'A stable bright light, larger than anything practical shined into my room on the second floor, not making any noise; it disappeared.' It's one of nearly 60,000 unsettling stories revealed in a new map of the contiguous United States, compiling UFO sightings from every state, dating back to 1995. While these mysterious encounters may largely have slipped out of the public eye after the Cold War-era UFO craze died down, the map shows reports have steadily grown in the last two decades, hitting a mid-summer peak each year. The map shows these reports are concentrated in major cities and dense population hubs, making places like New York and the surrounding metropolitan area hotspots for UFO sightings, along with southern and central California. The new map of reported UFO sightings in the US was created by Data Solutions Engineer Adam Crahen of the Data Duo, using data from Kaggle UFO sightings. There's little doubt that the internet has played a role in the growth of UFO reports in recent years, though most can be explained by natural or human-caused phenomena.

This week, the first meeting of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) Group of Governmental Experts on lethal autonomous weapons systems is taking place at the United Nations in Geneva. Organizations like the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots are encouraging the UN to move forward on international regulation of autonomous weapons, which is great, because talking about how these issues will shape the future of robotics and society is a very important thing. Over the weekend, however, I came across a video that struck me as a disturbing contribution to the autonomous weapons debate. The video, called "Slaughterbots" and produced with support from Elon Musk's Future of Life Institute, combines graphic violence with just enough technical plausibility to imagine a very bleak scenario: A fictional near future in which autonomous explosive-carrying microdrones are killing thousands of people around the world. We are not going to embed the video here because it contains a number of violent scenes, including a terrorist attack in a classroom (!). You can find it on the Future of Life website.

You might think having a smart boss must be a good thing, but new research has shown there is an optimal level of intelligence for a leader. Experts found that bosses whose IQ was more than 18 points higher than their employees begin to lose their respect. The results also showed a strong link between intelligence and performance up to an IQ of around 120, after which point this trend begins to go into reverse. The news may cause concern for US President Donald Trump, who is famously proud of his'huge' intellectual prowess. Experts have found that bosses whose IQ is more than 18 points higher than their employees lose their respect.

Wednesday's U.S. military statement says the airstrike was carried out Tuesday evening about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of the capital, Mogadishu, and occurred in coordination with Somalia's government.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the electric-car maker would reveal plans for a commercial truck and pickup truck. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is pledging a revolution with an electric semi-truck. Tesla's plans to disrupt the semi-truck business with a new electric big rig could create a new revolution -- and CEO Elon Musk isn't holding back on the hyperbole. Musk is pledging a groundbreaking advancement Thursday night at an event near Los Angeles and will release details on the new truck.. "This will blow your mind clear out of your skull and into an alternate dimension," Musk said Sunday in a tongue-in-cheek tweet. The race to deliver electric trucks could eventually pose economic benefits to consumers if the technology lowers the price of transportation and reduces emissions that contribute to climate change.

This futuristic footage shows driverless 4x4s being directed by unseen British soldiers using games console-style controllers in a world first. The Ministry of Defence yesterday announced it has worked with the US to trial an improved method of transporting food, fuel and ammunition to the front line. Over the course of a week, 'hoverbikes' and robotic trucks were tested in Michigan for the first time ever. It is hoped that remote control of vehicles will limit risks to soldiers by making'autonomous resupply' the norm. Footage from an exercise three years in the making shows a robotic convoy of trucks race across the vast landscape led by the six-tonne British Army MAN SV.

For a company to shift towards becoming an intelligent company, it needs to have more than just the technology to enable the transformation. There is a need for significant changes in the way employees think about data and how it can be effectively processed and acted on. Following are business domains that van Loon and Monaci believe need to be considered. Design Thinking is one of the ways in which this change can be brought about. Design Thinking is part of a broad methodology that amalgamates elements of imagination, intuition, holistic reasoning, and logic to explore all the probable solutions for a given problem.

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots has called on the UN to ban the development and use of autonomous weapons: those that can identify, track and attack targets without meaningful human oversight. On Monday, the group released a sensationalist video, supported by some prominent artificial intelligence researchers, depicting a dystopian future in which such machines run wild. I am gratified that my colleagues are volunteering their efforts to ensure beneficial uses of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. But I am unconvinced of the effectiveness of the campaign beyond a symbolic gesture. Even though I identify myself strongly as a pacifist, I have reservations about signing up to the proposed ban.

Musing on the future of the economy earlier this year, Bill Gates warned of smart machines replacing human workers and suggested a tax on robots. A new study of how technology is changing American jobs suggests workers are most immediately challenged by more common technology that Gates himself bears much responsibility for, such as Microsoft Office. The new study from the Brookings Institution used government data on work tasks to track how use of digital tools changed in a wide range of occupations between 2002 and 2016. Use of digital technology, such as computers and spreadsheets, became more important to occupations of all kinds. But the most dramatic changes were felt in jobs traditionally least reliant on technology skills--think of home health aides and truck mechanics using computers to diagnose problems or record their work.

Talks on lethal autonomous weapons systems began at the United Nations November 13, amid calls for an international ban on independent "killer robots" that could revolutionize warfare -- discussions are scheduled to last all week, under the banner of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. CCW Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems to meet next week https://t.co/cawvBkiuAR The summit in Geneva comes after over 100 major figures in technology and science co-signed a letter warning such weapons systems could lead to a "third revolution in warfare" in July. "Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend. The deadly consequence of this is machines -- not people -- will determine who lives and dies," the letter read.