It's a topic that has been explored countless times in the annuls of science fiction...human dominance subsumed by ever more intelligent machines. Mankind, in an attempt to create the ultimate simple life where most tasks are carried out by untiring automatons, inadvertently creates its own ironic extinction. The signs are everywhere...Google's Self-Driving Car, fully-automated factories, and of course human-like robots (replicants?) These machines/cyborgs or whatever you decide to classify them as have been developing at a rapid pace within a timescale that is minute compared to the entire history of computing. Some may (hopefully misguidedly) suggest that we are headed towards a Technology Singularity where we've created artificial intelligence (AI) so powerful that it is capable of not only self-improvement of its own faculties but full replication in an endless array of iterations more intelligent than its previous versions.

Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, announced plans Monday to have 25 percent of all car trips in this city-state in the United Arab Emirates to be driverless by 2030. In a statement carried by the state-run WAM news agency, Sheikh Mohammed said it would cut down on costs and traffic crashes. He said the project would be a joint venture by Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority and the Dubai Future Foundation. Already, Dubai is home to a driverless Metro rail system. It also has a number of taxi companies, driven by a large foreign labor force.

These "20 percent time" efforts have resulted in Google News, Gmail and AdSense, but it can be difficult for Googlers to find spare time for such projects. Meanwhile, successful examples of Google employees who have parted ways with the company include Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann and Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom. Area 120 reportedly will have a space inside one of the tech giant's San Francisco offices, and teams at Google can apply to join it full time for several months by pitching a business plan. These employees will then have a chance to establish a new company with Google as an investor. Google also has increased its focus on entrepreneurial efforts by splitting its core search engine business away from its new parent entity Alphabet, which nurtures moonshot projects like the Google self-driving car and acquisitions like smart thermostat maker Nest. Alphabet also houses startup funding efforts Google Ventures and Google Capital.

The U.S. government believes the Internet of things (IoT) has enormous economic potential across all industries. Its machine-to-machine technologies can reduce automobile-related injuries, usher in an era of precise weather forecasting and automate all types of processes. But what impact will IoT have on jobs? Will it create more than it destroys? And what happens to all the data devices generate?

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) is riding on a free wave of notoriety since the start of this year. The firm continues to lead an industry in transition away from internal combustion engines and toward all electric power. Most of the media attention lately comes from the introduction of the "affordable" Tesla Model 3. That car won't even begin delivery until late next year but over 400k people have paid 1000 each just to get in line to buy one. One of the features that will be available on the Model 3 is Autopilot. Tesla gets a lot of attention for its Autopilot feature that provides properly equipped Model S and Model X SUVs with self-driving abilities on highways.

The use of robots on the retail sales floor is the same sort of double-edged sword as when used for the warehouse. Some see them as capable of handling arduous processes to allow employees to focus on customer service. Others see robots as pure replacements, threatening to cut out the need for real live human staff. The latest robot to make an appearance at the front of the store is, if it catches on, likely to generate the same sort of controversy. A company called 4D Retail Technology Corp. has created a robot capable of automating the inventory process by rolling through the aisles and imaging every product and every barcode in a store.

Professor Toby Walsh, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales will be giving a lecture on the future of robotics tomorrow at UCT. Professor Walsh is currently on the Executive Council of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, and an advocate of the'Campaign to Stop Killer Robots'. He is also Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. John Maytham speaks to Professor Walsh to find out more about the lecture he will be delivering, and the interesting subject of artificial intelligence. AI is trying to build computers to do things that we would normally think of as intelligent and its starting to pervade our lives. He says artificial intelligence is starting to take over more aspects of the things humans do.

A team of computer scientists may have developed a surprising way to curb wildlife poaching. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), a team of computer scientists at the University of Southern California (USC) have developed a model for "green security games" that use game theory to protect wildlife from poachers. Game theory uses mathematical equations "to predict the behavior of adversaries and plan optimal approaches for containment," explains NSF, which would allow park rangers to patrol parks and wildlife sanctuaries more effectively. "In most parks, ranger patrols are poorly planned, reactive rather than pro-active and habitual," Fei Fang, a Ph.D. candidate in the computer science department at USC and a researcher involved with the project, tells NSF. "We need to provide actual patrol routes that can be practically followed."

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions--sights, sounds, textures, tastes--are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it--or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion--we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain's best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn't, wouldn't evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it's really like.

We humans take for granted our remarkable ability to predict things that happen around us. For example, consider Rube Goldberg machines: One of the reasons we enjoy them is because we can watch a chain-reaction of objects fall, roll, slide and collide, and anticipate what happens next. But how do we do it? How do we effortlessly absorb enough information from the world to be able to react to our surroundings in real-time? And, as a computer scientist might then wonder, is this something that we can teach machines?