Siber is the buff, blue-eyed and bald principal of the Buyonic Insurance Agency in Austin, Texas. This insurance android is more evidence that the future of mechanized businesses has arrived, with robots marching out of computer backrooms and off assembly lines right onto the frontlines of the service economy. Recent studies have suggested that a quarter of insurance jobs could be replaced by robots over the next decade. Buyonic is not one of the virtual or online agencies vying for business on the cloud today. Rather, it's an old-fashioned, Main Street brick-and-mortar retail shop where customers actually show up in person.

An artificial intelligence breakthrough from the universities of New York, Toronto and MIT is showcasing the impressive ability of artificial intelligence to learn visual concepts in a single shot and manipulate them in human-like ways. The advance could lead to smarter phones, much-improved speech recognition, and computers that better understand the world around them. Human beings show a remarkable ability to learn things on the fly: children, for example, need only be shown one example of a new object like a dog or schoolbus before they can identify other instances on their own. One of the reasons for our quickness, researchers believe, is that we often understand new concepts in terms of how their familiar parts work together as a whole. When we first saw a Segway, we quickly recognized wheels and a handle, concluding to a reasonable degree of certainty that it must be some form of personal transportation.

While the internet of things (IoT) is changing the automotive industry, most young US internet users still prefer a traditional car to a self-driving vehicle, according to October 2015 research. Nielsen polled 1,133 US children and teens ages 8 to 18. More than half of respondents in grades 3 through 5 said they prefer traditional vehicles. US children and teens in older grade levels also preferred traditional cars. For example, 59% of respondents in grades 6 through 8 said they preferred traditional cars, while 41% in that age group said they favored self-driving cars.

Terrifying, toothy, and with tears you can never trust, crocodiles are fearsome predators. But added to their ability to lay perfectly still with mouth agape for hours on end is the most powerful bite in the animal kingdom. Now research has shed light on exactly how crocodilians got their bite, and it's thanks to a second jaw joint which helps to spread out the full force when their teeth snap shut. New research has shed light on how crocodiles and alligators get their bite. The reptiles have a second joint in their jaws which helps to spread out the full force of their powerful bites, stabilising the jaw and keeping grip.

Learning a second language when you are young has long been known to boost brainpower. Now researchers have found that the brains of babies exposed to two languages benefit from this extra boost even before they can utter a word. Scientists claim that just growing up in a home or environment where they are listening to more than one language being spoken could improve a child's problem solving skills and memory. Researchers have found that the brains of babies exposed to two languages develop better, even before they can utter a word. They claim that just growing up in a home or environment where they are listening to more than one language being spoken could improve a child's problem solving skills and memory Previous studies suggest that speaking two or more languages from a very young age helps a child's development into adults with more highly refined cognitive skills.

You may think your contacts and photos are safely locked away on your iPhone. But a new bug has been discovered that seemingly lets people unlock iPhone 6S and 6S Plus models without inputting a password or using the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Bypassing the security measures is possible because the bug takes advantage of unauthenticated access to Siri, which can then be used to tap into a phone owner's contacts. A new bug has been reported that appears to let people access private data such as photos and contacts on iPhone 6S and 6S Plus models without inputting a password or using the Touch ID fingerprint scanner. Spanish tech expert, Jose Rodriguez, claims to have discovered the bug and demonstrated the exploit in a YouTube video punished under the name Videosdebarraquito.

There are five main schools of thought in machine learning, and each has its own master algorithm – a general-purpose learner that can in principle be applied to any domain. The symbolists have inverse deduction, the connectionists have backpropagation, the evolutionaries have genetic programming, the Bayesians have probabilistic inference, and the analogizers have support vector machines. What we really need, however, is a single algorithm combining the key features of all of them. In this webinar I will summarize the five paradigms and describe my work toward unifying them, including in particular Markov logic networks. I will conclude by speculating on the new applications that a universal learner will enable, and how society will change as a result.

Artificial intelligence should be used to provide children with one-to-one tutoring to improve their learning and monitor their well-being, academics have argued. One-to-one tutoring has long been thought the most-effective approach to teaching but would be too expensive to provide for all students. However, in a paper, academics from University College London's Knowledge Lab argue that AI systems could simulate human one-to-one tutoring by delivering learning activities tailored to a student's needs and providing targeted and timely feedback, all without an individual teacher present. Instead of being examined in traditional ways, children could be assessed in a more complete manner by collecting data about their performance over a long period, providing employers and educational institutions with a richer picture of their abilities. The report argues that AI could radically transform our education system for the better – but it is being held back by funding.

Last week, the robots finally came for that which we humans hold most dear: Our ability to write the Great [insert country or region here] Novel. The Japan News reported, and various American outlets picked up, the news that a short novel co-written by a computer program and homo sapiens had almost won a literary prize. The prize, the Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award, accepts entries written by robots, though this was reportedly the first year that any such entries had been submitted. Of several submissions written with AI programs, one entry scored a remarkable victory: It made it through a single round of screening. Okay, so "nearly won," as Bustle put it, might be a slight exaggeration of how well this artificial novelist performed.

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