Amazon is expected to confirm shortly that it is making its artificial intelligence-enhanced speakers available to the UK and select other countries in Europe. The Echo devices are controlled by their owner's voice and can be used to answer questions, control other smart home kit and buy goods from the US retailer. The tech is still fairly "clunky", according to the BBC's technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, but it points the way to how virtual assistants could play a role in our lives beyond the smartphone.

Analysts at Bank of America have reportedly suggested there is a 20 to 50 per cent chance our world is a Matrix-style virtual reality and everything we experience is just a simulation. The report, which was issued to clients, also implies even if our world was an illusion, we would never know about it. Bank of America Merrill Lynch backed up the claims by citing comments from leading philosophers, scientists and other thinkers. BANK OF AMERICA: There's a 20%-50% chance we're inside the matrix and reality is just a simulation Myles Udland pic.twitter.com/TltpYbjPxI "It is conceivable that with advancements in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and computing power, members of future civilizations could have decided to run a simulation of their ancestors," the report stated.

Drone racing's rise to prominence is hardly a surprise. The sport combines a new, rapidly improving technology with skilful pilots and bombastic, three-dimensional courses. If you've ever watched a heat, either in person or online, you'll know it's an exhilarating spectacle. With this in mind, it's no bombshell to hear that Sky has made an investment in the Drone Racing League (DRL), a professional outfit backed by Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross. As part of its 1 million cash injection, Sky will be showing the entire tournament on its new Sky Sports Mix channel in the UK.

While you might be playing GTA to remorselessly run over people for fun, researchers are now using the popular game to train computers how to better navigate self-driving cars in the real world. Scientists from Darmstadt University in Germany and Intel Labs have developed a new clever method to source visual data from Grand Theft Auto that could then be fed to computers to teach vehicles how to drive autonomously. Momentum by TNW is our New York technology event for anyone interested in helping their company grow. Although machine learning is enabling computers to quickly pick up new skills, the approach requires large quantities of information to work effectively – and data could be hard to find sometimes. It takes thousands of hours of real-world visual data in various scenarios to teach cars how to navigate on their own, but the researchers say information from games is easy to collect and can be "almost as good, or sometimes even better" than real data.

On April 13th 2016, Norway's Prime Minister was hosted in Singapore by Norway's leading multinational company DNV GL. The PM unveiled -The Hive- a fully autonomous drone docking station developed by SwarmX a one year old startup. Pulkit Jaiswal the 23year old CEO of SwarmX who I interviewed over skype as part of my coverage of the global event for tech startups Rise was understandably elated at the development. Pulkit with two other co Founders created SwarmX in April 2015. Prior to that, he spent three years building Garuda Robotics along with two other Founders.

At SAS's Analytics Experience conference in Las Vegas yesterday, the analytics powerhouse unveiled two new additions to its SAS Viya analytics platform aimed at supporting cognitive computing: SAS Visual Investigator and SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning. "Cognitive computing is disruptive, combining technologies such as natural language processing, image processing, text mining and machine learning to augment human intelligence," Oliver Schabenberger, SAS executive vice president and CTO, said in a statement yesterday. "SAS has supported cognitive technologies in analytics for decades. The exciting change is applying deep learning and high-performance computing to achieve greater automation and accuracy in the interaction between computers and people." Visual Investigator is a new, cloud-ready investigation and alert management product designed to help intelligence analysts and investigators uncover insider threats, disease outbreaks, loan risks, drug trafficking, fraud and other emerging issues.

Doctors at Oxford University made medical history recently by successfully completing the first robot-assisted intraocular surgery. Robert MacLaren, Professor of Ophthalmology at the university, and his team managed to gently peel off a 1/1000th millimeter membrane from the inside of a patient's eye. To do so, the team relied on a cutting-edge medical device known as the Robotic Retinal Dissection Device, or R2D2. The R2D2, developed by Dutch medical robotics firm Preceyes BV, is designed to perform keyhole surgery, entering and exiting the eyeball through a single, sub-millimeter hole. What's more, it's built to be exceedingly steady, especially given the tight tolerances within which it works.

Leave it to the great minds at MIT and Georgia Tech to figure out a way to read the pages of a book without actually opening it. A team of researchers from the two institutions pulled it off with a system they developed that looks like a cross between a camera and a microscope. They said it could someday be used by museums to scan the contents of old books too fragile to handle or to examine paintings to confirm their authenticity or understand the artist's creative process. Writing in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications, the scientists explained how they used terahertz waves -- a type of radiation situated on the electromagnetic spectrum between microwaves and infrared light -- to read a stack of papers with a single letter handwritten on each page. The device, called a terahertz spectrometer, managed to clearly read only nine pages, though it could see writing on up to 20. "We were very excited because we didn't think we would be able to see as deep as we did," said Barmak Heshmat, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab.

Apple created mass hysteria when it unveiled a handset paired with wireless headphones. Although users feel it will only be a matter of time before they lose the AirPods, Apple CEO Tim Cook says he'never personally had one fall out since using them' and has used them on treadmills. In an exclusive interview with Good Morning America, the tech tycoon suggests it is the weight of the wires that pull the headphones out of people's ears, and by cutting the wires, the earbuds should now stay in place. Although users feel it will only be a matter of time before they lose the AirPods, Apple's CEO Tim Cook says he'has never personally had one fall out since using them'. The tech tycoon suggests it is the wires connected to the earbuds that pull them out of people's ears Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke with Robin Roberts on ABC News' 'Good Morning America' about the concerns consumers might have about Apple's new AirPods.

NSA Chief Says Without Artificial Intelligence, Cyber'Is A Losing Strategy' by Giuseppe Macri, Artificial intelligence will play a big role in the future of U.S. strategy in cyberspace, according to National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers, who told Congress Tuesday that relying primarily on human intelligence "is a losing strategy." "[We're] very much interested in artificial intelligence, machine learning, how we can do cyber at scale [and] at speed," Rogers testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. "Because if we're just going to take this largely human capital approach to doing business, that is a losing strategy." "It will be both incredibly resource intensive, and it will be very slow," Rogers added. "That is a big area of focus for us."