Our brains can fathom the beginning of time and the end of the universe, but is any brain capable of understanding itself? With billions of neurons, each with thousands of connections, one's noggin is a complex, and yes congested, mental freeway. Neurologists and cognitive scientists nowadays are probing how the mind gives rise to thoughts, actions, emotions and ultimately consciousness. The complex machine is difficult for even the brainiest of scientists to wrap their heads around. But the payoff for such an achievement could be huge.

An invincible checkers-playing program named Chinook has solved a game whose origins date back several millennia, scientists reported Thursday on the journal Science's Web site. By playing out every possible move -- about 500 billion billion in all -- the computer proved it can never be beaten. Even if its opponent also played flawlessly, the outcome would be a draw. Chinook, created by computer scientists from the University of Alberta in 1989, wrapped up its work less than three months ago. In doing so, its programmers say the newly crowned checkers king has solved the most challenging game yet cracked by a machine -- even outdoing the chess-playing wizardry of IBM's Deep Blue.

The past few years have shown that U.S. government intelligence goes only so far. One of the biggest challenges is recognizing vital information in foreign languages -- and acting quickly on it. That's why the military would love software that can listen to TV broadcasts or phone conversations and read Web sites in Arabic and Chinese, translate them into English and summarize the key elements for humans. But each of those steps has long bedeviled computer scientists. Perfecting them and combining them -- well, that is "DARPA hard."

The real-life equivalent of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (which posits that robots may not harm humans, even if they are instructed to do so) is, like killer-robot technology itself, a ways off. In April, the United Nations released a report (PDF) that recommended suspending the development of autonomous weapons until their function and application is discussed more thoroughly. Last December, the Department of Defense issued a directive on weapon systems autonomy, calling for the establishment of "guidelines designed to minimize the probability and consequences of failures in autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems that could lead to unintended engagements." Though the Pentagon document stresses the need for human supervision of military robots, critics claim it leaves the door open for the development of autonomous lethal robots that aren't accountable to meaningful human oversight. "We already don't understand Microsoft Windows; we're certainly not going to understand something as complex as a humanlike intelligence," says Mark Gubrud, a research associate working on robotic and space weapons arms control at Princeton.

Chinese restaurant Two Panda Deli in Pasadena, California, recruited a pair of Japanese robot waiters, Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2 (for $20,000 each), to deliver Chow mein to customers and bust out disco moves. Police radio interference compelled them to splatter orange chicken and whirl furiously around in circles. Complex customer requests were also often met with the terse reply: "That's not my problem." In The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a cyborg killing machine from the future programmed to go back in time, find, and kill Sarah Conner in 1984 Los Angeles.

Amazon is working on self-driving cars, according to a new patent that deals with the complex task of navigating reversible lanes. The patent, filed in November 2015 and granted on Tuesday, covers the problem of how to deal with reversible lanes, which change direction depending on the bulk of the traffic flow. This type of lane is typically used to manage commuter traffic into and out of cities, particularly in the US. Autonomous vehicles, the patent warns, "may not have information about reversible lanes when approaching a portion of a roadway that has reversible lane", leading to a worst-case scenario of them driving headfirst into oncoming traffic. More generally, the inability to plan for reversible lanes means cars and trucks can't optimise their routes by getting into the correct lane well in advance, something that could otherwise prove to be one of the benefits of self-driving cars.

A competition to find the best conversational computer programme will be hosted by the Bletchley Park Trust. As part of the 2012 celebrations for the Alan Turing centenary, the Trust is delighted to be hosting the annual Loebner Prize competition. The chatbot programmes will be competing for a coveted bronze medal and a prize fund of $7,000 sponsored by Dr Hugh Loebner who founded the competition twenty years ago. The Loebner Prize competition is based on the Turing Test, one of the biggest challenges in the world of Artificial Intelligence. The test was proposed by Alan Turing in his famous 1950 paper entitled Computing Machinery and Intelligence, as a way of determining whether a computer programme could be said to be intelligent.

Google's Go-playing program AlphaGo will take on world champion Lee Sedol in a series of games in Korea next month with a $1 million prize for the winner. Go is a 2,500-year-old game that was mentioned by Confucius. Players take turns placing black or white stones on a grid, capturing opponents' stones or surrounding spaces to take territory. AlphaGo has already bested a ranking Go master in Europe. AlphaGo, developed by Google's London-based artificial intelligence team DeepMind, trounced the best Go-playing AI programs in a series of matches, as reported by Nature last month.

And Pepper, the new companion robot from Tokyo-based technology company Softbank, delivers cuteness like you've never seen. What's striking is the absolutely ardent attention it gives you -- frankly a lot better than some real-life people. "You look a bit thin," it coos in a soft childlike voice, free of any rigid mechanical accent. "You should watch what you eat." The 4-foot-tall white machine-on-wheels was disarmingly charming and definitely intriguing when I spent half a day with it, ahead of its delivery to its first customers later this month.

HURSLEY, UK--(Marketwire - September 13, 2007) - IBM (NYSE: IBM) has developed an ingenious system called SiSi (Say It Sign It) that automatically converts the spoken word into British Sign Language (BSL) which is then signed by an animated digital character or avatar. SiSi brings together a number of computer technologies. A speech recognition module converts the spoken word into text, which SiSi then interprets into gestures, that are used to animate an avatar which signs in BSL. Upon development this system would see a signing avatar'pop up' in the corner of the display screen in use -- whether that be a laptop, personal computer, TV, meeting-room display or auditorium screen. Users would be able select the size and appearance of the avatar.