The aesthetic appeal of its sprawling, modern campus with sun-lit cafeterias and lush outdoor gardens is no longer shielding the Google corporation from the scrutiny it deserves, as more than 3,100 of the search engine's employees recently signed onto a petition demanding that their employer cease its role in advancing the development of artificial intelligence (AI). According to reports, Google is actively involved in a government program known as "Pentagon AI" that's pushing to develop AI technologies that are capable of analyzing video footage. The goal is to develop AI-controlled drones that are better able to annihilate their targets. Though Google's official motto is "don't be evil," the corporation sure is eager to lend its services in the development of advanced "warfare technology" that poses serious threats to freedom. By offering its technological expertise to such projects, Google is essentially now operating as an arm of the military-industrial complex, which is basically fascism.

An autonomous sentry freezes an "intruder" during a 2006 test of the weapons system by the South Korean military. Fifty-seven scientists from 29 countries have called for a boycott of a top South Korean university because of a new center aimed at using artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster national security. The AI scientists claim the university is developing autonomous weapons, or "killer robots," whereas university officials say the goal of the research is to improve existing defense systems. A web page that has since been removed by the university said the center, to be operated jointly with South Korean defense company Hanwha Systems, would work on "AI-based command and decision systems, composite navigation algorithms for mega-scale unmanned undersea vehicles, AI-based smart aircraft training systems, and AI-based smart object tracking and recognition technology." Toby Walsh, a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, who organized the boycott, fears that the research will be applied to autonomous weapons, which can include unmanned flying drones or submarines, cruise missiles, autonomously operated sentry guns, or battlefield robots.

With each industrial revolution mankind, has progressed by leaps and bounds. But that progress has also damaged our environment. Today, climate change, loss of biodiversity, water woes, and food sustainability are among the most pressing global issues. However, the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is set to fundamentally change such trends. Characterized by advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, automation, and quantum computing, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to heal the past and ensure a better future.

The core team behind Exeon Analytics has its roots at the Zurich Information Security and Privacy Center (ZISC) of ETH Zurich, a center of excellence founded more than a decade ago by IBM, Sun and Credit Suisse. Thanks to our scientific research, we have years of experience with handling and aggregating large amounts of network records, applying machine learning in a scalable way and identifying anomalies in millions of data points. This knowledge is bundled and made easily accessible to our customers in our ExeonTrace analytics solutions. As the cyber security space is very dynamic and attackers are constantly adapting their techniques, Exeon Analytics is continuing scientific research with several partners such as armasuisse Science and Technology S T, the center of technology of the Swiss Department of Defense, Civil Protection and Sports (DDPS) and the Information Security Group at ZHAW headed by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Tellenbach financed by Innosuisse - the Swiss Innovation Agency.

It was a chaotic week in the tech world, even before the YouTube HQ shooting. Apple's pushing its luck by pushing its Mac Pro release to next year, Russia's mail delivery drone barely got off the ground, and Scott Pruitt's EPA is doing its best to suffocate California in smog. Numbers, because how else will you know when yours is up? And it looks like the creatives that the Pro is designed for will have to wait just a little bit longer as the company announced this week that the promised revamp won't happen until 2019. Guess Nick Cage won't be headed to Mars anytime soon.

We are now a connected global community where many digital natives cannot remember a time before the iPhone. The rise of smart homes means that we are increasingly attaching our lighting, door locks, cameras, thermostats, and even toasters to our home networks. Managing our home automation through mobile apps or our voice illustrates how far we have evolved over the last few years. However, in our quest for the cool and convenient, many have not stopped to consider their cybersecurity responsibilities. The device with the weakest security could allow hackers to exploit vulnerabilities on our network and access our home.

The computer expert who alleges a trove of Facebook data was improperly used to help President Donald Trump's campaign in the 2016 election says he will cooperate with a Justice Department investigation.

Artificial intelligence experts have announced they will boycott a South Korean research university that is looking into how to use AI for weapons, CNN and other media outlets are reporting. The university, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, started a research center that will look to create "AI-based" missiles, submarines and quadcopters by the end of this year. More than 50 leading experts penned an open letter to the university that denounced the killer technology research, Fortune reported. "At a time when the United Nations is discussing how to contain the threat posed to international security by autonomous weapons, it is regrettable that a prestigious institution like KAIST looks to accelerate the arms race to develop such weapons," the experts wrote in the letter. "We therefore publicly declare that we will boycott all collaborations with any part of KAIST until such time as the president of KAIST provides assurances, which we have sought but not received, that the center will not develop autonomous weapons lacking meaningful human control."

Last week, Nasa announced that it is developing robotic bees to gather information about areas of Mars that wouldn't be accessible to a Mars rover. The bots could detect, for example, methane, a possible sign of life. Boston Dynamics' latest robot resembles a dog with an arm where its head should be. It recently demonstrated it can use the arm for the complex (in robot terms) action of opening a door, despite the intervention of man with a hockey stick. Its fins are flexible, giving it the ability to glide through turbulent seas. The team hopes that the bot could prove useful for underwater searches and gathering marine data.

Imagine your least-favorite world leader. Now, imagine if that person wasn't a human, but a network of millions of computers around the world. This digi-dictator has instant access to every scrap of recorded information about every person who's ever lived. It can make millions of calculations in a fraction of a second, controls the world's economy and weapons systems with godlike autonomy and -- scariest of all -- can never, ever die. This unkillable digital dictator, according to Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, is one of the darker scenarios awaiting humankind's future if artificial-intelligence research continues without serious regulation.