Bandages that glow bright yellow if the wound underneath has been infected have been developed by British scientists. The AI that gives you a voice: Lip-reading machine... Is your T-shirt clean of slavery? DNA tests could soon tell... London and New York could be underwater'in our lifetimes':... The AI that gives you a voice: Lip-reading machine... Is your T-shirt clean of slavery? DNA tests could soon tell... London and New York could be underwater'in our lifetimes':...

HAL 9000: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen. Astronaut Dave Bowman: Where the hell did you get that idea, HAL? HAL 9000: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move. A bit behind schedule – if you don't recognize that movie dialogue, it's from Stanley Kubrick's 2001 – but computers are moving rapidly towards mastering lip-reading. But new research shows they're clearly outperforming humans, and improving fast. So if you've been captured on CCTV, with or without audio, it might soon be practical to decipher whatever you were talking about. Lip-reading has been an active focus of AI research for years.

An oil droplet guided by a wave, similar to the pilot wave model of quantum theory. There has been a lot of digital ink spilled over the recent paper on the reactionless thrust device known as the EMDrive. While it's clear that a working EM Drive would violate well established scientific theories, what isn't clear is how such a violation might be resolved. Some have argued that the thrust could be an effect of Unruh radiation, but the authors of the new paper argue instead for a variation on quantum theory known as the pilot wave model. One of the central features of quantum theory is its counter-intuitive behavior often called particle-wave duality.

If you get your news from social media, as most Americans do, you are exposed to a daily dose of hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories and misleading news. When it's all mixed in with reliable information from honest sources, the truth can be very hard to discern. In fact, my research team's analysis of data from Columbia University's Emergent rumor tracker suggests that this misinformation is just as likely to go viral as reliable information. Many are asking whether this onslaught of digital misinformation affected the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election. The truth is we do not know, although there are reasons to believe it is entirely possible, based on past analysis and accounts from other countries.

Humanoid robots who are all named Pepper, are greeting shoppers in two Westfield malls in California. They will be at the malls during the holiday season and might go well beyond that, according to Steve Carlin, the vice president and general manager for Softbank Robotics America. The friendly robots welcome the shoppers to the mall, dance with them, or play games with them like card matching. The Pepper robots can also take selfies and teach six languages to anyone who's interested, as well as conduct a customer service survey. Pepper ready to welcome visitors (Image Credit: SFGate) There's no plan to replace human clerks with the robots, though.

London: Scientists have discovered a way to remove specific fears from the brain, using a combination of artificial intelligence and brain scanning technology, an advance that may lead to new treatments for conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and phobias. Currently, a common approach is for patients to undergo aversion therapy, in which they confront their fear by being exposed to it in the hope they will learn that what they fear is not harmful. However, this therapy is unpleasant. Researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK have found a way of unconsciously removing a fear memory from the brain. They developed a method to read and identify a fear memory using a new technique called'Decoded Neurofeedback'.

Autonomy is coming to warfare, and some would say it's already here. Weapon systems driven by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms will soon be making potentially deadly decisions on the battlefield. This transition is not theoretical. The immense capability of large numbers of autonomous systems represents a revolution in warfare that no country can ignore. As we march towards this reality, it is important that technology leaders and military strategists begin a discussion around the moral and legal framework within which such autonomous capabilities will be enabled.

Continuing our series of deep learning updates, we pulled together some of the awesome resources that have emerged since our last post on October 17th. In case you missed it, here are our past updates: September part 2 & October part 1, September part 1, August part 2, August part 1, July part 2, July part 1, June, and the original set of 20 resources we outlined in April. As always, this list is not comprehensive, so let us know if there's something we should add, or if you're interested in discussing this area further. The 2016 NIPS Conference, the leading annual machine learning conference, is next week, December 5 to 10, in Barcelona. Let us know if you'll be there.

Autonomy is coming to warfare, and some would say it's already here. Weapon systems driven by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms will soon be making potentially deadly decisions on the battlefield. This transition is not theoretical. The immense capability of large numbers of autonomous systems represents a revolution in warfare that no country can ignore. As we march towards this reality, it is important that technology leaders and military strategists begin a discussion around the moral and legal framework within which such autonomous capabilities will be enabled.

UK bank, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has announced it will be rolling out an artificial intelligence programme called "Luvo" to support its human staff. Using artificial intelligence is not a new idea in financial services, with intelligent financial instruments being used to manage money on a daily basis, but Luvo is different in that it has been given a "human" personality. The idea behind this decision is to make the AI seem more personable, friendly and warm. At present, it is being used to help support human employees but the bank hopes to roll out the tech so that customers can interact with it directly. It is currently being used to answer basic queries like "my customer has lost their bank card, what steps do I need to take now?", which is rather banal, but as the tech develops it is likely to offer more in the future.