A Florida based startup has developed a done that can carry and fire military weapons, including rifles and grenade launchers. The TIKAD drone, which was tested on a target in Israel in 2015, is remotely-operated and has been refined to absorb recoil motion from the firing of a weapon. The drone, which has the potential to reduce the number of boots on the ground in conflict situations, has already been ordered by the Israeli military and is being pitched for use by the US military. Duke Robotics co-founder and 20-year Israeli military veteran Lieutenant Colonel Raziel Atuar told Defense One that the drone can carry up to 22 pounds (10 kilograms) and is remotely operated. This means that a person would control the multirotor drone's flight and targeting from a distance.

More than 100 leading robotics experts are urging the United Nations to take action in order to prevent the development of "killer robots". In a letter to the organisation, artificial intelligence (AI) leaders, including billionaire Elon Musk, warn of "a third revolution in warfare". The letter says "lethal autonomous" technology is a "Pandora's box", adding that time is of the essence. The 116 experts are calling for a ban on the use of AI in managing weaponry. "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 letter says.

Today (or, yesterday, but today Australia time, where it's probably already tomorrow), 116 founders of robotics and artificial intelligence companies from 26 countries released an open letter urging the United Nations to ban lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS). This is a follow-up to the 2015 anti-"killer robots" UN letter that we covered extensively when it was released, but with a new focus on industry that attempts to help convince the UN to get something done. The press release accompanying the letter mentions that it was signed by Elon Musk, Mustafa Suleyman (founder and Head of Applied AI at Google's DeepMind), Esben Østergaard, (founder & CTO of Universal Robotics), and a bunch of other people who you may or may not have heard of. You can read the entire thing here, including all 116 signatories. For some context on this, we spoke with Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and one of the organizers of the letter. Why was it important to release this second open letter?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become such a buzzword that it's at risk of becoming no more than tech marketing pixie dust. Just sprinkle a little here and suddenly, your solution inherits the foresight of a self-driving Tesla and the simplicity of an Amazon Echo. As more solutions crowd the cybersecurity market touting the benefits of AI, it's important to read through the hype. Machine learning (ML) can deliver transformative insights in some domains, but it has limitations. My goal is to help you pick apart vendor claims.

In the quest to better understand climate change, there is plenty we still don't know. But the question isn't whether or not climate change is happening. "What we sometimes hear on the news is political manufactured uncertainty," said Auroop Ganguly, a professor of civil & environmental engineering at Northeastern. Instead, real climate change uncertainty stems from the challenge of simulating the future. What will happen to Boston's electric grid under long-term extreme weather conditions?

Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk has joined dozens of CEOs of artificial intelligence companies in signing an open letter urging the United Nations to ban the use of AI in weapons before the technology gets out of hand. The letter was published Monday -- the same day the U.N.'s Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems was due to meet to discuss ways to protect civilians from the misuse of automated weapons. That meeting, however, has been postponed until November. "Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare," read the letter, which was also signed by the chief executives of companies such as Cafe X Technologies (which built the autonomous barista) and PlusOne Robotics (whose robots automate manual labor). "Once this Pandora's box is opened, it will be hard to close. Therefore we implore the High Contracting Parties to find a way to protect us all from these dangers."

Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast has been scorched by fighting between the state and members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), considered a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Once developed, [lethal autonomous weapons] will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend,

If a distant comet is on course to collide with Earth, scientists will be able to detect it only about a year in advance. That doesn't leave much time to prepare. Artificial intelligence researchers believe they have the key to providing astronomers more foresight: machine learning algorithms that can more quickly identify and cluster the debris that comets leave in their wake. By speeding up analysis of meteor showers, researchers hope to pinpoint the orbits of distant, but potentially dangerous, comets. This project is one of five being explored as part of an artificial intelligence pilot research program sponsored by NASA.

The UN has received a stark warning from the Future of Life Institute, in an open letter that was signed by more than 100 leaders in the AI industry. Technological advances in the artificial intelligence (AI) field are developing at a rapid rate, and, while AI is being used in innovative and helpful ways, there are just as many dangers and ethical quandaries to consider. In an open letter published today (August 21), a group of AI specialists and experts from 26 countries implored the United Nations (UN) to ban the development and use of autonomous weapons. The signatories called for autonomous weapons systems to be included in the banned weapons list, under the UN's Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which was enforced in 1983. 'We do not have long to act.