Inbox by Gmail has a few useful features but probably the most interesting is Smart Reply, which was expanded to the desktop this week. As impressive as the A.I.-powered suggestions for replies to your emails are, they're just not very useful yet. Sure, Smart Replies tend to offer relevant options, but they're not very useful in most real-world cases. Open an invitation to party and you might get'Sounds good!,' 'Can't wait,' and Sorry, I can't be there!' as the suggestions. By the time I've added'Hi Bob,' and a few other bits of personalization, I might as well have written the whole thing myself.

Welcome to robot nursery school," Pieter Abbeel says as he opens the door to the Robot Learning Lab on the seventh floor of a sleek new building on the northern edge of the UC-Berkeley campus. The lab is chaotic: bikes leaning against the wall, a dozen or so grad students in disorganized cubicles, whiteboards covered with indecipherable equations. Abbeel, 38, is a thin, wiry guy, dressed in jeans and a stretched-out T-shirt. He moved to the U.S. from Belgium in 2000 to get a Ph.D. in computer science at Stanford and is now one of the world's foremost experts in understanding the challenge of teaching robots to think intelligently. But first, he has to teach them to "think" at all. "That's why we call this nursery school," he jokes. He introduces me to Brett, a six-foot-tall humanoid robot made by Willow Garage, a high-profile Silicon Valley robotics manufacturer that is now out of business. The lab acquired the robot several years ago to experiment with. Brett, which stands for ...

On December 2nd, 1942, a team of scientists led by Enrico Fermi came back from lunch and watched as humanity created the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction inside a pile of bricks and wood underneath a football field at the University of Chicago. Known to history as Chicago Pile-1, it was celebrated in silence with a single bottle of Chianti, for those who were there understood exactly what it meant for humankind, without any need for words. Now, something new has occurred that, again, quietly changed the world forever. Like a whispered word in a foreign language, it was quiet in that you may have heard it, but its full meaning may not have been comprehended. However, it's vital we understand this new language, and what it's increasingly telling us, for the ramifications are set to alter everything we take for granted about the way our globalized economy functions, and the ways in which we as humans exist within it. The language is a new class of machine learning known as deep learning, and the "whispered word" was a computer's use of it to seemingly out of nowhere defeat three-time European Go champion Fan Hui, not once but five times in a row without defeat.

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." The opening line of George Orwell's great novel 1984 sets up a cautionary tale of how the future could look. In its way, what we're confronting in 2020 is every bit as chilling, but it is also an exciting time of opportunity. Yet, just as the clocks "were striking thirteen", there could be alarming changes at work in the name of progress. "Within the next five years, 20 per cent of all the jobs that exist today will have been automated away," claims futurologist Rohit Talwar.

And no sound bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets, will bring them back to life." First written in the aftermath of the 2008-2009 Israeli war on Gaza, these words from Rafeef Ziadah's poem "We Teach Life, Sir" became popularised by a 2011 performance that went viral. A Palestinian performance poet based in London, Ziadah is an activist in her own right and a member of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee. She has helped spearhead many of the initiatives calling for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel until it adheres to the demands granting Palestinians rights under international law. The poem is now featured on Ziadah's latest album of the same name, which blends her poetry with original music composed by Phil Mansour. Al Jazeera spoke with Ziadah about her latest album, the inspiration and politics of her art, as well as her UK-based activism. Al Jazeera: Your poems were previously known for your captivating performance. Why did you decide to add music to your poems? Rafeef Ziadah: Both my first album "Hadeel" and this second one "We Teach Life" have been collaborations with wonderful musicians who deliberately worked to ensure the music strengthened and emphasised the words. With an album, unlike live performances, people are not able to see me and relate to my facial expressions or hand gestures - on the album we wanted to recreate that connection and music really helped to bring the poems to life. I was happy to work with activist-artist Phil Monsour (who produced the album). The music has also helped introduce the work to a broader audience and is beginning to have radio play on independent radio stations around the world. Al Jazeera: How long did it take you to make this album? Why have you decided to release it now and what do you hope will come out of its release? Ziadah: The album was a slow collaboration that started with a number of poetry pieces and slowly grew in number. It took about 12 months to complete the final production, but the poems were written over several years and recorded in a few countries depending on accessibility. It is really an attempt to capture in words a number of recent experiences of Palestinians inside historic Palestine and in exile as well. This work is also - in many ways- a collective effort beyond myself and the musicians because we launched a crowd funding campaign to support the final stages of production and many people generously donated to make sure narratives that are largely absent in the Western mainstream can be heard. As I explain in the album's artwork "the poems and music here have been written over several years, three wars, two sieges, too many borders and many protests and picket lines.

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

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

Uber and other sharing services are growing in popularity with business travelers, according to a new report from expense management firm Certify. SAN FRANCISCO - Uber allegedly has placed an order for a number of 100,000 Mercedes-Benz S-Class sedans, fueling speculation about the ride-sharing company's plans to ultimately field a fleet of self-driving automobiles. The German automaker's technology showpiece at present does not feature fully autonomous driving capabilities. Rather, it offers driver-assistance features such as lane-keeping and blind-spot monitoring. But apparently "(Uber) wanted autonomous cars," a source told Germany's Manager Magazin Friday citing officials at both companies.

At San Francisco's first fully automated restaurant, meals appear in little glass cubbies, just 90 seconds after customers order and pay on wall-mounted iPads. It's a human-less experience – no waitstaff, no cashier, no one to get your order wrong and no one to tip. The moment before the meal appears, the see-through display screen that fronts the cubbies goes black for the few seconds when you might catch sight of the hand that feeds you. Related: Would you bet against sex robots? AI'could leave half of world unemployed' Eatsa has not yet achieved total automation.

Midway through the first of five recent matches between Lee Sedol, a top-ranked professional Go player, and AlphaGo, a computer program conceived by Google DeepMind, an odd thing happened: Lee's jaw dropped, hanging open for a nigh-cartoonish twenty seconds, and then he laughed. AlphaGo had just mounted an aggressive, and evidently unexpected, attack. The moment was reminiscent of a famous episode in Go history, when Honinbo Shusaku, a future legend of the game, squared off against Inoue Genan Inseki, an older and more experienced player, in 1846. The story goes that a spectator--a local doctor who knew little of Go--correctly guessed that the seventeen-year-old Shusaku was beating Inseki. Asked how he knew, the doctor responded that, after an earlier move, Inseki's ears had flushed red, a clear indication of surprise.