Just days after China announced plans to grow its defense budget, the country's largest missile maker has started developing military drones with stealth abilities that can evade anti-aircraft weapons, local media reported Thursday. The move comes as China continues to advance in its military modernization program amid growing threats from its neighbors and the West. "Drones have become an indispensable weapon in modern warfare because they can play an important role in high-resolution reconnaissance, long-distance precision strikes, anti-submarine operations and aerial combat," Wei Yiyin, deputy general manager of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, told the China Daily. China has been working to develop new weapons, including stealth fighters and aircraft carriers but has clarified that its investment to upgrade its military prowess has no hostile intent. Amid tensions with U.S. over the South China Sea, and the recent threats from North Korea after its missile launches, China, which is ranked third in the list of biggest military in the world has stepped up research into military drones.

A Japanese theme park is creating floating sleeping capsules to allow visitors to drift along to different attractions while they snooze. Huis Ten Bosch, in Sasebo, Japan, is developing the novel service with the upper half of the two-storey spherical structures designed as a bedroom and the lower section a bathroom. By the end of the year, the Dutch-themed park hopes guests will be able to stay overnight in the capsule while travelling to an island where they can explore its various attractions. The operator aims to draw tourists with its adventurous attractions and augmented reality technology across the 39,000sqm uninhabited island in Omura Bay, four miles southwest of its main theme park area in Nagasaki. According to Bloomberg, there are plans to use the island for survival games where toy guns can be used.

Having a website become standard for every business years ago. That same process is just beginning for chatbots. Chatbots are the new rage as more top brands are advancing the technology and integrating it into their chat systems. Big names such as Facebook and Telegram have already made moves in this arena by creating their own chatbots and chatbot platforms. Over the past couple months, I've been trying to implement chatbots into my company Due.

Each Friday, I embrace the adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words" and hand-select compelling graphics to put important investment news into perspective. All it takes is a quick glance and you'll be up to speed. The company behind popular messaging app Snapchat priced its IPO on Wednesday and began trading yesterday. As Reuters reports, "Investors set aside concerns about its lack of profits and voting rights for a piece of the hottest tech IPO in years." As I previously warned, Snap is hardly a "fist-pounding buy." And let's get real, Reuters.

Researchers are looking at the vast opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI) to the Philippines to improve different local industries amid fears that the technology may soon replace the human workforce. UP Computer Science Department Chairman Dr. Pros Naval said AI as a "transformative technology" can create more jobs for Filipinos. "AI is not going to completely replace human beings. AI is a transformative technology. Sometimes it could be disruptive but the way I see it is that it could transform the lives of people, not only the lives but also the workplace," Naval said.

In a feat reminiscent of the controversial victory by supercomputer'Deep Blue' over world chess champion Garry Kasparov, a computer program has managed to beat a string of professional poker players at the game. DeepStack, as it was called, defeated 10 out of 11 players who took part in a total of 3,000 games as part of a scientific study into artificial intelligence. The 11th player also lost, but by a margin that the researchers decided was not large enough to be statistically significant. This is not the first time a computer has won at poker. Libratus, a program developed by Carnegie Mellon University academics, won $1.76m (£1.4m) from professionals in January, for example.

Microsoft Corp. is trying again in health care, betting its prowess in cloud services and artificial-intelligence can help it expand in a market that's been notoriously hard for technology companies. A new initiative called Healthcare NExT will combine work from existing industry players and Microsoft's Research and AI units to help doctors reduce data entry tasks, triage sick patients more efficiently and ease outpatient care. "I want to bring our research capabilities and our hyper-scale cloud to bear so our partners can have huge success in the health-care world," said Peter Lee, a Microsoft Research vice president who heads Healthcare NExT. Microsoft has tried to expand in health care before, with mixed results. It had a Health Solutions Group for many years, but combined that into a joint venture with General Electric Co.

Nevermind their loud, sleepy buzz, bumblebees are no drones. Scientists have discovered that these nectar-hunting insects actually can learn to use a new tool by watching others. The findings, described in the journal Science, add to a growing body of work showing that these kinds of smarts aren't limited to bigger-brained, vertebrate animals (such as humans). "It is a nice confirmation that this level of cognitive complexity is possible in something as simple as a bee," said James Nieh, a behavioral ecologist at UC San Diego who was not involved in the work. Social insects like bees, ants and termites often get a lot of credit for collectively acting like super-organisms, guided by what some have dubbed "swarm intelligence."

At the edge of a plot of muddy farmland, a few miles down the road from the University of California at Davis, an engineer takes a few quick steps across crop rows and lets go of a three-foot drone. Within seconds, the device – which weighs less than 2lbs and carries a powerful camera – ascends hundreds of feet into the cold, clear, blue sky and begins to snap detailed photos of the ground far below, including a long row of large solar panels mounted on steel poles. This flight is just a test, demonstrated by Kingsley Chen, the drone fleet coordinator for SunPower at the solar company's research and development center, which is under construction and about a two-hour drive northeast of the San Francisco Bay Area. The drone will enable SunPower to survey a wide region and help design a solar power farm that can fit more solar panels on a piece of land, more quickly and for lower costs than it previously could. The test highlights a growing use of the latest computing technologies – drones, robots, software, sensors and networks – by US companies to design, build and operate solar farms.

After a delayed launch and one aborted delivery attempt, SpaceX's caution paid off Thursday when its Dragon capsule stuffed full of food, equipment, and experiments successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS). Now on its 10th re-supply mission, the private space company has become an essential part of the supply lines supporting an increasingly intricate space operation. After a GPS error scuttled its first docking attempt Wednesday, the Dragon capsule smoothly slipped close enough to the ISS for the space station's robotic arm to snag the craft early Thursday morning, along with the 5,500 pounds of goodies on board. "Looks like we've got a great capture," radioed space station commander Shane Kimbrough. In addition to a much needed food refresh, the capsule also contains more than 250 science experiments.