The Pacific Rim International Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (PRICAI) was initiated in Japan in 1990, to create an artificial intelligence (AI) conference which would promote collaborative exploitation of AI in the Pacific Rim nations. The conference has grown, both in participation and scope, and now includes participation from all major Pacific Rim nations.

It's the premise of many science fiction novels and movies: Super-intelligent robot machines that can outsmart humans, if not terminate them entirely. But the prospect doesn't exactly frighten some of today's experts in the field. "It's a distraction," said Nigel Duffy, chief technology officer at AI software maker Sentient Technologies. More pressing issues, he said, revolve around the role algorithms play online in determining whether people are allowed to get a mortgage, or establish a line of credit. His remarks were echoed by others in the industry, during a panel discussion on Wednesday at an event in Silicon Valley focused on artificial intelligence.

Fresh off a nearly perfect run predicting the outcome of World Cup futbol matches, Microsoft's digital assistant, Cortana, has focused her abilities on picking the winners of NFL football games. Need help predicting whether or not the Seahawks will hold off the Green Bay Packers? The kicker, of course, is that you'll need access to Cortana, Microsoft's digital assistant. And for right now, that means a Windows Phone 8.1 phone, either one that's been upgraded via Microsoft's developer program or as part of the "Cyan" rollouts that Microsoft and its carriers are pushing to vanilla Windows Phone 8 Lumia phones. For one, asking Cortana about the outcome of a particular game is a bit like a magic spell: You'll need to ask Cortana "Who will win Team A or Team B?" and she will provide an answer.

For example, NASA and General Motors built the 300 pound Robonaut2 - or R2 - a robot that is capable of using the same tools as humans and now works alongside them in space onboard the International Space Station. R2 can use its hands to do work beyond the scope of prior humanoid machines and can easily work safely alongside people, a necessity both on Earth and in space, NASA stated. It is also stronger: able to lift, not just hold, a 20-pound weight (about four times heavier than what other dexterous robots can handle) both near and away from its body. Granted the robot takes up valuable space station space, but it doesn't have to be fed or go to the bathroom - major advantages in space. Other robots such as the Octoroach being developed by UC Berkeley researchers can crawl into all manner of super-secret surveillance or emergency recovery applications that the human body just could not.

Jean-Pierre Changeux is France's most famous neuroscientist. Though less well known in the United States, he has directed a famous laboratory at the Pasteur Institute for more than thirty years, taught as a professor at the Collège de France, and written a number of works exploring "the neurobiology of meaning." Aside from his own books, Changeux has published two wide-ranging dialogues about mind and matter, one with the mathematician Alain Connes and the other with the late French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Changeux came of age at a fortunate time. Born in 1936, he began his studies when the advent both of the DNA age and of high-resolution images of the brain heralded a series of impressive breakthroughs. Changeux took part in one such advance in 1965 when, together with Jacques Monod and Jeffries Wyman, he established an important model of protein interactions in bacteria, which, when applied to the brain, became crucial for understanding the behavior of neurons. Since that time, Changeux has written a number of books exploring the functions of the brain. The brain is of course tremendously complex: a bundle of some hundred billion neurons, or nerve cells, each sharing as many as ten thousand connections with other neurons.

THERE's been a minor car crunch on a city street in Brazil, and the two drivers are screaming and gesticulating, arguing angrily over who's to blame and who should pay for the damage. Instant justice has arrived, cyber-style. The laptop runs an artificial-intelligence program called the Electronic Judge, and its job is to help the human judge on the team swiftly and methodically dispense justice according to witness reports and forensic evidence at the scene of an incident. It can issue on-the-spot fines, order damages to be paid and even recommend jail sentences. The software is being tested by three judges in the state of Espirito Santo.

An artist's impression of the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe, which aims to be the first to land on a comet. Several research groups, including a team led by geneticist Erika Sasaki and stem-cell biologist Hideyuki Okano at Keio University in Tokyo, hope to create transgenic primates with immune-system deficiencies or brain disorders. This could raise ethical concerns, but might bring us closer to therapies that are relevant to humans (mice can be poor models for such disorders). The work will probably make use of a gene-editing method called CRISPR, which saw rapid take-up last year. The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft could become the first mission to land a probe on a comet.

Chinese restaurant Two Panda Deli in Pasadena, California, recruited a pair of Japanese robot waiters, Tanbo R-1 and Tanbo R-2 (for $20,000 each), to deliver Chow mein to customers and bust out disco moves. Police radio interference compelled them to splatter orange chicken and whirl furiously around in circles. Complex customer requests were also often met with the terse reply: "That's not my problem." In The Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a cyborg killing machine from the future programmed to go back in time, find, and kill Sarah Conner in 1984 Los Angeles.

The Planetary Society's LightSail, funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, will aim to demonstrate that controlled solar sailing is possible. The Planetary Society's LightSail, funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, will aim to demonstrate that controlled solar sailing is possible. The Planetary Society's LightSail, funded in part by a Kickstarter campaign, will aim to demonstrate that controlled solar sailing is possible. When it comes to incredible science, 2015 will be hard to top. Among a number of notable events, we got our first, thrilling look at Pluto, found evidence that liquid water still flows on Mars and began facing the reality that human gene editing is closer than ever thanks to the CRISPR system.

WASHINGTON – When robots play soccer, it looks like a game played by 5-year-olds: they swarm around the ball, kick haphazardly and fall down a lot. However, robot teams have made strides in recent years, and some researchers believe the humanoids could challenge the world's best players in a decade or two. "Maybe in 20 years we could develop a team of robots to play against the best World Cup teams," said Daniel Lee, who heads the University of Pennsylvania robotics lab, which is seeking a fourth consecutive RoboCup in Brazil this month, the premiere event for robotic soccer. Robotic soccer, says Lee, is more than fun and games. It involves artificial intelligence and complex algorithms that help provide a better understanding of human vision, cognition and mobility.