Billionaire and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson is the latest businessman to say that universal basic income (UBI) can help people as jobs are lost to automation. In a post, Branson detailed his experience is Finland, where the country is already experimenting with UBI. Since January, Finland has been paying those who are unemployed €560, part of its two-year experiment on 2,000 Finns aged 25-58. The money, which replaces previous benefits, is paid even if the individual finds a job, in an effort to reduce unemployment and loss of income from taking low-paid jobs to get by. "The hope is that policies like these can help people struggling just to survive and allow them to get on their feet, be entrepreneurial and be more creative," said Branson is the post.

"You are worse than a fool; you have no care for your species. For thousands of years men dreamed of pacts with demons. Only now are such things possible." When William Gibson wrote those words in his groundbreaking 1984, novel Neuromancer, artificial intelligence remained almost entirely within the realm of science fiction. Today, however, the convergence of complex algorithms, big data, and exponential increases in computational power has resulted in a world where AI raises significant ethical and human rights dilemmas, involving rights ranging from the right to privacy to due process.

This acquisition will further expand its suite of capabilities that deliver an enhanced customer experience and security. Artificial intelligence plays a critical role in enabling consumer convenience, while delivering enhanced security. This advanced technology delivers greater insights from every transaction to assist in making even more accurate fraud decisions. "To fully realize the promise of our increasingly digital lives, we need to design our payment systems with the future in mind and that's what we're doing," said Ajay Bhalla, president of enterprise risk and security for Mastercard. "Our unprecedented use of artificial intelligence on our network is already proving successful. With the acquisition of Brighterion, we will further extend our capabilities to support the consumer experience."

A SpaceX shipment arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday, delivering a bonanza of science experiments. The SpaceX Dragon capsule pulled up following a two-day flight from Cape Canaveral. NASA astronaut Jack Fischer used the space station's hefty robot arm to grab the Dragon 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Pacific, near New Zealand. A SpaceX shipment arrived at the International Space Station on Wednesday, delivering a bonanza of science experiments. The Dragon holds 3 tons of cargo, mostly research.

Here is a very real and true thing: 2017 is making it really hard to be a science fiction writer. To be sure, these times -- by which I mean the Trump era to date, let's go ahead and avoid cutesy winking allusions -- are making it hard for lots of writers, not just the ones who write science fiction. It's difficult to focus on writing, particularly fiction, when the world feels like it's on fire and everyone you know is trying to decide between hiding in a hole or taking up recreational alcoholism to get by. The rapid-fire pace of events is such that you (or at least I) end up sitting at the computer sort of paralyzed. In the last few weeks we've had (in no particular order) the healthcare vote, hurricane Scaramucci, North Korea and racists marching with Tiki torches like the domestic terrorists they are.

We detail how cybersecurity startups are using AI to take a new approach to counter some of the most significant cyber threats. Cybersecurity companies saw a record number of funding deals last year and on a quarterly basis Q1'17 was the most active quarter for deals to private cybersecurity companies over the last five years. Alongside overall rising investment activity, a number of cybersecurity companies are emerging to offer up novel solutions to age-old cyber threats by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI). According to CB Insights' AI Deals Tracker, cybersecurity is the fourth most active industry for deals to companies applying AI. But how exactly does AI put these cybersecurity companies in a unique position within this rapidly evolving industry?

And Tuesday August 15 marks the end of a seriously stellar opportunity: until 11:59 pm PDT, you can send missives to NASA that might actually make it out into interstellar space. It's all in honor of the Voyager mission. Voyager 1 finally made it to interstellar space--the boundary beyond which the sun's magnetic field ceases to influence everything around it--in August of 2012. Voyager 1 carries all of our hopes for humanity's future in the cosmos.

Amazon has unveiled a machine learning-based tool aimed at securing sensitive data held in the cloud, after a number of high-profile data leaks involving customers of Amazon Web Services (AWS). The tool, called Macie, was announced at the AWS New York Summit event along with an automated extract, transform and load (ETL) service and a unified repository of AWS' data migration tools. The announcement follows several data breaches in which major companies were found to have stored sensitive data on AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) in a way that left it publicly accessible. Last month it was disclosed that Verizon had exposed data on about 6 million customers in this way, and similar incidents have affected voter information held by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and customer data exposed by wrestling entertainment company WWE. The RNC breach, disclosed in June, affected more than 198 million people, or about 61 percent of the US population, and was the country's largest-ever voter data exposure.

If you are involved in the UK Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) sector, we'd love to hear from you. Please fill in this survey. In it is set an'open door' challenge to industry to come to the Government with proposals to transform and upgrade their sector through'Sector Deals'. Businesses rather than the Government are being encouraged to identify what companies need in order to enhance their competitiveness as a sector. This is not about the Government providing additional funding; rather, it is an open call to business to organise behind strong leadership, like the automotive and aerospace sectors, to address shared challenges and opportunities.

Exoskeletons don't come cheap and they're not one size fits all, making them a daunting prospect for the average buyer. But, some companies are working towards changing that. In December, Hyundai promised to make the suits cheaper. And, researchers are using machine learning to make them more accessible for people with mobility issues. That's where Bionik Laboratories comes in.