'The Stone Sky' by N.K. Jemison won the 2018 Locus Award for the best fantasy novel. The 2018 Locus Awards were announced this past weekend. Unlike the Hugo and Nebula Awards, voting for the Locus Awards is open to everyone. Membership in an organization or even a subscription to Locus is not required. Subscribers do have an advantage, however, because their votes count double.

To gain a better understanding of the emerging opportunities, challenges, and implications resulting from developments in artificial intelligence (AI), the Comptroller General of the United States convened the Forum on Artificial Intelligence, which was held on July 6 and 7, 2017, in Washington, D.C. GAO issued a technology assessment in March 2018 summarizing the results of this forum. Forum participants noted a range of opportunities and challenges related to AI, as well as areas needed for future research and for consideration by policymakers. Regarding opportunities, investment in automation through AI technologies could lead to improvements in productivity and economic outcomes, according to a forum participant. AI can also be used to gather an enormous amount of data from multiple sources and detect abnormalities faster than humans can, and it could be used to help solve some of the world's most complex and pressing problems. The participants also highlighted a number of challenges related to AI.

The conversation around artificial intelligence and automation seems dominated by either doomsayers who fear robots will supplant all humans in the workforce, or optimists who think there's nothing new under the sun. But MIT Sloan professor Erik Brynjolfsson and his colleagues say that debate needs to take a different tone. New research finds that specific tasks within jobs, rather than entire occupations themselves, will be replaced by automation in the near future, with some jobs more heavily impacted than others. "Our findings suggest that a shift is needed in the debate about the effects of AI: away from the common focus on full automation of entire jobs and pervasive occupational replacement toward the redesign of jobs and reengineering of business practices," the researchers write in an article published in May in the American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings. The work is by Brynjolfsson, professor Tom Mitchell of Carnegie Mellon University's machine learning department, and Daniel Rock, a doctoral candidate and researcher at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy.

The cantonal government announced that Geneva would take part in a European feasibility study into using drones for personal transportation. Geneva with the ability to innovate was the ideal candidate to represent Switzerland in the European Union-led project. The project which comes under the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) initiative aims to put urban mobility into the third dimension and also aims to assess public interest for the idea of drone taxis. "This project is a first step towards implementing the canton of Geneva drone vision published in November 2017," said cantonal and city government minister Pierre Maudet. "In a region that is growing rapidly and where traffic is becoming more and more saturated, public bodies have the responsibility to explore new ways of addressing the challenges of tomorrow," said Luc Barthassat, the Geneva transport minister.

Greg Brockman, cofounder of nonprofit AI research organization OpenAI, had an interest in artificial intelligence from a young age, but he didn't come to it right away. Brockman studied computer science at Stanford before transferring to MIT, where he dropped out to launch online payments platform Stripe. As a founding engineer, Brockman helped scale the business from four people to 250. But he had his heart set on another field: artificial general intelligence, or systems that can perform any intellectual task that a human can. Brockman left Stripe to pursue a career in AI, building a knowledge base from the ground up.

Greg Brockman, cofounder of nonprofit AI research organization OpenAI, had an interest in artificial intelligence from a young age, but he didn't come to it right away. Brockman studied computer science at Stanford before transferring to MIT, where he dropped out to launch online payments platform Stripe. As a founding engineer, Brockman helped scale the business from four people to 250. But he had his heart set on another field: artificial general intelligence, or systems that can perform any intellectual task that a human can. Brockman left Stripe to pursue a career in AI, building a knowledge base from the ground up.

Future citizens of a newly-formed "space kingdom" may need to pass an IQ test to be a part of the self-proclaimed utopian society. At a ceremony in Vienna's Hofburg Palace on Monday, 25 June, hundreds of people gathered for the inauguration of Asgardia – a "global humanitarian project" which hopes to one day set up human colonies on the Moon. Asgardia's first ruler is a Russian billionaire, Igor Ashurbeyli, a computer scientist who has spear-headed the new nation since it was first announced in October 2016. Nasa's canny decision to commission sumptuous vintage-inspired posters by Seattle design firm Invisible Creature has firmly placed space travel back where it belongs: in the imagination of travellers "We were ecstatic, just because our grandfather was an illustrator at Nasa for 30 years," says Clark The artwork harks back to the Jet Age-era posters commissioned by Howard Hughes' Trans World Airlines and its rival United in the 1950s and 1960s, when the work of David Klein (for TWA) and Stan Galli (for United) glamorised and essentially branded this new age of air travel It doesn't matter that Nasa has no plans for a "Grand Tour" of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus Nasa's canny decision to commission sumptuous vintage-inspired posters by Seattle design firm Invisible Creature has firmly placed space travel back where it belongs: in the imagination of travellers "We were ecstatic, just because our grandfather was an illustrator at Nasa for 30 years," says Clark The artwork harks back to the Jet Age-era posters commissioned by Howard Hughes' Trans World Airlines and its rival United in the 1950s and 1960s, when the work of David Klein (for TWA) and Stan Galli (for United) glamorised and essentially branded this new age of air travel It doesn't matter that Nasa has no plans for a "Grand Tour" of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus During his inauguration speech, Mr Ashurbeyli stressed his belief in the significance of his leadership. "This day will certainly be recorded in the annals of the greatest events in the history of humankind," he said.

Although artificial intelligence (AI) promises greater efficiency and could provide the key to tackling some of society's most pressing issues, not all Europeans are welcoming the technology with open arms. In a newly published thought leadership paper from SAP, "European Prosperity Through Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence," prepared by Andreas Tegge, head Global Public Policy, SAP addresses some anxieties and proposes measures for ensuring AI's rapid assimilation and advancement in Europe. No other technology currently inspires such fascination nor stirs up such heated debate as AI and the branch of AI known as machine learning. Algorithms that are capable of autonomously gaining insight from data without being explicitly programmed are already empowering machines to see, read, listen, and interact. In the intelligent enterprise, machine learning allows better and more efficient processes, which means that enterprises benefit from increased productivity levels and employees have more time to devote to tasks that add greater value.

A new federal association for artificial intelligence is trying to help Germany catch up on tech. The government pays lip service to new digital tools, but critics say it's not enough. If we don't act now, then in 10 years, the German economy will no longer be competitive: That's the message from the country's brand new Federal Association for Artificial Intelligence. The association, which was formed in March this year and has around 50 businesses who work in the sector as members, released a position paper this week with a direct appeal to Chancellor Angela Merkel's government. The paper contains nine points that association members believe are necessary if the country is to keep up to date with modern technology.

Hands are hot items in the world of robots. That's one of the biggest trends out of the Automatica conference, one of the world's premiere showcases of robot technology, which recently wrapped up in Germany. Among this year's dexterous, grippy offerings is a robotic end effector inspired by a gecko's fingers. Also: Robots with soft hands will transform the world. Geckos can scale vertical and inverted surfaces thanks to microscopic flaps on their feet.