third in the center in the middle of the room for those who can't see the presentation. What's about to happen is one of the most important annual gatherings in tech.

Could smartphones and other screens be decreasing the human attention span? Author Adam Alter thinks so. "Ten years ago, before the iPad and iPhone were mainstream, the average person had an attention span of about 12 seconds," Alter tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. Now, he says, "research suggests that there's been a drop from 12 to eight seconds ... shorter than the attention of the average goldfish, which is nine seconds." Alter links our diminished attention spans to the "mainstream adoption of screens."

Specifically, the EPFL team has developed a gelatinous actuator, the component of robots that make them move. And rather than rely on a mechanical motor or external power source, these actuators use liquids and air that react to chemicals. Each segmented actuator is roughly 4 cm in length and, as you can see in the image above, curl to one side when activated. This allows a single actuator to crawl -- inchworm-style -- through the digestive tract or, working in tandem, create a crude gripper. These actuators can also be paired with small digestible batteries, cameras and sensor equipment, all of which is already available, to create a truly edible robot.

Messaging app Viber has introduced a new feature called'Secret Chats', designed to protect users from the prying eyes of CIA agents. It takes tips from Snapchat, with messages self-destructing after a specific amount of time, which users set themselves. Secret Chats also features screenshot restrictions. Only iOS users can capture screenshots of conversations, and Viber will notify users when this happens. 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.

The various pieces of technology that are in our lives could hand over our most personal information to hackers, the UK's most elite cyber security chiefs have warned. Smart phones, watches, televisions, and fitness trackers all collect information on their users that could be used to extort money from people or pose as them. An increasing amount of internet-connected deivces around the home allow hackers far more powerto use "aggressive" and "confrontational" tactics, according to a new report from the Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the National Crime Agency (NCA). It highlights the huge amount of personal information that those gadgets contain. Each of them has data including people's photos, personal messages and fitness information – which could be turned on their ownersm, according to the experts.

Google Home, the smart home speaker launched by the tech giant last year, is about to become available in the UK. The voice controlled assistant powered by artificial intelligence and which is a rival to the Amazon Echo is scheduled to be available for UK buyers in the second quarter of the year, it's been revealed. Not content with being the surprise headline of Mobile World Congress (after Nokia's 3310) with the launch of its voice assistant on many of the new phones being unveiled at the event, Google's flagship product which uses Google Assistant is also making waves. It's the first indication of Google's ambitions to expand Google Home beyond US shores, where it launched in October It comes hot on the heels of Amazon's Echo launch in the UK just before Christmas, signalling an escalating rivalry in the battle to own the connected home. Further details have not been revealed, such as the exact date it will be available, where it will go on sale, and the price.

A crash resistant drone has been developed by researchers who say they were inspired by the properties of insect wings. The external frame of the drone is flexible and bends without breaking, but it locks around an internal case with magnets - making it rigid during flight. Experiments showed that the frame of the drone withstood roughly 50 collisions with no permanent damage. The drone, designed by researchers at the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) and the Floreano Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), is a soft quadcopter that doesn't break during collisions. Its design was modeled after the dual stiffness properties of insects wings.

Intel is slated to launch self-driving test vehicles in Europe later this year as part of its new venture after acquiring Israeli tech company Mobileye. The cars the chipmaker will use are from BMW, another partner in this big project. On Monday, Intel revealed that it has agreed to purchase Mobileye -- a company known for its autonomous driving, anti-collision and other driving solutions -- for $15.3 billion. The announcement is seen as a desperate move by the renowned chipmaker to venture into the autonomous-driving sector after missing its chance to enter the mobile phones industry, as per Reuters. The combination of Intel and Mobileye is deemed fitting for both companies have what it takes to create top-of-the-line technologies for driverless vehicles.

The NHS is testing a new artificially intelligent chatbot app that it hopes will offer an alternative to the non-emergency 111 helpline. The bot will allow users to enter their symptoms and get advice immediately right on their smartphones. The idea is to offer the health advice service to ease the number of calls to 111, which may otherwise be resolved with a few simple answers from the app. The 111 helpline has been subject to criticism for unanswered calls, failing to identify serious conditions and inappropriate advice. This service is mostly manned by non medical professionals who often answer questions using a script anyway.