When you think of canine-inspired robots, your brain probably conjures up images of Boston Dynamics' celebrated dog robot, Spot. Swiss robotics company Anybotics has also created its own audacious, quadruped robot. The size of a large dog and weighing a little under 80 pounds, Anymal aims to be the gold standard in dog-bots. It's capable of autonomously walking, running, and climbing, and can even get back on its feet if it falls over. Although Spot will go on sale for the first time later this year, this gleaming robotic beast is already on the market in Europe, the United States, and the Middle East.

The next SpaceX mission to the International Space Station (ISS) may be uncrewed, but it could nonetheless eventually help humanity extend its footprint far beyond low Earth orbit. The company's robotic Dragon cargo capsule is scheduled to launch toward the ISS atop a Falcon 9 rocket on July 21 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. In addition to food, water and other supplies, Dragon will be toting 2,500 lbs. A fair number of these payloads have a distinct space-settlement flavor. For example, the BioRocks experiment will investigate how microbes interact with rocks in a low-gravity environment, potentially paving the way for "biomining" on the moon and Mars.

In today's day and age there cannot be a more perfect meeting place for human and artificial intelligence (AI) than human resources (HR). The synergy of the two is all set to transform the way organizations recruit, assess, manage and motivate talent. One has to understand that AI is not set to put HR executives out of work, rather it is set to transform HR departments across organizations. Therefore, it is not surprising that many see AI as having the potential to transform and alter key HR functions, such as recruiting, performance evaluation and capability development. KPMG International's latest global survey The Future of HR 2019, indicates that 60% of HR executives feel "very confident" about HR's actual ability to transform and move them forward via key capabilities like analytics and AI.

Not all voice assistants can handle the same requests. We put Siri, Alexa and Google to the test. LONDON -- Alexa will see you now. Britain's health care service is teaming up with Amazon's digital voice assistant to help answer medical queries with advice from the service's official website. Critics, however, warn about risks to data privacy.

'SolSeraph' is an'ActRaiser' homage for PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One. Back when flannel-wearing grunge rockers were lighting up the music scene, I remember browsing through the video game section at Video Maniacs – a local Blockbuster competitor in Reno, Nev. At the time, I had already played the heck out of the pack-in game that came with my Super Nintendo, "Super Mario World," as well as "Contra III: The Alien Wars," which I bought on my broke-college student budget. Unable to afford another game, I decided to go the rental route and, after having tried every interesting-looking SNES game at the rental store, I finally decided to give "ActRaiser" a shot. Honestly, the package art wasn't that impressive, which was the reason I didn't rent it right away.

Director Peter Jackson on Amazon's "Lord of the Rings" series: "I'd like to try to be of assistance." Amazon has landed a prime franchise on which to build an online game: the Lord of the Rings. Amazon Game Studios will jointly develop the free online game with Hong Kong-headquartered Leyou Technology Holdings, which owns several game studios including Digital Extremes, maker of sci-fi role-playing action game "Warframe." There is no release date for the console and PC game, a massively multiplayer online action title à la "World of Warcraft." Last year, Athlon Games, an L.A.-based Leyou subsidiary announced it had reached a deal with Middle-Earth Enterprises to create a game based in J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit-laden universe during the time before the events in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Nintendo will launch a version of its popular Switch console dedicated to players who really prefer gaming on the go. The Nintendo Switch Lite will launch on September 20 for $199.99, the company revealed in a statement Wednesday. It will be available in three colors: yellow, gray and turquoise. Because Nintendo is emphasizing Switch Lite as more of a straightforward handheld gaming experience, it will drop key features of the standard Switch including a video output to play on a TV, and detachable controllers. All games supporting handheld mode will be compatible with Switch Lite, Nintendo says.

MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has developed a new deep learning-based AI prediction model that can anticipate the development of breast cancer up to five years in advance. Researchers working on the product also recognized that other similar projects have often had inherent bias because they were based overwhelmingly on white patient populations, and specifically designed their own model so that it is informed by "more equitable" data that ensures it's "equally accurate for white and black women." That's key, MIT notes in a blog post, because black women are more than 42 percent more likely than white women to die from breast cancer, and one contributing factor could be that they aren't as well-served by current early detection techniques. MIT says that its work in developing this technique was aimed specifically at making the assessment of health risks of this nature more accurate for minorities, who are often not well represented in development of deep learning models. The issue of algorithmic bias is a focus of a lot of industry research and even newer products forthcoming from technology companies working on deploying AI in the field.

Employees and contractors at the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services spend countless hours every year reviewing thousands of medical records to ensure the accuracy of Medicare Advantage payments. An automated intake tool is working to change that. Using emerging technologies such as robotic process automation, optical character recognition, machine learning and artificial intelligence, KPMG's Intake Process Automation Tool ingests records as they are submitted and identifies potential problems according to set parameters, submission rules and coding guidance. Specifically, RPA orchestrates the steps of the intake process, OCR digitizes the scanned document and then AI and machine learning are applied to understand the document and extract the information necessary to validate the information. Intake PA stands to save CMS time and money, said Payam Mousavi, KPMG's lead director for intelligent automation for governments and the technical lead for the CMS project.

With approximately 450,000 background investigations in inventory and an executive order shifting its operations under the Defense Department, the National Background Investigations Bureau is optimistic about its future. The agency this year has made significant progress in churning through its backlog, which reached 725,000 at its peak in April 2018, said NBIB Director and Acting Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency Director Charles Phalen in a roundtable interview. As Phalen assured progress would continue, he was quick to note that the agency operates in a steady state with thousands of cases in its working inventory. The backlog, in a sense, will never be eliminated. "When you think about what our goal here is, it is never to get to zero because that just will never work out. Our working inventory that allows us to stay timely is roughly 200,000," he said.