This past week was the inauguration of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative. Stephen Hawking gave a lecture, media was gathered, and millions of dollars committed. A mural was also unveiled, full of fantastical dust swirls, particle jets, and an interstellar bottle carrying Einstein's equations. The painter, Robbert Dijkgraaf, happened to know the equations already, from his day job: string theorist at, and director of, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel hung their hats at the storied institution, back in the day. Einstein's grand piano even sits in Dijkgraaf's living room--"just to be able to touch it is magic," he says. Keenly aware of the historical weight of the Institute and his position in it, Dijkgraaf serves both as a physicist and as a public figure. Painting isn't his only extracurricular: A former president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a regular fixture on Dutch television, and is deeply interested in science education, policy, and outreach. He sat down with Nautilus on the campus of the Institute this April. The video interview plays at the top of the screen. The honeycombs in which they store their amber nectar are marvels of precision engineering, an array of prism-shaped cells with a perfectly hexagonal cross-section. The wax walls are made with a very precise thickness, the...READ MORE If nature had a human personality, what would it be? I think it's part of being a scientist to understand the character of nature. For instance, even if you're a theoretical physicist, you would describe certain mathematical equations to describe natural phenomena. Or, how does nature let herself be captured? And then you just notice that the specific kind of mathematics or the specific kind of reasoning is very effective.

A group of undergrads at Brigham Young University in Utah have built an AI machine that can play on a modified foosball table. In a recent game, the machine defeated a human player four to one. "It's not that we need a computerized foosball table, but it is a small example of a much larger problem," computer engineering student Nathan Warner said in a video. In the future, computers will have to react to physical surroundings in more nuanced ways. They'll be inside of things like self-driving cars and robotic assistants.

It's no secret that machine learning - more specifically, deep learning - has been playing an increasingly noticeable role in the world of art, as of late. From Deep Dream, to Deep Forger, to Beyond the Fence, and further, all varieties of art have been touched by the creativity of neural networks, and it seems that this has not gone unnoticed by those outside of the direct sphere of machine learning. Gene Kogan, of the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, has recently started up his inaugural offering of Machine Learning for Artists, an elective course in the school's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). The ITP has the mission of exploring "the imaginative use of communications technologies," and how they may be leveraged for bringing art and delight into the lives of individuals. They self-identify as "a Center for the Recently Possible," a term I think is fantastic.

Beyond being the founder of Sci-Hub, the world's largest pirate site for academic papers, and risking arrest as a result, Alexandra Elbakyan is a typical science graduate student: idealistic, hard-working, and relatively poor. After becoming hooked on science at an early age, she discovered a knack for computer hacking when she went to university in Kazakhstan, where she was born. After a stint in Germany working on brain-computer interfaces, she returned home, where frustrations with journal paywalls led her to create Sci-Hub. She is now enrolled in a history of science master's program.

If you think Tickle Me Elmo is freaky already, wait until those talking monsters can beat you at Jeopardy!. Sesame Workshop, the educational nonprofit behind Sesame Street and its iconic characters, this week announced a partnership with IBM Watson to develop edtech for pre-school children. Sesame Workshop is no newcomer to tech. The organization previously set up a venture fund in partnership with Collaborative Fund. And they currently offer mobile games, story apps, e-books and digital Family Toolkits to help parents and caregivers navigate challenging topics like autism, incarceration, and more.

The first time I saw it, I was like, 'You people are nuts, this is not going to be interesting.' And by the end I was cheering. You just kind of get into it once these robots start racing."

The world is on the precipice of an artificial intelligence revolution, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says. Mr Wozniak told the Advance Queensland Innovation and Investment Summit in Brisbane on Thursday, via a live feed from Orlando in Florida, machines were closer than ever to emulating the human brain. "I looked at the brain my whole life thinking we would never understand how it's wired, never know what consciousness is, we would never know what intuition is," he said. "And now we're seeing so many signs that are getting so close - we speak to our phones, we can get answers." Mr Wozniak said the artificial intelligence revolution would be separate from, and have just as big an influence on the world, as the digital revolution that proceeded it.

Technology allowing a pre-programmed robot to shoot to kill, or a tank to fire at a target with no human involvement, is only years away, experts say. A new report called Monday for a ban on such "killer robots." The report by Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic was released as the United Nations kicked off a week-long meeting on such weapons in Geneva. The report calls for humans to remain in control over all weapons systems at a time of rapid technological advances. It says that requiring humans to remain in control of critical functions during combat, including the selection of targets, saves lives and ensures that fighters comply with international law.

Brittany Lopez held the remote with care, keeping her eyes on the small robot in front of her. She moved her fingers gingerly to maneuver the machine -- which looked more like a two-wheel, upright tractor than the humanoid version people often think of -- over to a blue Lego piece. Soon the robot's mechanical arm had picked up the Lego, which was supposed to represent a miniature solar panel, and placed it on top of a small structure. "When you're a kid and growing up, you play with Legos," said Brittany, a 14-year-old eighth-grader at Vista View Middle School in Fountain Valley. "This is basically like advanced Legos. It's fun to play with the robots."

To coincide with the announcement, Zoomi released details on the success of VelocityChess' education portal since implementing Zoomi's technology platform last January. The course, which includes a series of videos, presentations and infographics, caters to a wide variety of skill levels – from novice to chessmaster. Using predictive analytics and machine learning, the Zoomi platform adapts course content in real-time based on an initial diagnostic quiz, as well as data collected as the user moves through the course. Zoomi's proprietary algorithms and learning analytics allow VelocityChess to interpret the user's behavioral, performance and social patterns, adapt the content to their skill level, and even predict whether or not they'll get the next question right. To date, more than 1,400 users have taken the course.