The rise of robots and deadly viruses are among the threats that could wipe out swathes of humanity - but governments are failing to prepare properly for them, a new report warns. Catastrophic climate change, nuclear war and natural disasters such as super volcanoes and asteroids could also pose a deadly risk to mankind, researchers said. It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi films, but experts said these apocalyptic threats are more likely than many realise. The report Global Catastrophic Risks, compiled by a team from Oxford University, the Global Challenges Foundation and the Global Priorities Project, ranks dangers that could wipe out 10% or more of the human population. It warns that while most generations never experience a catastrophe, they are far from fanciful, as the bouts of plague and the 1918 Spanish flu that wiped out millions illustrated.

The rise of robots and deadly viruses are among the threats that could wipe out swathes of humanity - but governments are failing to prepare properly for them, a new report warns. Catastrophic climate change, nuclear war and natural disasters such as super volcanoes and asteroids could also pose a deadly risk to mankind, researchers said. It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi films, but experts said these apocalyptic threats are more likely than many realise. The report Global Catastrophic Risks, compiled by a team from Oxford University, the Global Challenges Foundation and the Global Priorities Project, ranks dangers that could wipe out 10% or more of the human population. It warns that while most generations never experience a catastrophe, they are far from fanciful, as the bouts of plague and the 1918 Spanish flu that wiped out millions illustrated.

The report Global Catastrophic Risks, compiled by a team from Oxford University, the Global Challenges Foundation and the Global Priorities Project, ranks dangers that could wipe out 10% or more of the human population. It warns that while most generations never experience a catastrophe, they are far from fanciful, as the bouts of plague and the 1918 Spanish flu that wiped out millions illustrated. Sebastian Farquhar, director at the Global Priorities Project, told the Press Association: "There are some things that are on the horizon, things that probably won't happen in any one year but could happen, which could completely reshape our world and do so in a really devastating and disastrous way. "History teaches us that many of these things are more likely than we intuitively think. "Many of these risks are changing and growing as technologies change and grow and reshape our world. But there are also things we can do about the risks."

SAVILE ROW in London is best known for producing some of the world's finest bespoke suits. But tucked away in a quiet corner of the same street is a firm that gives tailored health advice through a smartphone app. Your.MD uses artificial intelligence to understand natural-language statements such as "I have a headache" and ask pertinent follow-up questions. The app typifies a new approach to mobile health (also known as m-health): it is intelligent, personalised and gets cleverer as it gleans data from its users. There are now around 165,000 health-related apps which run on one or other of the two main smartphone operating systems, Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

The rise of robots and deadly viruses are among the threats that could wipe out swathes of humanity - but governments are failing to prepare properly for them, a new report warns. Catastrophic climate change, nuclear war and natural disasters such as super volcanoes and asteroids could also pose a deadly risk to mankind, researchers said. It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi films, but experts said these apocalyptic threats are more likely than many realise. The report Global Catastrophic Risks, compiled by a team from Oxford University, the Global Challenges Foundation and the Global Priorities Project, ranks dangers that could wipe out 10% or more of the human population. It warns that while most generations never experience a catastrophe, they are far from fanciful, as the bouts of plague and the 1918 Spanish flu that wiped out millions illustrated.

Amazon said that a review of its entire U.S. staff found that women's compensation in 2015 was 99.9% of men's in equivalent jobs. Further, minorities make 100.1% of what white workers earn. SAN FRANCISCO -- Hear an echo? Amazon's first quarter results are likely to recall the themes of previous quarters, including the march of Prime and its cloud services business. Last year was an excellent one for the Seattle-based retailer.

Nimble-fingered robots that exactly mimic the movements of a human hand could soon be used to help decommission nuclear power stations. Remote-controlled robots with hand-like manipulators are used in many situations that are difficult or dangerous for humans, such as bomb disposal. However, their movements are typically controlled by human operators via joysticks, which limits their dexterity. To address this, Miika Perä and Hamid Reza Zaheri at London firm Cambrian Intelligence have built a system that lets robotic arms and hands emulate hand movements exactly. To guide the robot, a human carries out the desired actions either in front of a video camera or while wearing a glove that captures movement.

Nathan Ensmenger is a professor at Indiana University who has specialised in the social and historical aspects of computing. In his book "The Computer Boys Take Over", he explores the origins of our profession, and how programmers were first hired and trained: Little has yet been written about the silent majority of computer specialists, the vast armies of largely anonymous engineers, analysts, and programmers who designed and constructed the complex systems that make possible our increasingly computerized society. The title of the book is a reference to where it all started: With the "Computer Girls". The women programming the ENIAC -- one of the very first electronic, general purpose, digital computers -- are widely considered to be the first programmers. At the time, the word "programmer", or the concept of a program, did not even exist yet.

Global insurer MetLife is taking the Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning very seriously, despite still being in the early stages of implementing and exploiting the technology. Speaking to Computing at a SAS Global Forum media event in North Carolina, MetLife VP of enterprise analytics Malene Haxholdt said that the IoT has the potential to help the company develop new products, but that work in this area is still very much at an "exploratory" stage. "IoT is definitely being considered as something you have to take seriously in this business. It's not a'oh it's going to go away' type of conversation – that data is not going away, so you have to take it seriously and figure out if there is a use for it," she said. Haxholdt said she can see how IoT can play a part in the company's digital transformation efforts, enabling it to communicate better with its customers and use real-time data analytics to improve efficiency in its underwriting process.

Last December, Tesla CEO Elon Musk teamed up with Y Combinator president Sam Altman and former Google Brain Team scientist Ilya Sutskever to launch OpenAI, a 1 billion non-profit organization dedicated to furthering our understanding of artificial intelligence with a promise to share its research openly with the world. Today, it's taken its first step in that direction by launching a free toolkit for developers to build and train their own AI bots with games and algorithmic challenges. Some of the biggest names in tech are coming to TNW Conference in Amsterdam this May. The OpenAI Gym, currently in beta, includes environments to simulate situations for your AI to learn from, as well as a site to compare and reproduce results. The tools are designed for use with Reinforcement Learning (RL), one of the technologies used to develop Google's AlphaGo AI that defeated Go world champion Lee Se-Dol recently.