Apple is set to hold its biggest software event of the year, WWDC, in the middle of June. It'll use the San Francisco event to show off all of the software that's on its way to your Watch, phone and other computers – as well as potentially new Apple devices. The event comes at a big time for Apple. The company is fresh off the back of its first quarter of decline since the iPhone came out, and is feeling the heat from other companies like Google. It will intend to use WWDC as a way of showcasing the software and potentially other products that it hopes will prove its doubters wrong and get the company to grow again.

Czech writer Karel?apek's 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), which famously introduced the word robot to the world, begins with synthetic humans--the robots from the title--toiling in factories to produce low-cost goods. It ends with those same robots killing off the human race. Thus was born an enduring plot line in science fiction: robots spiraling out of control and turning into unstoppable killing machines. Twentieth-century literature and film would go on to bring us many more examples of robots wreaking havoc on the world, with Hollywood notably turning the theme into blockbuster franchises like The Matrix, Transformers, and The Terminator. Lately, fears of fiction turning to fact have been stoked by a confluence of developments, including important advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, along with the widespread use of combat drones and ground robots in Iraq and Afghanistan. The world's most powerful militaries are now developing ever more intelligent weapons, with varying degrees of autonomy and lethality.

"It was magical, it was a moment in history," recalls Joseph Atick of the day in 1994 when the computer he and colleagues at Rockefeller University had built was able to recognize its masters' faces. As each of the three mathematicians introduced themselves, a metallic voice responded, "I see Joseph. Atick, who now chairs an organization that promotes identification technologies, says, "We didn't realize what we'd just done." Fast-forward two decades and picture a talking mannequin that greets a shopper by name as she enters a favorite store, informing her that pants that match the blouse she bought a week earlier have just been marked down. "It's just a matter of time until we start to see this technology reach shopping malls and beyond--it's ready right now," says Werner Goertz, a Gartner analyst who has authored a report on the adoption of facial recognition and other surveillance tools by retailers, casinos, and theme parks.

Sometimes, really brilliant folks with a reputation for being brilliant start to comment on subjects outside their area of expertise, as if their level of genius so transcends the intelligence of the unwashed masses that they can be called on as an authority in literally any subject. Stephen Hawking has arguably been guilty of this before, and has faced criticism for his recent pontifications on the dangers of artificial intelligence in particular. But on Tuesday, Hawking admitted to being utterly stumped by something -- or, rather, someone: Donald Trump. ITV's "Good Morning Britain" cheekily asked whether the physics genius could explain the American billionaire's rise to presidential candidacy. "He's a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator." Hawking, who has lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for more than half a century, uses a computer controlled by tiny movements of his cheek muscles to type out communications.

Inside the glistening red cave of the patient's abdomen, surgeon Michael Stifelman carefully guides two robotic arms to tie knots in a piece of thread. He manipulates a third arm to drive a suturing needle through the fleshy mass of the patient's kidney, stitching together the hole where a tumor used to be. The final arm holds the endoscope that streams visuals to Stifelman's display screens. Each arm enters the body through a tiny incision about 5 millimeters wide. To watch this tricky procedure is to marvel at what can be achieved when robot and human work in tandem. Stifelman, who has done several thousand robot-assisted surgeries as director of NYU Langone's Robotic Surgery Center, controls the robotic arms from a console.

But a new super-dexterous robot hand can "learn" how to perfect new abilities over time -- without any help from its three human overlords at the University of Washington. The trio of researchers presented their handiwork, called the Adroit manipulation system, on Tuesday at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm. The Adroit system gets the world one step closer to the Jetsons' housekeeper robot Rosie: hardware that performs better than human bodies, yet is controlled by a software "brain" that learns like a human mind. The researchers say their creation has potentially huge implications for the robotics field, and for any industry that requires a variety of complex tasks -- from space exploration to healthcare to automated butlers. Manipulating robot hands to perform fine-motor tasks like catching a stick, rotating a tube or rolling a block "is one of the biggest problems in robotics," lead researcher Vikash Kumar told CNNMoney.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been implemented in multiple industries, from stock trading to hospitals, and Google has singled it out as the next big thing. As Uschi Schreiber, Chair of the Global Accounts Committee at EY, wrote earlier this year: "Leaders in every industry are responding to shifts that would have seemed unimaginable even a few years ago. "Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are fundamentally reinventing the workforce." The finance sector, given its heavy reliance on mass amounts of numbers and data, is a prime candidate for the automation offered by intelligent learning systems. But while this might mean great things for efficiency and digital transformation, many have raised concerns about robots taking the place of human employees. The driving motivations behind the installation of AI in business processes appear to be the greater speed, accuracy and volume capability of computers when compared to their existing human counterparts. Many businesses are already using robotic process automation systems to crunch numbers and sift data on a daily basis. For example, Kensho is an intelligent computer system widely used by stock traders and investors to automatically analyse portfolio performance and predict market changes. The software is described as'the world's first computational knowledge engine for the financial industry'. It claims to address Wall Street's greatest challenge – automating and improving on previously human-intensive knowledge work to keep up with the split-second changeability of stock. Kensho's founder, Daniel Nadler, told the New York Times Magazine: ''People always tell me, 'I used to spend two out of five days a week doing this sort of thing,' or'I used to have a guy whose job it was to do nothing other than this one thing'.'' Even the breaking down and translating of numerical data into colloquial terms no longer requires the input of a human operator, thanks to systems that learn with use to mimic personable patterns. UK-based Arria has developed natural language generation software (NLG) that is being used across a wide range of industries to humanise and simplify the analysis of data heavy reports. Arria's Chief Technology Officer Robert Dale, said: "By emulating human behaviour in software, you get technology that can carry out tasks that are more than just straightforward number crunching, with the machine exhibiting real intelligence.

If you leave your iPad untouched for a few days, you probably do not need to worry about much more than a flat battery and a backlog of emails. But with artificial intelligence, computers could soon have their own set of'rights' that could let them sue you for neglect, according to a leading scientist. Professor Marcus du Sautoy, a mathematician at Oxford University, has suggested that as AI leads to our devices developing their own consciousness, they may need their own laws to protect them. Advances in artificial intelligence could lead to computers and smartphones developing consciousness and they may need to be given'human' rights. He claims that if technology is conscious, it could also then be deemed as being alive, and so could win the right to be governed by laws on human rights.

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

High winds are one of the most common causes of flight delays and cancellations at airports, but new technology is now to put an end to the problem. Air traffic controllers at three of Britain's busiest airports are to adopt a new system that can automatically adjust the landing rate of aircraft depending on the wind conditions. Traditional landing procedures mean aircraft must be separated by a set distance when on approach to a runway. A new system that separates landing aircraft (pictured) by time rather than distance is to be introduced to Gatwick and Manchester Airports after a successful trial over the past year at Heathrow. Time-based separation replaces the old system of keeping large aircraft five nautical miles apart when they come into land.