Scientists have taught a robot how to hunt and destroy prey in a chilling new experiment. The test comes as experts warm AI could wipe out a tenth of the global population in five years. The ability to identify and zone in on a specific target will be crucial for any useful robotic technology like driverless cars, the researchers at the University of Zurich in Switzerland believe. And despite the chilling prospect of allowing a robot to mark up a target, they believe their research will prove more useful than deadly. Scientists have taught a robot how to hunt and destroy prey in a chilling new experiment.

Pieter Abbeel is an associate professor in UC Berkeley's EECS department, where he works in machine learning and robotics--in particular his research is on making robots learn from people (apprenticeship learning) and how to make robots learn through their own trial and error (reinforcement learning). Pieter's robots have learned advanced helicopter aerobatics, knot tying, basic assembly, and organizing laundry. He has won various awards, including best paper awards at ICML and ICRA, the Sloan Fellowship, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Program (AFOSR-YIP) Award, the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program (ONR-YIP) Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award (DARPA-YFA), the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program Award (NSF-CAREER), the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the CRA-E Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentoring Award, the MIT TR35, the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (RAS) Early Career Award, and the Dick Volz Best US PhD Thesis in Robotics and Automation Award.

A new legal technology company called Deftr is today launching a tool powered by artificial intelligence that helps professionals diagram intricate corporate structures. The tool reads text in real time, as it is being typed, then turns that text into a shareable, interactive graphic illustrating a corporate structure or transaction. In a press release being issued today, Deftr's co-founder and CEO Matthew Osman explained: Building charts to represent corporate structures or transactions essentially by hand is a laborious process all too familiar to anyone in corporate life. It's the reason a lot of associates don't have weekends. Our tool automates this outdated, manual process, allowing a user to build a chart in a fraction of the time and focus their efforts on high-level, analytical work. The tool should be of value to law firms, in-house legal departments, accounting firms, financial services and management consultants, Deftr says.

By 2020 50% or more of the U.S. workforce are expected to be on-demand workers / contingent workers in the liquid workforce. Zoondy capitalizes on this paradigm shift by utilizing a commodity brokerage approach to create a marketplace for seasoned professionals to sell their skills and expertise in four unique ways: free, fixed price, auction and goal pricing. Zoondy provides a secure, structured market environment for buyers and sellers of professional high-skill expertise to transact for the knowledge, expertise and skills that they need on a short term or project basis. While most associate freelance and on–demand workers with creative engagements, at best or un-skilled hourly gig workers, at worst, like Uber drivers, Fivver or Upwork; Zoondy targets the 43 million seasoned professionals, retirees and work-from-home executives who have proven expertise that can be shared locally or globally with businesses both small and large. For seasoned professionals, a Zoondy profile takes only minutes to set up and when completed the platform immediately begins marketing a user's skills.

Early terrestrial animals dragged themselves through mud and sand to take their first'steps' on land 360 million years ago. Now, scientists believe the powerful tails they used as fish were more important than previously thought. They came to this conclusion by studying African mudskipper fish and building a robot modelled on the animal. Scientists believe the powerful tails early terrestrial mammals used as fish were more important than previously thought. Scientists believe ancient creatures used the powerful tails they relied on as fish to crawl across the mud and sand as they made the move onto land, some 360 million years ago.

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Google has announced a deal to acquire Moodstock, a French startup that builds technology which helps smartphone devices recognize images and objects. The acquisition is aimed at boosting AI development of Google. Moodstock's work in computer vision and machine learning and its technology behind smartphones being able to recognize images and objects was the reason behind Google's interest. Google is among Silicon Valley titans investing in ways to get computers to see and understand the world around them the way people do. Machine learning has been woven into an array of Google offerings, such as its free language translation and photo services.

The devastating neurodegenerative condition Alzheimer's disease is incurable, but with early detection, patients can seek treatments to slow the disease's progression, before some major symptoms appear. Now, by applying artificial intelligence algorithms to MRI brain scans, researchers have developed a way to automatically distinguish between patients with Alzheimer's and two early forms of dementia that can be precursors to the memory-robbing disease. The researchers, from the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, suggest the approach could eventually allow automated screening and assisted diagnosis of various forms of dementia, particularly in centers that lack experienced neuroradiologists. Additionally, the results, published online July 6 in the journal Radiology, show that the new system was able to classify the form of dementia that patients were suffering from, using previously unseen scans, with up to 90 percent accuracy. "The potential is the possibility of screening with these techniques so people at risk can be intercepted before the disease becomes apparent," said Alle Meije Wink, a senior investigator in the center's radiology and nuclear medicine department. "I think very few patients at the moment will trust an outcome predicted by a machine," Wink told Live Science.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display