FILE - In this May 25, 2016, file photo, an Afghan man reads a local newspaper with photos the former leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mansoor, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. A senior U.S. defense official says the administration is moving toward a decision to expand the military's authority to conduct airstrikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The official says a final decision has not been made. But there is a broad desire to give the military greater ability to help the Afghan forces.

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.

German researchers are experimenting with an "artificial robot nervous system" to teach robots how to feel and react to pain, in what might be one of the saddest displays of robot bullying since Boston Dynamics' Atlas was pushed by a hockey stick. It may seem counter-intuitive at first, but we build robots to go into dangerous situations for us. Pain is a way to protect ourselves, so wouldn't it be beneficial to have something that doesn't have those limitations? Researchers from Leibniz University of Hannover believe that robots can also use these sensations as a form of protection. "Pain is a system that protects us," researcher Johannes Kuehn told Spectrum IEEE.

From 1992 to 2001, Dan Goldin served as the longest-tenured Adminstrator of NASA, overseeing projects like the launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour and the redesign of the International Space Station. After leaving NASA, Goldin spent some time bouncing around and studying robotics, before accepting a position as the president of Boston University in 2003 -- a position Goldin never officially held, because the school terminated his contract a day before he was slated to start, though he still got a 1.8 million payout. And then, Goldin mostly vanished from the public eye for over ten years. Today, the 75-year-old Goldin has reemerged to reveal what he's been working on for the last decade: KnuEdge, a top-secret startup based in San Diego, with a mission to one-up Google, AMD, and Intel with the "fundamental invention" of the next-generation computer processor. "I'm not an incrementalist; I wanted to wait for the grand slam," Goldin tells Business Insider.

Are you a lawyer, a law student, or an incoming law freshman? If you are any of the three, better think twice of your career path now because a new generation of lawyers – in the form of robots – will win all future court cases. You might want to rethink that choice, buddy. It appears that the J.D. lawyers have earned is no match to this robot. Powered by IBM's cognitive computer program Watson, the robot named ROSS can read through all law transcripts including court decisions to provide an answer relevant to the case being decided.

Hardly a day goes by without word of advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The technology is rippling through a growing array of industries and transforming the way people live and work. At Atom Bank, an upstart financial services firm in the United Kingdom (UK), machine learning is the fundamental underpinning for the business. "We are an app-based bank," says Chief Operating Officer Stewart Bromley. "There are no branches or massive call centers. The app-only approach is revolutionary, and, if successful, it could prove highly disruptive to the financial industry and beyond. "It's our belief that people in the UK who want to bank digitally are underserved," Bromley explains. "There is no other firm that allows them to do all their banking entirely within an app.

Researchers in Japan have used a machine-learning method to cut the time it takes to predict the catalytic potential of different metals. Binding between a metal surface and an adsorbate mainly depends on the electronic structure of the metal. More energy at centre of the metal's d-band creates a stronger bond between its surface and the adsorbate. Based on this theory, scientists have long regarded a value called the d-band centre as a key indicator of a metal's catalytic activity. Researchers normally compute this value independently for each metal using first-principles calculations.

Today, the National Robotics Initiative is celebrating 5 years of multi-agency'teamwork' to accelerate the development and use of robots that work beside, or cooperatively, with people. The last 50 years have seen robots advance from mere curiosities to reliable companions. However, the National Science Foundation have rather ingeniously pointed out something was missing from everyone's workspace: Our most advanced robots spend their days sitting quietly and staring at laboratory walls while roboticists figure out the final frontiers of programming, materials development and systems challenges. Which begs the question: Why not throw some robot motivational posters up on those walls? Check out the hilarious posters below.

The frustration of building a website has eased over the years with the assistance of third-party tools, but putting together a well-crafted site still remains challenge for many small business owners and hopefuls trying to brand new companies. Since 2006, tools such as those developed by Wix.com (WIX) have saved many computers from flying out of frustrated site builders' windows, and its latest, artificial intelligence-backed version has analysts excited. Since the announcement of this new product earlier this week, shares of Wix have risen 3.7% to 29.14. So far this year, Wix shares are up 20%. Analysts are encouraged by the rigorous roll-out of the new web-building tool ADI, or artificial design intelligence, that was detailed at an analyst's day early Thursday.

A communications test was performed in 1975 between Stanford and University College London for what was to become arguably the most important communication innovation of the 20th century: The Internet Protocol (IP). At its core, IP was focused on speed and simplicity. This required decentralization of ownership of the "web" and resulted in no one owning the Internet, nor the controls and routes used to transmit it. While there are 75 million servers running the global Internet, there are 1.2 billion cars driving global transportation, with 253 million in the United States alone (the highest per capita rate of any large country). Personal vehicle ownership is grossly inefficient: Cars are estimated to be parked 95 percent of the time.