Not every scientific study can be about weighty topics, like gravity waves or gene editing. Sometimes you can gain a true scientific insight by discovering that mammals of vastly different sizes require roughly the same amount of time to empty their bladders, or by noticing that people who speak 10 disparate languages all came up with a version of the word "Huh." These awards are bestowed every fall by the editors of the Annals of Improbable Research. There are 10 winners in a range of categories, which typically include fields like physics, neuroscience and mathematics (but which also may include entomology, safety engineering, fluid dynamics or acoustics). The prize-winning scholarship may sound silly, but that doesn't mean it's trivial.

Imagine a driverless vehicle capable of using a variety of emojis, honks and signs to communicate its intentions to nearby drivers and pedestrians. Drive.ai, a new entrant in the autonomous vehicle race, has begun testing a fleet of such vehicles near its home base in Mountain View, Calif. The company, staffed by researchers from Stanford University's artificial intelligence laboratory, is getting an assist from Steve Girsky, a former General Motors executive who has been named to the Drive.ai Girsky stepped down from GM's board in June after holding several posts at the automaker, including vice chairman of GM and chairman of its Adam Opel subsidiary. "We all know that the automotive industry is in the midst of a foundational shift," Girsky said in a statement.

The live-action adaptation of "Ghost in the Shell" starring Scarlett Johansson as the cyberpunk-fighting cyborg just dropped its first bit of footage. No doubt manga, anime and genre fans everywhere will have something to say about this brief glimpse of the new dystopia. The first footage from the feature film dropped during the finale of "Mr. Robot," because if a show about hackers taking down evil corporations entertains you, wait until you breathe in the cyberpunk horror that is "Ghost in the Shell." The movie takes place in a fictional, futuristic Japanese city and follows "The Major" (Johansson) and the members of a covert task force within the Japanese National Public Safety Commission made up of former detectives and military operatives.

In this interview, we chat with Wizeline's head of growth, Matt Pasienski. As a PhD-educated data scientist and chatbot enthusiast, Matt has lots of interesting opinions on the emerging role of artificial intelligence in the worlds of business and social media. So if you're curious about any of these topics, don't be afraid to hit him up on Twitter. To learn more about Matt and our team's work on chatbots, visit Wizeline's solutions page. Adam: Everyone, welcome to the program, I'm Adam, and today we're being joined by Matt Pasienski who runs the services team at Wizeline.

This Wednesday, the tech billionaire investor announced an investment in Luminance, a newly launched startup that uses artificial technology to read contracts in order help law firms with the arduous process of due diligence for mergers and acquisitions (M&A). It's not a "sexy" piece of technology, Lynch argues -- but one that has huge implications for the way we live our lives, and is indicative of a quiet revolution in artificial intelligence. What this is is probably an example of what's going to be changing a lot of things. If you can get machine technology to be reading contracts, it's going to be changing a lot of the world around us ... you're seeing the beginning of a new age." He has since founded venture capital firm Invoke Capital -- the vehicle through which the investment in Luminance was made. This week, Business Insider sat down with the investor to discuss Luminance, Brexit, his augmented reality plans, and why he likes having an "unfair advantage." Mike Lynch is an investor in Luminance -- but was also instrumental in helping create it. "The bit that makes it possible is the machine learning, and that was being done by some research people at Cambridge, and I actually have a connection because my PhD a long, long time ago was in machine learning," Lynch said. "I was introduced to them, and what they were doing looked great, but I said to them'look, you gotta go and meet some real world people.' "So they started getting real data and they met up with [law firm] Slaughter and May, and basically the machine learnt from Slaughter and May how to do these thing and at that point they made a little company. They got a CEO who is a lady who'd actually been involved in a lot of M&A deals over their career and we funded it, and it's been developing the product, and today it comes out into the bright lights of day."

In case you haven't yet managed to find the perfect social robot for your home, this is BIG-i. BIG-i is going to stare at you without blinking until you decide that you want it. Seriously though, BIG-i should get your attention if for no other reason than it's a design that's completely different (and significantly softer) than anything we've seen before. It's also mobile, with what looks to be a simple and useful if-this-then-that-style verbal programming. The Kickstarter just Kickstarted off and has already just about reached its goal, but if giant eyeballs are your thing (and let's be honest, everyone has a thing for giant eyeballs), this robot is probably worth a look.

Here are some story lines I don't want you to miss today. Donald Trump's defenders say he is an equal-opportunity offender, as likely to go after "low-energy" Jeb Bush or "little" Marco Rubio as "crooked" Hillary Clinton. His critics say, as he might put it, there's something going on with repeatedly criticizing Clinton for not looking presidential and calling into question her strength and stamina. And there was his primary season comment about playing "the woman's card." So what is going on with gender in the campaign?

There are three central challenges that have plagued past efforts to use artificial intelligence in medicine: the label problem, the deployment problem, and fear around regulation. With tools like Apple's ResearchKit and Google Fit, we can collect health data at scale; with deep learning, we can translate large volumes of raw data into insights that help both clinicians and patients take real actions. These annotations, called labels, are essential to make techniques like deep learning work. These two things enable outside-in approaches to healthcare: build up a user base outside the core of the healthcare system (e.g., outside the EMR), but take on risk for core problems within the healthcare system, such as re-hospitalizations.

But deciding to build an app in the first place was driven by a broader purpose. As one doctor put it, "If you want to do world-class sociology research, build Facebook."

Rami Malek said it better than anyone: "Please tell me you're seeing this, too." It was a reference to his Mr. Robot character Elliot's tenuous grip on reality, but as he stood there accepting his Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, it was also the phrase so many viewers had to be whispering to themselves for hours. Throughout last night's telecast, underdogs like Orphan Black's Tatiana Maslany actually won, TV's growing diversity was celebrated (take that, Oscars), and streaming services proved their method of shaking up the TV model was working by scoring scads of trophies. It felt like a dream. Sure, Jimmy Kimmel wasn't the best host, and there was a sense of immobility at the top, as HBO's Veep and Game of Thrones took home Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Drama Series, respectively, for the second year in a row.