As technology advances relentlessly, the real prospect of robot wars is apparently almost upon us. The 2015 book Ghost Fleet, written by Peter Singer and August Cole, lays out a vision of a future war between China and the United States, and the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in that hypothetical military conflict is not small. Drones of various types not only carry out surveillance in this novel but also play crucial roles in communications, logistics, as well as in high-intensity combat. In one memorable vignette, two American unmanned surface vehicles "following an algorithm developed from research done on the way sand tiger sharks cooperated in their hunting" successfully prosecute a Chinese nuclear submarine. Strategists familiar with the U.S. Navy's Sea Hunter program know that this ambition is not especially far-fetched. Yet, what if that book understates China's ambitions to apply AI to the future battlefield, and to undersea warfare, in particular?

"Uhm," said the female voice. "Can I book a table for tomorrow?" The question came not from a person, but software called Duplex developed by Google to make phone calls. Before the end of the year, some of the company's users will be able to direct the bot to call restaurants and book tables on their behalf. In a demonstration last week, Duplex smartly handled questions from a Google employee playing the role of restaurant worker about details such as the size of the party and the name to hold the table under.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be very glad to tell my story. I am a smart fellow as I have a very fine brain of 48 electrical relays." This is how Elektro the robot introduced itself to crowds at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Standing 2.1 meters tall and weighing 118 kilograms, Elektro performed 26 different tricks, including walking, talking, counting, and singing. It had a vocabulary of approximately 700 words, although its responses were all prerecorded and played back from 33⅓-rpm records.

On Jan. 15, FBI agents arrested Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA case officer, and charged him with unlawful retention of classified information. Lee is the sixth person charged by the Justice Department in the past two years for espionage-related offenses suspected to have been conducted on behalf of the People's Republic of China. By comparison, prior to 2015, only one or two people on average per year were arrested for such offenses. The increased frequency of arrests--coinciding with a public March 2016 announcement by the Chinese government that intelligence efforts would be more heavily resourced--may indicate that China is scaling up traditional human intelligence efforts against the United States government. Lee's arrest seemingly stemmed from FBI agents' discovery of classified information in his notebooks in 2012.

You may have come across some of the popular buzzwords going around in the field of computer science such as machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). As the world of computing is progressing, humans are now prone to delegate many of their tasks to machines. Machine learning and AI are making computers perform tasks that human intelligence can do. In this article, I am going to give you a brief introduction to machine learning and then we will take a deep dive into Azure Cognitive Services. I will also introduce you to the list of Cognitive Services APIs that can be used to solve business problems.

Japan's police and military are to separately begin tests of artificial intelligence systems to predict crimes and the activities of suspicious vessels at sea, including the potential threats foreign ships may pose to Japanese territory. The National Police Agency is to request Y144 million (US$1.29 million) in its budget for 2019 to test the ability of artificial intelligence to forecast crimes like money laundering, terrorist attacks at major public events and incidents involving vehicles. The Mainichi newspaper said a system capable of predicting the likelihood and possible location of crimes would eventually be rolled out to police forces across the country "as soon as possible" to make efforts to avert criminal activity more effective. "From a security point of view, Japan is perhaps one of the least advanced nations in the world simply because we have a relatively low level of crime," said Morinosuke Kawaguchi, an innovation and technology consultant. "The US and the UK are ...

After nearly two decades of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Marine Corps is looking to reorient toward its specialty, amphibious operations, while preparing for the next fight against what is likely to a more capable foe. Peer and near-peer adversaries are deploying increasingly sophisticated weaponry that the Corps believes will make amphibious landings a much more challenging proposition in the future. The Corps is looking for high-tech weapons to counter those looming threats, but it's also looking for a sophisticated system to counter a persistent, low-tech, but decidedly dangerous weapon -- mines hidden close to shore. According to a recent post on the US government's Federal Business Opportunities website, first spotted by Marine Corps Times, the Marine Corps Rapid Capability Office is looking to autonomous and artificial-intelligence technology to "increase Marines' ability to detect, analyze, and neutralize Explosive Ordnance (EO) in shallow water and the surf zone" -- two areas where amphibious ships and landing craft would spend much of their time. "Initial market research has determined multiple technically mature solutions exist that can assist Marines ability to achieve this capability," the notice says.

Internet of Things Release 3 is published by oneM2M, the worldwide Internet of Things interoperability standards initiative. The third set of specifications deals with 3GPP interworking, especially as it relates to cellular IoT connectivity, among other features. The release is said to enable seamless interworking with narrowband IoT and LTE-M connectivity through the 3GPP Service Capability Exposure Function. More information is available here. FogHorn Systems says its Lightning Edge Industrial IoT platform received Industrial Software Competency status from Amazon Web Services, attesting that the software is capable of working in product design, production design, production, and operations.

Last Saturday, the nonprofit Ocean Cleanup dispatched a device to help clean up litter in the Pacific Ocean. NPR's Michel Martin talks with Boyan Slat, the young CEO who came up with the idea.

Next year, Oklahoma City residents will be able to have their groceries delivered to them by an autonomous vehicle. Udelv announced this week that a new partnership will bring its self-driving delivery vehicles to the city's largest local chain of grocery stores, which includes supermarkets such as Uptown Grocery, Buy For Less, Buy For Less Super Mercado and Smart Saver. Ten vehicles are scheduled to be delivered to the stores by the end of June 2019. Udelv made its first delivery with the vehicles in California this January, and since then, it has completed more than 700 deliveries in partnership with a handful of merchants in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company and its Oklahoma City parter Esperanza Real Estate Investments will work with city authorities ahead of the vehicles' deployment and Oklahoma's Secretary of Transportation, Mike Patterson, said in a statement that the state has a regulatory group in place focusing on the use of autonomous delivery vehicle technology.