Positive news on the AI front recently when the US and UK governments both started public debate on the future of artificial intelligence. While there has been a lot of coverage on AI in the press over the recent months, it is very encouraging to see the governments of two of the leading contributing countries to this technology start taking its development seriously enough to have open public debates on the issues. Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) is one of the'Eight Great Technologies' identified by the UK Government in 2012. A national strategy for RAS innovation from a'RAS Special Interest Group' has been published by Innovate UK. "Robots are now beating humans at even the most complex games, like Go. Artificial intelligence will play an increasing role in our lives over the coming years. From navigation systems to medical treatments and from new manufacturing techniques to unmanned vehicles, new applications are rapidly being developed that involve robotic decision making. It is important that the UK is ready with the research, innovation and skills to be able to fully take advantage of the opportunities and manage any risks. The global market for the AI sector is expected to grow to 2-6 trillion by 2025."

Using an in vitro analogue of the decision-making process, we show that the system employs an energy management strategy, switching between a low- and high-use mode depending on the outcome of the decision.

While robotics and AI research is taking massive strides forward, our social development hasn't really kept up with them. We may very well have sentient robots in a few decades, but is our society prepared to deal with that possibility? For starters, what role would robots play? Would they be considered as mindless servants, inferior slaves who (which?!) exist only to serve our needs? Would they be like animals, given some rights, but clearly not as many as humans?

It's now a strategic imperative that business leaders conceptualize how business and IT services can be bundled with "smart" technologies, like cognitive computing or machine learning, to create innovative service models and intellectual property (IP) for new revenue streams. Speaking ahead of the Gartner Sourcing & Strategic Vendor Relationships Summit 2016 in London, Frances Karamouzis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, said, "Smart machines are not future fantasy. They are commercially available -- it has been estimated that more than 10 billion of smart machine technologies have already been purchased through more than 2,500 companies. Services related to smart machines may be five to 10 times the size of the aggregate technology market. The new normal is that "recruited" smart algorithms, smart machines, robots and cognitive bots (with artificial intelligence) will occupy the domains of expertise historically fulfilled by people.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 2, 2016) - TechCode, a global network of startup incubators and entrepreneur ecosystems, today launches its accelerator program for artificial intelligence and hardware startups in the United States. "TechCode's accelerator program is unlike any other available right now," said Luke Tang, General Manager of TechCode Accelerator U.S. "We're focusing our resources and connections specifically to startups in the AI and hardware spaces who already have a prototype -- what we call Phase-II Acceleration. Our goal is to help speed up commercialization for these startups by introducing them to partners and investors, all while helping them test global market entry and fine tune or add artificial intelligence elements to their products." With a global presence and especially strong connections in China, TechCode will provide its accelerator participants with hands-on supply chain support, distribution, manufacturing and retail connections in the U.S., China and Europe and mentorship and technical support for artificial intelligence applications. TechCode has also a strategic partnership with CFLD, a leader in investment and operation of new industrial cities in China.

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

If artificial intelligence goes off the rails, which many philosophers and tech entrepreneurs seem to think is likely, it could result in rampant activity beyond human control. So some researchers think it's important to develop systems to "interrupt" AI programs, and to ensure the AI can't develop a way to prevent those interruptions. A study, conducted in 2014 by Google-owned AI lab DeepMind and the University of Oxford, sought to create a framework for handing control of AI programs over to human beings. In other words, a "big red button" to keep the software in check. "If such an agent is operating in real-time under human supervision, now and then it may be necessary for a human operator to press the big red button to prevent the agent from continuing a harmful sequence of actions -- harmful either for the agent or for the environment -- and lead the agent into a safer situation," reads the team's paper, titled "Safely Interruptible Agents" and published online with the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.

About a year ago, I wrote an article introducing the concept of optimizing road trips using a combination of genetic algorithms and Google Maps. During that time, I've given some thought to how I could make that algorithm more useful to folks looking to plan their summer road trips. One thought that struck me was that the road trips I created before were quite grandiose--spanning entire states or even most of Europe--such that only people who had some savings and were able to take a month off of work could even hope to go on one of the trips. In reality, most of us have budgetary constraints on our road trips: we can only spend so much money, or we only have so much time off before we have to get back to work. In this article, I'm going to expand on the idea of optimizing road trips by introducing multi-objective Pareto optimization to the algorithm.

A new investment fund by a Vancouver-based venture capital group and an alliance of robotics professionals in the Netherlands plan to invest 100 million ( 113.6 million) into robo-startups around the world, according to a joint statement this past week. The RoboValley Fund, named after the RoboValley Innovation Hub located near the Hague leading the charge, will likely focus on seed and early stage funding. RoboValley touts 170 members from a variety of AI and robotics-related disciplines and is based out of the Delft University of Technology. The investment strategy will be managed and led by Chrysalix Venture Capital. According to Markets and Markets, the industrial robotics market is predicted to reach a value of nearly 80 billion by 2022.

Move over, humans; the emulations are coming and our world is going to get really weird. The book tries to discern how the world will change when it becomes possible to upload human minds into computational substrates. Hanson argues that three supporting technologies are required to achieve this: fast, cheap computers; fast, cheap brain scanners; and detailed and effective models of brain cells. Once all three become available later this century, it will be possible to scan a human brain and emulate it on computer hardware. At that point we'll enter the Age of Emulation--or the Age of Em, for short.