Order a grocery delivery in the Washington D.C. area in the coming months and you could find yourself opening the door to a self-driving robot. The company behind the wheel-based autonomous bot is about to start testing grocery and restaurant takeout deliveries in the East Coast city after it became the first in the U.S. to greenlight use of the diminutive delivery vehicle, Re/code reported this week. Built by Starship Technologies -- a London-based company started by two Skype co-founders -- the trundling robot uses nine cameras, an array of sensors, and GPS software to navigate its route. The maps, compiled by Starship, are said to be accurate to the nearest inch, though if the robot has any unexpected problems on the way to its destination, a human operator will be on hand to take control remotely. Starship had hoped to get permission to use the robot in San Francisco, but the company was reportedly put off by the city's demand that it pay a hefty 66 permit fee for every side of a city block that it wanted to use. Washington officials are charging no such fee, though it does stipulate that the robot mustn't exceed 10 mph.

Microsoft researchers are doing a bug bash on cancer, complete with software code names like "Project Hanover." Some of them are actually drilling down into our genetic code, looking for ways to reprogram the immune system to combat cancer cells more effectively. "If you can do computing with biological systems, then you can transfer what we've learned in traditional computing into medical or biotechnology applications," Microsoft's Neil Dalchau says in the company's in-depth report about its cancer moonshots. Others are enlisting the power of cloud computing to identify which treatment would work best for a particular cancer patient, based on his or her personalized medical profile. Microsoft and AstraZeneca are already using a software tool known as the Bio Model Analyzer to figure out why leukemia patients respond differently to different treatments.

I'm known to be a bit negative about email. When you receive a few hundred of them a day, it tends to make you a little skittish, even a little depressed. Yet, it's still my primary form of communication, especially when I'm trying to find answers to problems. In our highly digitized world, it's amazing we still use asynchronous communication so often. When you send a message, there's no way of knowing if the recipient is doing anything about it.

While there is some human assistance during the assembly process, as shown in the video below, the majority of the crafting is done by the machines. What's more, the design itself relies heavily on data from ARAMIS, a motion capture technology that maps an individual's skin, bone and muscle to create a more comfortable shoe. Adidas says the M.F.G. (aka "Made for Germany") is only the beginning, with more products expected to come over the next few months. The company has been pushing the envelope with its Futurecraft line recently, which also includes sneakers made partially with 3D-printed materials. Don't hold your breath if you want a pair of Futurecraft M.F.G., though, since only 500 pairs will be available for an undisclosed price.

Before exploring the skills we'll need in the next 10–20 years, it's helpful to look at a few jobs that didn't even exist just a decade ago in 2006. We didn't have'Social Media Managers' as the major platforms -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram -- either didn't exist or hadn't broken free of a few college campuses. We didn't have'Cloud Computing Specialists'. Indeed, the term'Cloud Computing' is thought to be taken from a 2006 conference featuring Google CEO Eric Schmidt. And we didn't have YouTube content creators.

Wärtsilä's strong commitment to developing the technologies, the system reliability, and the essential designs to enable the viability of autonomous shipping is again emphasised through its participation in an important research programme. Together with other leading marine sector and information & communication technology (ICT) companies, Wärtsilä is supporting a project aimed at creating the world's first autonomous marine transport system. The initial focus will be on developing a fully autonomous system for the Baltic Sea by the year 2025, with cargo ships and freight transportation being the first pilot applications. The programme is being largely financed by Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for innovation and the ecosystem platform is being handled by DIMECC, a leading breakthrough oriented co-creation ecosystem provider. The main corporate investors in the programme, apart from Wärtsilä, are Rolls-Royce, Cargotec, Ericsson, Meyer Turku, and Tieto.

A robot has been detained by police at a political rally in Moscow, with authorities attempting to handcuff the machine. The rally was for Valery Kalachev, a candidate for the Russian Parliament, who had rented the robot for his campaign. Police have not confirmed why they detained the machine named Promobot, but local media was reporting the company behind the robot said police were called because it was "recording voters' opinions on [a] variety of topics for further processing and analysis by the candidate's team". A Promobot representative suggested it was detained because "perhaps this action wasn't authorised". Mr Kalachev has featured the robot at previous campaign stops.

Robots have considerable potential to make human lives better, but only if humans start doing some "big thinking" now about how to ensure that the effects of artificial intelligence are beneficial. That was the view of A.I. experts during a panel discussion on the topic Tuesday at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum in Germany. "We've got to take responsibility for the technology we create," said Noel Sharkey, an emeritus professor of A.I. and robotics at the University of Sheffield as well as chair of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control and cofounder of the Foundation for Responsible Robotics. "We've got to do some big thinking here." The number of robots in use around the world is skyrocketing, Sharkey said.

What differentiates us from machines is not our ability to think, but our ability to reason and to make cross connections between two unrelated phenomenons. There is no doubt that machines have been getting smarter and now, there are concerns that they may take over work from humans. So, while Percy Spencer, inventor of the microwave, could figure out that micro waves from an active radar could be used for heating food, a machine would have just dismissed the accident as a black swan event. Although, there is increasing automation--especially for jobs that entail repetitive tasks, for instance, self-driving cars--there is still time before artificial evolution allows machines to turn our lives into a sci-fi movie gone horribly wrong. in that context, we need to address the question whether these are really as intelligent as their human masters. In order to delve into that question, one needs to understand artificial intelligence and its evolution.

Getting a mortgage is one of the few customer experiences that has, until now, been left pretty much untouched by the digital revolution. You still have to talk to someone on the phone, most likely book an appointment, and then meet with a real person face to face. But a small number of firms are starting to shake this up by going online. This week UK tech startup Habito has launched what it claims is'the world's first artificially intelligent digital mortgage adviser'. But what exactly does that mean?