Little green men in flying saucers may be the least of our worries. There is a growing belief amongst scientists that aliens may not be biological creatures at all, but rather artificial, robot-like intelligence. Because the universe is much older than Earth, singularity may already exist in alien life forms, allowing them to upload their consciousness into an artificial intelligence within a synthetic body. "Most people have an iconic idea of aliens as these biological creatures but that doesn't make any sense from a timescale argument," Seth Shostak, the director of Center for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, said. For Shostak, the argument for more advanced extraterrestrial life is "straightforward." Considering that humans have inhabited Earth for less than .003

Teenagers may lose their virginity to sex robots in the future, a leading expert predicted yesterday. Professor Noel Sharkey, emeritus professor of robotics at Sheffield University, warned that android sex dolls may have damaging consequences for society. He said that just as the rise of internet porn took the Government by surprise, a similarly seismic robot revolution is on the way – with far-reaching consequences. Professor Sharkey, speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival, explained that he was'fairly liberal about sex'. But he explained: 'It's not a problem having sex with a machine.

Knowing that an AI wrote Sunspring makes the movie more fun to watch, especially once you know how the cast and crew put it together. Director Oscar Sharp made the movie for Sci-Fi London, an annual film festival that includes the 48-Hour Film Challenge, where contestants are given a set of prompts (mostly props and lines) that have to appear in a movie they make over the next two days. Sharp's longtime collaborator, Ross Goodwin, is an AI researcher at New York University, and he supplied the movie's AI writer, initially called Jetson. As the cast gathered around a tiny printer, Benjamin spat out the screenplay, complete with almost impossible stage directions like "He is standing in the stars and sitting on the floor." Then Sharp randomly assigned roles to the actors in the room.

We've previously reported how AI is developing rapidly and gaining the ability to do things like defeat human champions at the game of Go, describe photos in words for vision-impaired users, detect cyber attacks and even write novels and financial reports. That's old hat – there's now an AI that can write screenplays. It's named itself Benjamin and its first film, a sci-fi short, has just been released on YouTube for the world to enjoy. 'Sunspring' was directed by Oscar Sharp and stars Silicon Valley's Thomas Middleditch. It was made for the 48-Hour Film Challenge at the Sci-Fi London festival.

In a statement following their meeting, Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan's special adviser on foreign affairs, said the discussions were candid. According to the statement, the two sides restated their positions. Pakistan affirmed that the drone strike breached its sovereignty and compromised an already stalled Afghan peace process; and the United States reiterated its accusation that Pakistan is providing safe havens for the Taliban in Pakistan.

Video captured from drones has become the must-have money shot when selling high-end real estate. Equipped with a camera, the unmanned aerial vehicles soar over homes, giving prospective buyers a bird's-eye view of the property along with sweeping vistas and skylines. Recently, however, intrepid agents and drone pilots have turned them loose inside estates to capture the majesty of the great indoors: exhilarating descents past chandeliers that continue through cavernous living rooms before launching viewers straight out windows to behold cityscapes. "If you've got the space, using drones inside can be magical," Realtor Bret Parsons said. "One client said that they never realized how beautiful their home was until it was shot by a drone. And now they joke that they don't want to sell it."

NEW YORK – With its ubiquitous Phantom drones, Chinese manufacturer SZ DJI Technology Co. brought aerial photography to millions. Now, with dozens of competitors biting at its heels, the world's biggest producer of consumer drones needs to prove that its products are more than just glorified selfie sticks. "Right now, DJI is the king of the drones-are-cool market, they are not king of the drones-are-a-tool market," said Colin Snow, founder of Skylogic Research, which advises corporations using drones. "They've entered where they don't have a lot of experience." The nine-year-old company is developing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for agriculture and surveying as dozens of competitors inside China and around the world begin to flood the market with cheap drones, from 10 minitoys to sub- 100 camera carriers.

You see them at LAX airport in the second week of June every year, long snaking lines of them, sloping off long haul flights and waiting to pass through customs. They're mostly men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, dressed in jeans, T-shirts and trainers; they're in big groups, laughing and joking, enjoying the air of jubilant anticipation, but pretending not to. They're all here for the same thing; the same thing 50,000 other people are coming to Los Angeles for; the same thing I've now been doing for 10 years. E3 – the electronic entertainment expo – is effectively the Mecca of the mainstream video game industry. Held every year at the vast Los Angeles convention centre (except for a couple of ill-remembered jaunts to Atlanta, and two years when it was semi-cancelled), it is a trade-only event that everyone in the business has to attend at least once.

Would modern artificial intelligence live up to the dreams of the field's founders? But in many ways, the smartest machines we have built are entities they never could have imagined. In 1956, attendees of a research camp at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire coined the phrase "artificial intelligence" to describe its efforts to "find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves." Compare that with the AI project that Facebook announced this month. Under one of the world's most prominent experts, it will "do world-class artificial-intelligence research using all of the knowledge that people have shared on Facebook" – with potential gains including building "services that are much more natural to interact with."

I sent this announcement to 46,383 Digital Health LinkedIn group members. If you're on LinkedIn, please do join the group, which allows you to opt in to receiving these announcements in addition to connecting with thousands of other global stakeholders in digital health. Note that I will continue to update this announcement up until sending out the final version via LinkedIn. Crowdfunding for digital health wearable tech continues to be scorching hot: London-based startup Vinaya's emotion-tracking bracelet recently nabbed 100,000 in just 24 hours on Indiegogo and the Pebble 2 smartwatch has landed over 10 million so far on Kickstarter. A cool new partnership called'Surfline Scout' was announced by Surfline (a resource for surfers that I use regularly and provides surf/wave conditions and forecasting) and Trace, a device you attach to your surfboard to "Relive those epic sessions with GPS maps, wave count, top speed, calories burned, biggest turn, and much more" (I don't have one).