They sound cute, but for the second year in a row, politically motivated groups calling themselves the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies have more or less successfully gamed the Hugo Award nominations, some of the most prestigious prizes in science fiction and fantasy. The Chuck Tingle book is one of their recommendations. The puppies oppose diversity initiatives and support lists that are dominated by white men. Their targets, which they call SJW for "social justice warriors," are women, people of color, LGBT writers, editors and artists and the people who support them, including L.A. Times Critic at Large John Scalzi. Rabid Puppies leader Vox Day, a self-described libertarian, has criticized best-selling science fiction writer N.K. Jemisin, who is black, as an "ignorant half-savage," writing, "Unlike the white males she excoriates, there is no evidence to be found anywhere on the planet that a society of NK Jemisins is capable of building an advanced civilization, or even successfully maintaining one without significant external support from those white males."

Vice President Joe Biden will push for international cooperation in the fight against cancer in a speech at the Vatican. The vice president's office says the address on Friday will look at global research partnerships and will describe how his cancer "moonshot" project may have an international impact. Biden is due to speak at an international conference on breakthroughs in regenerative medicine. The gathering of doctors, patients and researchers is hosted by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Stem for Life Foundation. Biden's office says the vice president will visit with Pope Francis during the stop.

Stanford's five-foot "virtual diver" was originally built for studying coral reefs in the Red Sea where a delicate touch is necessary, but the depths go well beyond the range of meat-based divers. The "tail" section contains the merbot's onboard batteries, computers and array of eight thrusters, but it is the front half that looks distinctly humanoid with two eyes for stereoscopic vision and two nimble, articulated arms. Those arms are what make OceanOne ideal for fragile reef environments or priceless shipwrecks like La Lune, which sank off the coast of France over 350 years ago and hasn't been touched until now. Force sensors in each wrist transmit haptic feedback to the pilot, allowing them to feel the object's weight while staying high and dry on a dive ship. The robot's "brain" works with the tactile sensors to ensure the hands don't crush fragile objects, while the navigation system can automatically keep the body steady in turbulent seas.

It's that time of year: The most prepared of you are carboloading after weeks of training for Marathon Monday, while the least prepared are scrambling to finish your taxes. Either way, surely you'll need some breaks in the pasta and accounting. Should you take your kids to Disney's live-action/CGI remake of its beloved 1967 film "The Jungle Book"? Absolutely, says Ty Burr, who gives three stars to this movie placing "talking animals of almost tactile musculature and movement" in a lush jungle landscape; it holds up right until its overly frenetic final scenes. The jungle beasts are voiced by the likes of Ben Kingsley, Lupita Nyong'o, Bill Murray, Idris Elba, and Scarlett Johanssen, and newcomer Neel Sethi is charming as Mowgli.

Machine learning has come of age in public health reporting according to researchers from the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. They have found that existing algorithms and open source machine learning tools were as good as, or better than, human reviewers in detecting cancer cases using data from free-text pathology reports. The computerized approach was also faster and less resource intensive in comparison to human counterparts. Every state in the United States requires cancer cases to be reported to statewide cancer registries for disease tracking, identification of at-risk populations, and recognition of unusual trends or clusters. Typically, however, busy health care providers submit cancer reports to equally busy public health departments months into the course of a patient's treatment rather than at the time of initial diagnosis.

A brood of sidewalk drones could be rolling around the nation's capital within a year, if a District of Columbia Council member has her way. Executives from Starship Technologies, with roots in Estonia and London, say their goal is to unleash a platoon of "smart, friendly robots" that will ply sidewalks along with pedestrians to make local deliveries of groceries or small packages "almost free." The company is led by Skype co-founders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, and launched the effort in November. Councilwoman Mary Cheh and company officials sought to make a splash by promising one of the squat vehicles on Wednesday would deliver legislation to the council authorizing self-driving delivery robots. The little white device, which looks like an ice chest rolling on six wagon wheels, did indeed scoot its way into Council Secretary Nyasha Smith's office with the three-page bill in its compartment and reporters on its tail.

There are many who say we can put controls in place that keep A.I. from becoming dangerous, but they've missed the fact that these technologies are already dangerous. Humans have already faced a strategic opponent that understands us better than we understand it, AlphaGo, which shocked the A.I. community by beating a human Go Master in 4 out of 5 games. The only thing we're now waiting to happen is for programmers to apply these technologies to disciplines that are more significant to our lives than board games. This will occur, and the raw power of these technologies will steadily advance, putting us at a greater and greater disadvantage. It seems we're destined to be out-matched, and not just on the Go board, but in countless strategic situations.

All across the wrinkly expanse of the brain's outer layer, a constellation of different regions handle the meaning of language, scientists report online April 27 in Nature. One region that responds to "family," "home" and "mother," for example, rests in a tiny chunk of tissue on the right side of the brain, above and behind the ear. That region and others were revealed by an intricate new map that charts the location of hundreds of areas that respond to words with related meanings. Such a detailed map hints that humans comprehend language in a way that's much more complicated -- and involves many more brain areas -- than scientists previously thought, says Stanford University neuroscientist Russell Poldrack, who was not involved in the work. In fact, he says, "these data suggest we need to rethink how the brain organizes meaning."

The findings of a recent survey from Nuance Communications into consumer preferences and expectations around customer self-service reveals that a significant number of consumers (89%) prefer, and even expect, to have conversational interaction. For 87%, a positive interaction with a company determines whether or not they will continue their relationship. With chat bots to the front of mind following Facebook's recent announcement, it is interesting to note from Nuance's survey that 89% of consumers "want to engage with virtual assistants to quickly find information instead of searching through Web pages or a mobile phone app on their own". The same need is reflected in consumers' desire to engage with automated phone systems that allow them to speak naturally. Nuance recently announced that one of the leading financial institutes in Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is now using Nuance Nina, and intelligent virtual assistant that delivers "a human-like, conversational customer service experience" to assist customers to quickly and easily access information.

Big Data constantly hits that wall. Despite all the investment in infrastructure and people, Big Data just can't generate further value. This is happening because we're treating Big Data and the stuff it contains like algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) just like we treat traditional information technology. From a high level, here is the wall. Brick 1 - Business knows business but doesn't understand AI.