Parts of this essay by Andrew Smart are adapted from his book Beyond Zero And One (2015), published by OR Books. Machine intelligence is growing at an increasingly rapid pace. The leading minds on the cutting edge of AI research think that machines with human-level intelligence will likely be realized by the year 2100. Beyond this, artificial intelligences that far outstrip human intelligence would rapidly be created by the human-level AIs. This vastly superhuman AI will result from an "intelligence explosion."

There is a new technology being tested for use on UK civilians en masse on our streets, millimetre microwave scanners. These electromagnetic radiation scanners, which use Ultra Wide Band (UWB) at 75-110 GHz, are able to be beamed at crowds to detect potential concealed weapons being carried by individuals. Using the same technology as the American airport TSA scanners, over which there has been much controversy in the level of detail these scanners reveal about an individual, MiRTLE, provided by Radio Physics Solutions (RPS) purports to use artificial intelligence (AI) to identify weapon shaped objects without the system revealing the human body image. Practically this would make sense, as a human operator seeing a crowd of people imaged by millimetre microwaves would not be able to effectively scan the crowd for weapon shaped objects or suicide vests. This technology is funded by us, to be used on us.

Travis Kalanick, Founder and CEO of Uber, delivers a speech at the Institute of Directors Convention at the Royal Albert Hall, Central London, Britain, 03 October 2014. Uber may be increasing its testing of self-driving cars, but it still has plenty of work to do to keep its human drivers happy. The ride-sharing leader announced a host of new initiatives that are sure to please drivers, giving them more control over the rides they drive. The moves, which the company started rolling out this week, run the gamut in improving the Uber driving experience. One new feature allows Uber drivers to pause new requests from coming in while they are finishing a route, while a second lets drivers set a "driver destination," or letting a driver twice a day input where they want to go and matching them only with riders on that route.

Microsoft is releasing a new Xbox One update for its preview members today, and it includes access to Cortana for the first time. While Microsoft had originally planned to introduce Cortana for Xbox One last year, the company delayed the digital assistant integration to include it with the Anniversary Update to the console. Cortana will appear in the Xbox One dashboard, and you'll be able to access the voice assistant through the Kinect sensor or a headset. As a result, Microsoft is altering the way you activate Xbox voice commands to just "Hey Cortana." Cortana integration will be available in the US, UK, Italy, Germany, and Spain initially, and you'll be able to use the digital assistant to launch parties, see what friends are playing, and do basic tasks.

Facebook is known for a variety of mantras embedded in its culture, often spelled out on signs at its offices or recited by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives: "Code wins arguments," "Move fast and break things," or "Done is better than perfect." A sign on the wall at the company's New York office perfectly sums up the approach Yann LeCun brings to his leadership of Facebook's nascent efforts in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning: "Always be Open." Artificial intelligence has become a vital part of scaling Facebook. It's already being used to recognize the faces of your friends in photographs, and curate your newsfeed. DeepText, an engine for reading text that was unveiled last week, can understand "with near-human accuracy" the content in thousands of posts per second, in more than 20 different languages. Soon, the text will be translated into a dozen different languages, automatically. Facebook is working on recognizing your voice and identifying people inside of videos so that you can fast forward to the moment when your friend walks into view. Facebook wants to dominate in AI and machine learning, just as it already does in social networking and instant messaging.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

Car insurer Adrian Flux has launched what it claims to be the UK's first personal driverless car insurance policy. The policy is designed for consumers who already have driverless features in their cars, such as self-parking, or are thinking of buying a car with autopilot features. Fully self-driving cars are only expected to be on the road by 2020 at the earliest, when Volvo plans to launch such vehicles. Gerry Bucke, general manager at Adrian Flux, said: "We understand this driverless policy to be the first of its kind in the UK – and possibly the world... More than half of new cars sold last year featured autonomous safety technology such as self-parking or ABS, which effectively either take control or take decisions on behalf of the driver. And it's only going to continue. Driverless technology will become increasingly common in our cars over the next few years."

Archaeologists and doctors in Spain are have used 3D-scanning technology to peer beneath the bandages of four ancient mummies. The specimens of three Egyptians and one Guanche – the aboriginal people who lived in the Canary Islands – were taken from the National Archaeological Museum, in Madrid. By using the scanning technology, the experts hope to be able to find out more about how the individuals lived, what killed them and the funeral rituals they underwent when they were buried. Archaeologists in Spain have used 3D-scanning technology to analyse four sets of mummified remains. The specialist team hope to be able to find out more about how the individuals lived, what killed them and the funeral rituals they underwent when they were buried.

With several new datasets uploaded to Datasets this month, we saw a great number of exceptional scripts created. In this month's blog featuring the May 2016 Scripts of the Week, you'll hear about four that the team selected for their quality insight and analysis including: Read on and find yourself motivated to fork any of these scripts and explore the authors' ideas further! I was reviewing the data in the competition and feeling a bit stuck on how to approach it. I have a background in earth observation/remote sensing using satellite and aerial data, but the contest goals are pretty unusual in this contest and the imagery is different from what I prefer to work with (multi- or hyper-spectral imagery). Given that I didn't have a clear approach or purpose in mind, I decided to just explore the data iteratively as a brainstorming process.

If someone asked you to define'intelligence,' how would you respond? The question elicits significantly different answers based on whom you ask. Ask people to define'artificial intelligence' and the conflicting answers only multiply. Not only are there multiple schools of thought within the field of AI, but the term itself stands on a word that we're still only beginning to understand. This was the elephant in the room at BootstrapLabs' Applied Artificial Intelligence Conference last week in San Francisco. Some speakers rejected the term AI altogether, and used a slew of replacements, while others couldn't get enough of it.