In a series of surveys published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers asked people what they believe a driverless car ought to do in the following scenario: A group of pedestrians are crossing the street, and the only way the car can avoid hitting them is by swerving off the road, which would kill the passengers inside. The participants generally agreed that the cars should be programmed to sacrifice their passengers if doing so would save many other people. This, broadly speaking, is a utilitarian kind of answer -- one aimed at preserving the greatest possible number of lives. But there's one problem: The people in the survey also said they wouldn't want to ride in these cars themselves. It would be OK for others to buy them, the participants said, but they personally would not.

Flirtey's flight was a first on U.S. soil, but it doesn't necessarily mean the company now has free reign of the skies. Unrestricted drone-operated delivery of any kind in the U.S. – be it humanitarian relief or postal delivery – is still obstructed by layers of legislative red tape. And although Flirtey has received approval in the past for big-name events like these, experts tend to believe practical commercial drone delivery in any capacity is still a ways off.

FILE - In this July 2, 2015, file photo, Peter Koerber, a pilot and air tactical officer with the U.S. Forest Service, talks about the hazards of flying drones over wildfire areas during a news conference in Redding, Calif. The U.S. Department of the Interior says it's working with drone makers and mapping companies to create a system allowing smartphones to quickly update no-fly zones at wildfires.

From within the dark confines of the skull, the brain builds its own version of reality. By weaving together expectations and information gleaned from the senses, the brain creates a story about the outside world. For most of us, the brain is a skilled storyteller, but to spin a sensible yarn, it has to fill in some details itself. "The brain is a guessing machine, trying at each moment of time to guess what is out there," says computational neuroscientist Peggy Seriès. Guesses just slightly off -- like mistaking a smile for a smirk -- rarely cause harm.

Researchers asked 2,000 study participants to choose the moral course of action in accident scenarios where the number of vehicle passengers and at-risk pedestrians varied. Motor vehicle accidents caused nearly 40,000 traffic fatalities and 4.5 million serious injuries in the United States in 2015, and 90 percent of those accidents were due to human error. Remove the human component with self-driving vehicles, and many of those accidents could be preventable. Instead, computer-driven cars will face moral dilemmas where they must choose between two bad outcomes: Place a passenger in danger to save a pedestrian or vice versa. A new study argues that how these vehicles respond to ethical dilemmas could dictate their public safety and widespread adoption by consumers.

As expected, Apple previewed iOS 10 at this week's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. And as expected, upgrades to Apple's Siri digital assistant dominated the presentation. In a bid to compete against rivals such as Google and Amazon that are making hard pushes into the artificial-intelligence realm, Apple has opened Siri's API to third-party developers, potentially boosting its functionality. Uber and WhatsApp are early partners in this effort--if you ever wanted to order a cab or send a text massage to a friend via voice command, your chance is coming soon. On the desktop, Siri can help you send messages, find files, and execute some background tasks.)

Earlier this month, Bill Gates took the stage at the Recode conference to talk about philanthropy with his wife, Melinda. They discussed mobile payments, contraception, and billionaires giving away their fortunes. Then the conversation turned to artificial intelligence, and Gates grinned and swiveled in his giant red leather chair. "Certainly, it's the most exciting thing going on," he said. It's the big dream that anybody who's ever been in computer science has been thinking about."

With a wide base that tapers and expands to a fat midsection, upon which is perched a tiny head, the Russian robot named Promobot IR77 is no C-3PO. It evokes nothing so much as an artificially intelligent snowman, down to the machine's white-as-fresh-powder paint job. Like another famous snowman and itinerant – Frosty – the robot seems to have acquired a taste for skipping town, too. On June 16 the robot fled its creators, as The Washington Post reported. The story goes that an engineer working at Promobot Laboratories, in the Russian city of Perm, had left a gate open.

Google Research cooperated with OpenAI, Stanford University, and the University of California to publish a research paper highlighting the five main problems with machine learning systems that can lead to accidents. The problems, although minor now, can escalate to concerning levels during artificial intelligence development and operation.

PRO: Chris Bishop, director of Microsoft Research in Cambridge, said earlier this year that he believes the hyperbole around the AI risks could jeopardise any future developments that may in fact assist humanity. "Any scenario in which AI is an existential threat to humanity is not just around the corner," he told the Guardian. Referring to the views of high-profile cynics like professor Stephen Hawking, Bishop said: "I think they must be talking decades away for those comments to make any sense. Right now we are in control of that technology and we can make lots of choices about the paths that we follow." Oren Etzioni, chief executive of the Allen Institute for AI and professor of computer science at the University of Washington, meanwhile says the popular dystopian vision of AI is wrong because it "equates intelligence with autonomy".