For all of Amazon's grand plans regarding delivery drones, it still needs to figure out concepts we take for granted with traditional courier methods. Namely, figuring out how to drop off your latest order without destroying anything (including the UAV itself) during transit and landing. That's where advanced computer vision comes in from Jeff Bezos' new team of Austria-based engineers, according to The Verge. The group invented methods for reconstructing geometry from images and contextually recognizing environmental objects, giving the drones the ability to differentiate between, say, a swimming pool and your back patio. Both are flat surfaces, but one won't leave your PlayStation VR headset waterlogged after drop-off.

An alternate version private photo application is now available for users in Europe and Canada, leaving out features that violate privacy laws in those locales. Most notably, the facial-recognition tool isn't included in the software, which means users will have to do a bit more work to tag and identify who's in their snapshots. Facebook says that while it left the facial recognition out, the app will group photos that "appear to include the same face." Sounds kind of like facial recognition, right? Facebook says the app now functions more like object recognition, observing things like the distance between someone's eyes and ears rather than their unique facial features.

Belgian prime minster Charles Michel's recent drive to promote the country as a positive place for investment is understandable after recent terrorist activity in Brussels, but it seems he may have missed an opportunity. Right on his doorstep, in the northern Belgium coastal town of Oostende, he has a company programming and selling robotsthat help humans dance, sing and learn new skills. The global robotics market is expected to be worth 1.5bn ( 1bn) by 2019 and although currently dominated by projections for industrial robots, demand for business and consumer robotics is expected to grow seven times faster than in manufacturing. "Belgium is Belgium," says Tommy Deblieck, co-founder of QBMT Solutions, the company behind the Zora social robot. "The government has a digital agenda and we said: 'What about robotics?' The only answer we got was: 'Oops, we forgot about that.'"

The problem is that if robot labor is cheaper and more reliable than human labor, why bother with the latter? The payback period for industrial robots (the time it takes for their extra costs to be paid off) is falling sharply. For a welding robot to be used in a Chinese factory, for example, the period has fallen from 5.3 years in 2010, to 1.7 years in 2015, say analysts from Citi. By 2017, they say it could be as low as 1.3 years. And more robots in factories equals fewer jobs for humans.

Google, Amazon, Apple, IBM, Yahoo, Facebook, Intel, and Salesforce are all hustling to either invest in new artificial intelligence technology or acquire it outright both in New York and in other hubs across the USA. Lumped into this category are a variety of innovations, including image processing, natural language, machine learning and predictive APIs (application program interface). To find out how much activity has been going on within the AI sector in Silicon Alley, the New York Business Journal tapped PitchBook for help. PitchBook expects that as more AI technology gets integrated into different categories -- business intelligence, e-commerce, and healthcare -- the number of deals this year will surpass 2015 totals, both in terms of volume and capital invested (see the infographic above). According to previous coverage, a wide majority of deals across the U.S. (between 2010 to 2015) were seed stage, accounting for 50 percent of overall activity in 2015.

Someday, the word driver will connote something completely different than it does today. When cars are fully automated and don't need us for anything more than letting them know where to go, the job of a "driver" will be like that of a patron in a bar selecting a song on a jukebox. But that scenario, where the passenger cabin is a rolling lounge in which all occupants are free to talk, entertain themselves with electronic gadgets, or sleep, is still decades away. Until then, even the most sophisticated self-driving car will occasionally encounter a circumstance that overwhelms its computerized smarts. At those moments, it will look to a human to take charge.

Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind. He is one of Britain's pre-eminent scientists and has said that efforts to create thinking machines pose a threat to our very existence. But till the time it happens, lets play games and kill AI. Going in the same direction, while casually talking to my friend Vishal Shukla about general purpose AI, a thought came up. Which gets boring after you figure-out the pattern in which AI play against player.

Throughout history, artists and scientists have sought to understand what it means to be human and create machines in our own image. Soon, a new exhibition will explore our obsession to recreate ourselves, revealing the remarkable 500-year history of humanoid robots. The forthcoming show at London's Science Museum will include a collection of more than 100 robots from a 16th-century mechanical monk to robots from science fiction and modern-day research lab. Soon, a new exhibition will explore our obsession to recreate ourselves, revealing the remarkable 500-year-old history of humanoid robots. It will enable visitors to discover the cultural, historical and technological context of humanoid robots and let them interact with 12 working humanoids on display.

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

Computing science researcher Siamak Ravanbakhsh (middle), with his co-supervisors Russell Greiner (left) and David Wishart. Ravanbakhsh has developed a computer system called Bayesil that could dramatically improve diagnosis and treatment of a wide spectrum of diseases. Siamak Ravanbakhsh, who recently completed his PhD in computing science at the University of Alberta and whose research was recently published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, said Bayesil, the computer application resulting from this breakthrough, is pretty easy to explain in basic terms. "There is this technology called NMR spectrometry, which uses some of the same physical principles as MRI. This technology is very cool, because it can determine the concentration of certain compounds in your body," he said.