The rise of robots and deadly viruses are among the threats that could wipe out swathes of humanity - but governments are failing to prepare properly for them, a new report warns. Catastrophic climate change, nuclear war and natural disasters such as super volcanoes and asteroids could also pose a deadly risk to mankind, researchers said. It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi films, but experts said these apocalyptic threats are more likely than many realise. The report Global Catastrophic Risks, compiled by a team from Oxford University, the Global Challenges Foundation and the Global Priorities Project, ranks dangers that could wipe out 10% or more of the human population. It warns that while most generations never experience a catastrophe, they are far from fanciful, as the bouts of plague and the 1918 Spanish flu that wiped out millions illustrated.

The rise of robots and deadly viruses are among the threats that could wipe out swathes of humanity - but governments are failing to prepare properly for them, a new report warns. Catastrophic climate change, nuclear war and natural disasters such as super volcanoes and asteroids could also pose a deadly risk to mankind, researchers said. It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi films, but experts said these apocalyptic threats are more likely than many realise. The report Global Catastrophic Risks, compiled by a team from Oxford University, the Global Challenges Foundation and the Global Priorities Project, ranks dangers that could wipe out 10% or more of the human population. It warns that while most generations never experience a catastrophe, they are far from fanciful, as the bouts of plague and the 1918 Spanish flu that wiped out millions illustrated.

The report Global Catastrophic Risks, compiled by a team from Oxford University, the Global Challenges Foundation and the Global Priorities Project, ranks dangers that could wipe out 10% or more of the human population. It warns that while most generations never experience a catastrophe, they are far from fanciful, as the bouts of plague and the 1918 Spanish flu that wiped out millions illustrated. Sebastian Farquhar, director at the Global Priorities Project, told the Press Association: "There are some things that are on the horizon, things that probably won't happen in any one year but could happen, which could completely reshape our world and do so in a really devastating and disastrous way. "History teaches us that many of these things are more likely than we intuitively think. "Many of these risks are changing and growing as technologies change and grow and reshape our world. But there are also things we can do about the risks."

SAVILE ROW in London is best known for producing some of the world's finest bespoke suits. But tucked away in a quiet corner of the same street is a firm that gives tailored health advice through a smartphone app. Your.MD uses artificial intelligence to understand natural-language statements such as "I have a headache" and ask pertinent follow-up questions. The app typifies a new approach to mobile health (also known as m-health): it is intelligent, personalised and gets cleverer as it gleans data from its users. There are now around 165,000 health-related apps which run on one or other of the two main smartphone operating systems, Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

The rise of robots and deadly viruses are among the threats that could wipe out swathes of humanity - but governments are failing to prepare properly for them, a new report warns. Catastrophic climate change, nuclear war and natural disasters such as super volcanoes and asteroids could also pose a deadly risk to mankind, researchers said. It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi films, but experts said these apocalyptic threats are more likely than many realise. The report Global Catastrophic Risks, compiled by a team from Oxford University, the Global Challenges Foundation and the Global Priorities Project, ranks dangers that could wipe out 10% or more of the human population. It warns that while most generations never experience a catastrophe, they are far from fanciful, as the bouts of plague and the 1918 Spanish flu that wiped out millions illustrated.

Nimble-fingered robots that exactly mimic the movements of a human hand could soon be used to help decommission nuclear power stations. Remote-controlled robots with hand-like manipulators are used in many situations that are difficult or dangerous for humans, such as bomb disposal. However, their movements are typically controlled by human operators via joysticks, which limits their dexterity. To address this, Miika Perä and Hamid Reza Zaheri at London firm Cambrian Intelligence have built a system that lets robotic arms and hands emulate hand movements exactly. To guide the robot, a human carries out the desired actions either in front of a video camera or while wearing a glove that captures movement.

Last December, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teamed up with Y Combinator president Sam Altman and former Google Brain Team scientist Ilya Sutskever to launch OpenAI, a 1 billion non-profit organization dedicated to furthering our understanding of artificial intelligence with a promise to share its research openly with the world. Today, it's taken its first step in that direction by launching a free toolkit for developers to build and train their own AI bots with games and algorithmic challenges. Some of the biggest names in tech are coming to TNW Conference in Amsterdam this May. The OpenAI Gym, currently in beta, includes environments to simulate situations for your AI to learn from, as well as a site to compare and reproduce results. The tools are designed for use with Reinforcement Learning (RL), one of the technologies used to develop Google's AlphaGo AI that defeated Go world champion Lee Se-Dol recently.

A robot assistant lifeguard called EMILY is making waves by helping migrants cross the Mediterranean Sea safely. In the wake of unrest, over 500 refugees have drowned attempting to cross the Mediterranean from Turkey to Greece. Members from the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's (TEES) Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) and Roboticists Without Borders gathered at the Greek island of Lesvos to assist the local Coast Guard and lifeguard organizations to prevent this from happening in the future. Dr. Robin Murphy, Raytheon Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, aided authorities in Lesvos alongside CRASAR, of which she is an active member. She is working with students to continually improve the lifesaving device, which can carry up to eight people at once.

Technology allowing a pre-programmed robot to shoot to kill, or a tank to fire at a target with no human involvement, is only years away, experts say. A new report called Monday for a ban on such "killer robots." The report by Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic was released as the United Nations kicked off a week-long meeting on such weapons in Geneva. The report calls for humans to remain in control over all weapons systems at a time of rapid technological advances. It says that requiring humans to remain in control of critical functions during combat, including the selection of targets, saves lives and ensures that fighters comply with international law.

When it comes to robots replacing humans, we might think we have the upper hand since we're the ones who build and program them but that's not neccesarily the case anymore. Google is taking a different approach to training its robots – it's letting them teach each other. Some of the biggest names in tech are coming to TNW Conference in Amsterdam this May. Researchers at Google have released a report showing how they connected 14 robotic arms together and used convolutional neural networks to let them teach themselves how to pick things up. The approach mimics how young children learn between the ages of one and four years old, and is essentially helping the robots to develop reliable hand-eye coordination.