It wasn't even April 1, but being the overachievers they are, Google had already started releasing its April Fools' Day announcements. Starting yesterday, we spotted a disco-clad pegman on Google Maps, a Google sock-finding app on Google's Australia blog, and a new "Flick" keyboard from Google Japan. There were also two Gmail hacks that rolled out: an emoji-powered smart reply feature and a "Send Mic Drop" option. The Gmail mic drop feature had a number of users up in arms after they unwittingly inserted a mic-dropping Minion gif into emails. By this morning, Google had disabled the prank and apologized for causing more headaches than laughs.

Whether you define artificial intelligence as a sophisticated being that is convincingly "human" and can pass a Turing Test, or simply an algorithm that dictates which stories you see in your Facebook feed, the rise of smart machines will see more and more of the jobs we do today transformed and even replaced. Where mechanisation replaced a large swathe of manual labour jobs, now we're going to see more and more white-collar jobs overtaken by algorithms. "In the past we were removed from the limitations of our muscles; now we'll be removed from some of the limitations of our brains," says Toby Walsh, a prominent Australian AI expert who has taken a global campaign against the development of autonomous weapons (aka "killer robots") to the United Nations. As with previous cycles of technological advancement, the rise in productivity is expected to bring a rise in living standards. But there will be pain, too, at least in the short term.

In The Social Express, a cast of animated characters help kids with autism learn helpful social skills. Both Katie and her teacher look like they'd be right at home in a Pixar film, and at first their conversation seems like it would fit in one too. The ponytailed and pink-clad Katie really wants to sharpen her pencil, but her teacher won't let her until the other kids in the class finish taking a test. Katie asks again, but the teacher offers the same, frustrating answer. "Katie seems upset that her teacher said'no.'

A look at a Penrose Studio VR short called "The Rose and I" and its cross-platform differences. Great read for VR developers interested in seeing what's coming. Here is a brilliant guide on how to stream mixed reality by the guys who know it best -- the Fantastic Contraption team! Now this is very neat! Mike Harris combined the Leap Motion draw and scale utilities from Orion into a neat demo.

Bergan Flannigan, of Plattsburgh, N.Y., says she used to "get a lot of stares" when she wore her prosthetic leg with the metal pipe exposed. "I feel like people don't look as much" with the cover, she says, "which I like." Bergan Flannigan, of Plattsburgh, N.Y., says she used to "get a lot of stares" when she wore her prosthetic leg with the metal pipe exposed. "I feel like people don't look as much" with the cover, she says, "which I like." Prosthetic limbs for people who have lost an arm or a leg have come a long way in the last decade.

Domino's Australia is independent from the U.S. based pizza chain, but pays a royalty to use the name, logo and recipes. Domino's Australia is independent from the U.S. based pizza chain, but pays a royalty to use the name, logo and recipes. NEW YORK (March 19, 2016) -- Ding dong, there's a robot at your door and it's got your extra large pizza. This could be a future Saturday night scenario if Domino's Australia gets its way. Domino's Australia is independent from the U.S. based pizza chain, but pays a royalty to use the name, logo and recipes.

Robot workers ready to take your call? No one expected a computer to beat a human at the ancient Korean board game Go for another few years at least. So when Google's "AlphaGo" artificial intelligence won against champion player Lee Sedol last month, there were ripples of shock and awe. A far more complex game than chess, this was a "holy grail" moment for machine learning, an important milestone in history. South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol, right, puts the first stone against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match in Seoul.

While traveling in Western Samoa many years ago, I met a young Harvard University graduate student researching ants. He invited me on a hike into the jungles to assist with his search for the tiny insect. He told me his goal was to discover a new species of ant, in hopes it might be named after him one day. Whenever I look up at the stars at night pondering the cosmos, I think of my ant collector friend, kneeling in the jungle with a magnifying glass, scouring the earth. I think of him, because I believe in aliens--and I've often wondered if aliens are doing the same to us.

The internet, and more importantly how we consume data from the web, has evolved at an incredible pace in recent years. One thing that has been steadily growing, and is only now really starting to make the headlines is Machine Learning. "Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the Web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on."

At the end of the fifth and final match, Lee Sedol sat back quietly in his chair in a conference room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul as the collected computer scientists celebrated around him. Lee, second only to fellow South Korean Lee Chang-Ho in international titles in the ancient Chinese board game of Go, put up a valiant fight against the machine, AlphaGo, created by Google's DeepMind division. AlphaGo had erred early on, but recovered to overpower the human and win the series four to one. Board games have been used since the early days of artificial intelligence research as ways to measure progress -- IBM's Deep Blue famously beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in New York in 1997 -- and AlphaGo's victory marks another significant milestone in the advancement of the technology. Go presents a far greater challenge to AI than chess.