There's no doubt Stephen Hawking is a smart guy. But the world-famous theoretical physicist recently declared that women leave him stumped. "Women should remain a mystery," Hawking wrote in response to a Reddit user's question about the realm of the unknown that intrigued him most. While Hawking's remark was meant to be light-hearted, he sounded quite serious discussing the potential dangers of artificial intelligence during Reddit's online Q&A session: A superintelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours, we're in trouble. Hawking's comments might seem unrelated.

San Francisco: Google announced a deal to buy Moodstocks, a French startup behind technology that helps smartphones recognise whatever they are aimed at. Moodstocks caught the US technology giant's eye for its work in computer vision and machine learning, as well for accomplishments in enabling smartphones or other mobile devices to recognise images and objects. Google is among Silicon Valley titans investing in ways to get computers to see and understand the world around them the way people do. Machine learning has been woven into an array of Google offerings, such as its free language translation and photo services. "There's a lot more to be done to improve machine vision," Google France tech site lead Vincent Simonet said in a blog post.

The discovery of major software flaws could render thousands of fMRI brain studies inaccurate. The use of fMRI is a common method for scanning the brain in neuroscience and psychology experiments. To make sense of the data produced, researchers sometimes use a technique called spatial autocorrelation to identify areas of the brain that appear to "light up" during particular tasks or experiences. But some software flaws in the popular fMRI data analysis packages SPM, FSL and AFNI meant this technique routinely produced false positives, resulting in errors 50 per cent of the time or more. Anders Eklund and Hans Knutsson at Linköping University in Sweden and Thomas Nichols at the University of Warwick, UK, calculated this by analysing brain data from a collaborative open fMRI project called 1000 Functional Connectomes.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. The simple task of picking something up is not as easy as it seems. Roboticists aim to develop a robot that can pick up anything--but today most robots perform "blind grasping," where they're dedicated to picking up an object from the same location every time. If anything changes, such as the shape, texture, or location of the object, the robot won't know how to respond, and the grasp attempt will most likely fail.

Japanese technology company SoftBank Group Corp. is buying British ARM Holdings for 31 billion in a deal the British government hailed Monday as a vote of confidence in the country following last month's vote to leave the European Union. The recommended cash deal underlines SoftBank's desire to expand in the so-called Internet of Things, which refers to how a multitude of home devices from smart-thermostats to security cameras and domestic appliances can connect online and work in sync. ARM, which is the biggest-listed technology company in Britain, has a world-renowned reputation as an innovator in the Internet of Things -- its technology is used in most smartphones, for example. "ARM will be an excellent strategic fit within the SoftBank group as we invest to capture the very significant opportunities provided by the Internet of Things," said Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank. ARM centers its business on intellectual property, especially in mobile computing, rather than chip manufacturing, for which it relies on partners.

Self-driving cars in Germany might end up having "black boxes" that can record details of accidents, similar to planes, Reuters reports. Sources say that the proposal from Germany's Transport Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, will also require that riders stay seated in front of the steering wheel, though they won't have to pay attention to traffic or actually steer. As you've probably guessed right now, the legislation follows the recent Tesla Autopilot-related driver death. Regulators and car companies alike will have to work even harder to prove the safety of self-driving cars.

Snapchat has filed a patent application for a system of advertising that uses object recognition to serve users sponsored filters. The technology outlined by the company would identify items in users' pictures, and then offer them image overlays from brands related to these objects. It's the visual equivalent of buying advertising space based on keywords in Google searches -- but instead of looking for textual data in searches like "headphones" or "shoes," it's looking for the objects themselves. The patent application was filed in January last year, published by the US patent office earlier this month, and first spotted by Business Insider. Although it includes details about the advertising system described above, its primary purpose is outlining a more general system of "object recognition based photo filters."

Tesla will release a software update to improve the Autopilot system in its cars following a crash that killed a driver, founder Elon Musk has revealed. The electric car manufacturer's chief executive said he had been talking to the German supplier of the radar systems used in the vehicles about ways of improving the feature. Driver Joshua Brown died in May when his Tesla Model S collided with a tractor trailer while using the Autopilot system after it failed to detect a white tractor trailer against the sky. Tesla is preparing to release a software update that will deliver'significant improvements to the radar used by its Autopilot system, which is designed to keep the vehicle in lanes and detect traffic ahead. Elon Musk is preparing to release a new'master plan' outlining the future of Tesla Motors.

When taking leisurely weekend walk through the woods, the sight of a 5'9' tall robot marching down the path ahead of you must be fairly alarming. But that is what one dog owner seems to have experienced when she encountered one of robotics company Boston Dynamics latest bipedal machines stomping down the trail. Fortunately the robot was accompanied by a fairly large group of minders who were there to make sure it remained on the right track. According to Boston Dynamics, Atlas is a'high mobility, humanoid robot designed to negotiate outdoor, rough terrain. It is designed to walk bipedally leaving the upper limbs free to lift, carry, and manipulate the environment.

The U.S. Air Force has awarded BAE Systems' U.S. subsidiary a three-year, 9.4 million contract to help the service branch develop, integrate and demonstrate a machine learning platform. BAE Systems Inc. will explore latest machine learning advancements to support the Air Force's efforts to apply analytics to address space situational awareness challenges as well as leverage high-performance computing and reasoning visualization architectures, the Defense Department said Friday. The Air Force also seeks to increase its ability to detect and predict new complex scenarios through the project. BAE systems will perform the services in Massachusetts and Virginia and is scheduled to finish July 15, 2019. The Air Force Research Laboratory obligated 868,750 in fiscal 2016 research, development, test and evaluation funds at the time of award.