Scott Aaronson has one of the highest intelligence/pretension ratios I've ever encountered. I wasn't really aware of him before last fall, when I attended a conference at New York University on an ambitious new theory of consciousness, integrated information theory. Most speakers touted IIT or tried to tease out its implications. The striking exception was Aaronson, a boyish (he turns 35 on May 21 but looks younger) computer scientist at MIT (soon leaving for the University of Texas--too bad, MIT!). Although at first he seemed nervous, even jittery, he proceeded to demolish IIT. He focused on a key IIT variable, phi, which denotes the inter-connectivity, or synergy, of the parts of a system. The more phi a system has, the more consciousness it has, supposedly. Aaronson argued--or showed, actually--that IIT's mathematical definition of phi implies that a simple information-storage device, like a compact disc, can be more conscious than a human being. Browsing Aaronson's blog, "Shtetl-Optimized," I discovered that he writes not only about quantum computation, his specialty, but also about artificial intelligence, mathematics, cosmology, particle physics, philosophy… Aaronson has things to say about almost everything. Even when he is at his most technical, he expresses himself in a down-to-earth, funny, self-deprecating and above all clear way. He exudes the spunky enthusiasm and curiosity of a 10-year-old kid, a kid who happens to have a firm grasp of mathematics and physics. He thinks I'm wrong about the end of science, and that's fine with me. Hell, he might be right! I won't say more about him here, because I don't want to embarrass him--or myself--more than I already have, and because he reveals so much of himself in what follows. Warning: this is an extra-long Q&A, but if you read it, I predict, you too will become an Aaronson fan. Come on, that's too high a bar! When I was a kid, I wanted to be the founder and ruler of a rationalist space colony, who also wrote video games and invented the first human-level AI and led a children's liberation movement and discovered the mathematical laws underlying society. On the other hand, as far as childhood dreams go, I have no right to complain. I have a wonderful wife and three-year-old daughter. I get paid to work on engrossing math problems and mentor students and write about topics that interest me, to do all the things I'd want to do even if I weren't getting paid. It's one of those things, like a joke, that dies a little when you have to explain it--but when I started my blog in 2005, it was about my limitations as a human being, and my struggle to carve out a niche in the world despite those limitations. It also gestured toward the irony of someone whose sensibility and humor and points of reference are as ancient as mine are--I mean, I already felt like a senile, crotchety old man when I was 16--but who also studies a kind of computer that's so modern it doesn't even exist yet.

SEOUL--Humanity has fallen to artificial intelligence in checkers, chess, and, last month, Go, the complex ancient Chinese board game. But some of the world's biggest nerds are confident that machines will meet their Waterloo on the pixelated battlefields of the computer strategy game StarCraft. A key reason: Unlike machines, humans are good at lying. StarCraft, created in 1998, is one of the world's most popular computer game franchises. It pits three races against one another: the humanlike Terrans, the slimy insectoid Zerg and a mystical race with psionic powers called the Protoss.

Autonomous cars use a variety of technologies like radar, lidar, odometry and computer vision to detect objects and people on the road, prompting it to adjust its trajectory accordingly. But these tools can drive up the cost of driverless cars, and still aren't as effective as the human brain in visually distinguishing some objects from pedestrians. To tackle this problem, electrical engineers from University of California, San Diego used powerful machine learning techniques in a recent experiment that incorporated so-called deep learning algorithms in a pedestrian-detection system that performs in near real-time, using visual data only. "We're aiming to build computer vision systems that will help computers better understand the world around them," said Nuno Vasconcelos, an electrical engineering professor at the University of California San Diego who led the study, quoted in a story posted by UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering. The findings, which were presented at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Santiago, Chile, are an improvement over current methods of pedestrian detection, which uses something called cascade detection.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. stock jumped upwards of 30 percent to 3.41 at the start of trading Friday, bolstered by the news that AMD is working on processors for three new gaming consoles. Amid declining PC sales, AMD has turned to the video game industry to reverse slumping revenue. At the market's close Thursday, AMD's stock sat at 2.62, but after-hours trading saw a jump of 24 percent based on what analysts called a strong first quarter. Leading the charge was the potential 1.8 billion revenue from three semicustom processor "wins" for new consoles. The revenue would be spread out over the next three to four years, AMD CEO Lisa Su said on an earnings call Thursday.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. stock jumped upwards of 30 percent to 3.41 at the start of trading Friday, bolstered by the news that AMD is working on processors for three new gaming consoles. Amid declining PC sales, AMD has turned to the video game industry to reverse slumping revenue. At the market's close Thursday, AMD's stock sat at 2.62, but after-hours trading saw a jump of 24 percent based on what analysts called a strong first quarter. Leading the charge was the potential 1.8 billion revenue from three semi-custom processor "wins" for new consoles. The revenue would be spread out over the next three to four years, AMD CEO Lisa Su said on an earnings call Thursday.

One of the new autonomous vehicle startups in Silicon Valley, Drive.ai, has been awarded a license to test autonomous vehicles in California, making it the 13th company to be granted a license in the state. The Mountain View-based firm, which received 12 million in venture funding late in 2015, is one of several small companies forging ahead to build the systems to control an autonomous vehicle, a direct challenge to neighboring tech goliath, Alphabet Inc. In addition, Zoox Inc., based in Palo Alto, received its license...

There was understandable alarm in the U.K. earlier in the week when a drone reportedly hit a passenger plane coming in to land at London's Heathrow airport. But after examining Sunday's events more closely, a government minister on Thursday speculated that rather than a drone, the object may have actually been a plastic bag. While there've been hundreds of apparent near misses between planes and drones over the last couple of years, initial news reports regarding the recent Heathrow incident suggested an actual collision had taken place for the first time. The aircraft, a British Airways Airbus A320 with 132 passengers on board, landed safely. The pilot had said that as the plane came in on its final approach, it hit what may have been a drone flying at an altitude of about 1,700 feet.

Lots of activity among tech stocks Friday, as several companies' shares are on the move. Revenue and earnings were down for the tech giant during the third quarter, as it continues its push toward mobile and cloud computing. Microsoft reported earnings of 47 cents a share, down 25% year-over-year. All those investments in self-driving cars and broadband Internet are costing the tech giant. Operating losses from the division behind Alphabet's "moonshots" widened to more than 800 million.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The cloud may be the future, but the specter of the PC lingers. Microsoft is the latest tech giant whose earnings say that loud and clear. Microsoft on Thursday posted substantial drops in revenue and earnings as it continues to navigate from its legacy PC business into emerging technologies -- a day after chipmaker Intel announced a 11% workforce reduction. The Redmond, Wash.-based company reported a 6% decline in fiscal third-quarter revenue to 20.5 billion. Earnings of 3.8 billion, or 47 cents per share, fell 25%in the same quarter a year ago.

A Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Beijing has decided to ditch traditional ways and use technology to attract followers. Longquan temple has developed a robot monk that can chant Buddhist mantras, move via voice command, and hold a simple conversation. Named Xian'er, the 2ft-tall (60cm) robot resembles a cartoon-like novice monk in yellow robes with a shaven head, holding a touchscreen on its chest. Longquan temple says it has developed a robot monk that can chant Buddhist mantras, move via voice command, and hold a simple conversation. Named Xian'er (pictured), the 2ft-tall (60cm) robot resembles a cartoon-like novice monk in yellow robes with a shaven head, holding a touch screen on its chest Xian'er can hold a conversation by answering around 20 simple questions about Buddhism and daily life, listed on its screen, and perform seven types of motions on its wheels.