German authorities have launched a six-month trial of automatic facial recognition technology at a Berlin railway station. More than 200 people volunteered to have their names and two photos stored for the project at Suedkreuz station, where three cameras film an entrance and an escalator. While German authorities are optimistic about the programme, security experts say that there is a high potential for errors, which could allow criminals to slip through the system. Three cameras have been installed at Suedkreuz station that will film an entrance and an escalator. Footage will automatically be scanned by a computer programme, which will compare it with photos stored in a database.

German authorities have launched a six-month test of automatic facial recognition technology at a Berlin railway station, which the country's top security official says could be used to improve security in the future.

As part of its celebration of the People's Liberation Army, the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution in Beijing is showing off a range of exciting exhibitions, offering a peek into the PLA's new self-propelled artillery, cruise missiles, ballistic missile launchers, and--perhaps most notably--tactical unmanned aerial systems. First up, there's official confirmation that the CH-901 "kamikaze" loitering attack munitions (a short-ranged mini-drone) is in use by the PLA. First publicly displayed at the DSA 2016 arms fair, CH-901 is a 20-pound, fixed-wing drone with a flight speed range of 9 to 90 miles per hour. It's got a 1.2-mile-range electro optical camera for reconnaissance (it can be recovered this way) and/or it can crash into enemy targets, detonating its warhead. It is comparable to the American Aerovironment "Switchblade" used by Special Operations. At the Military Museum, a 4X4 armored fighting vehicle (AFV) is armed with a pop-up hatch that carries eight CH-901 pneumatically launch tubes.

Care bots are part of a big bet China's making on robots. The country is already the world's largest producer of industrial robots and the largest buyer of robots in the world. China's factories spent more than $3 billion on industrial robots in 2015, according to the International Federation of Robotics and Bernstein Research. The government is also focused on developing service robots, and has laid out a plan to turn it into a 30-billion-yuan industry (about $4.35 billion USD) by 2020. A big part of that will be caregiving and companion robots for the elderly.

The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologies – nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science – are giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction. Disease, ageing and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end. They may enable us to enjoy greater'morphological freedom' – we could take on new forms through prosthetics or genetic engineering. The rapid development of NBIC technologies – nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science – are giving rise to possibilities that have been the domain of science fiction. 'Transhumanism' is the idea that humans should transcend their current natural state and limitations through the use of technology – that we should embrace self-directed human evolution. If the history of technological progress can be seen as humankind's attempt to tame nature to better serve its needs, transhumanism is the logical continuation: the revision of humankind's nature to better serve its fantasies.

The current political discourse sounds like people are speaking two different languages, according to a new study. Penn State psychologists determined that even though Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were both speaking English during the 2016 presidential election, semantically, they were so far apart that the difference was actually worse than if one of them were speaking Chinese. In a series of studies, the researchers found a split between the words democrats and republican presidential candidates used and how they meant them - they also found this'semantic divide' appears to be growing and may continue to make the possibility of a bipartisan dialogue difficult, if not impossible. The Penn State researchers compiled a list of 213 single words and 397 word phrases, including 136 politically charged words like'minority,' 'spending' and'justice.' They looked at all Presidential elections since 1999 and used an artificial intelligence neural network to statistically examine how often the words appeared together.

DEF CON Machine-learning tools can create custom malware that defeats antivirus software. In a keynote demonstration at the DEF CON hacking convention Hyrum Anderson, technical director of data science at security shop Endgame, showed off research that his company had done in adapting Elon Musk's OpenAI framework to the task of creating malware that security engines can't spot. The system basically learns how to tweak malicious binaries so that they can slip past antivirus tools and continue to work once unpacked and executed. Changing small sequences of bytes can fool AV engines, even ones that are also powered by artificial intelligence, he said. Anderson cited research by Google and others to show how changing just a few pixels in an image can cause classification software to mistake a bus for an ostrich.

Opaque and potentially biased mathematical models are remaking our lives--and neither the companies responsible for developing them nor the government is interested in addressing the problem. This week a group of researchers, together with the American Civil Liberties Union, launched an effort to identify and highlight algorithmic bias. The AI Now initiative was announced at an event held at MIT to discuss what many experts see as a growing challenge. Algorithmic bias is shaping up to be a major societal issue at a critical moment in the evolution of machine learning and AI. If the bias lurking inside the algorithms that make ever-more-important decisions goes unrecognized and unchecked, it could have serious negative consequences, especially for poorer communities and minorities.

A United States drone strike in Somalia killed one al-Shabab militant Saturday, U.S. military officials announced on Monday. The Department of Defense conducted the strike in southern Somalia in coordination with regional partners, and no civilian casualties were reported, officials said. "Al-Shabab has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and is dedicated to providing safe haven for terrorist attacks throughout the world. Al-Shabab has publicly committed to planning and conducting attacks against the U.S. and our allies," U.S. Africa Command said in statement to Fox News. A firefighter tries to extinguish fire after an attack on a restaurant by the militant group al Shabaab.

Satellites in space and a robot under Lake Erie's surface are part of a network of scientific tools trying to keep algae toxins out of drinking water supplies in the shallowest of the Great Lakes. It's one of the most wide-ranging freshwater monitoring systems in the U.S., researchers say, and some of its pieces soon will be watching for harmful algae on hundreds of lakes nationwide. Researchers are creating an early warning system using real-time data from satellites that in recent years have tracked algae bloom hotpots such as Florida's Lake Okeechobee and the East Coast's Chesapeake Bay. Satellites in space and a robot under Lake Erie's surface are part of a network of scientific tools trying to keep algae toxins out of drinking water supplies in the Great Lakes. The system in development will cast a wider net at a time when many states can't afford to monitor every lake threatened by harmful algae.