The military is constantly working on new drone technology. That includes new types of drones like autonomous boats and small swarming UAVs as well as ways to combat drones, like frying them with microwaves, guided bullets and hacking. Right now, the US Army is working on a small, lightweight drone that can take on a number of tasks depending on what's needed in a given situation. The drone, which you can see in action in the video below, looks a little bit like a flying squirrel. It's small, weighing just over half a pound, and its rotors can tilt themselves, giving the UAV plenty of flexibility in how it moves around. The design goal is to create a drone that can easily integrate with soldiers in the field and have multiple uses.

Prince Harry has urged young people to take a break from their phones from time to time. Speaking at an event in Leeds this week, he said youngsters can be overly reliant on technology. He believes that taking a break from our devices can help us become "more effective and efficient", and help us cope with the pace of modern life. Harry also took the opportunity to raise awareness of mental health issues. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Dean Kamen's DEKA R&D firm, with support from DARPA's Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program, designed the advanced prosthetic LUKE Arm to give amputees "dexterous arm and hand movement through a simple, intuitive control system." The LUKE Arm, which stands for Life Under Kinetic Evolution but is also a reference to Luke Skywalker's bionic hand, "allows users to control multiple joints simultaneously and provides a variety of grips and grip forces by means of wireless signals generated by sensors worn on the feet or via other easy-to-use controllers."

The opinion that software will soon dominate and radically change every aspect of everyone's lives has become so commonplace, and repeated so frequently, that those of us in the tech industry treat it as a statement of fact. A less heralded but more concrete fact is that much of the productivity gains expected from the introduction of computer technologies have not been realized. As Tyler Cowen explains, "Labor productivity has been growing at an average of only 1.3 percent annually since the start of 2005, compared with 2.8 percent annually in the preceding 10 years." Software has increased productivity across the board for some industries, such as manufacturing, but for many other industries only certain companies have managed to capture the benefits. A study from 2003 showed that while Wal-Mart and Kmart both invested in IT, Wal-Mart did a better job of changing the rest of their business to work with the technology, and consequently saw "higher levels of productivity and market value".

Aerodynamics and physics dictate that you can't quite strap an assault rifle onto a DJI Phantom and expect it to fly and hit a target. Florida company Duke Robotics has apparently devised a way to keep a drone steady while compensating for a gun's recoil. "Though a system of flexibly connected pates, the TIKAD distributes the backward momentum in a way that keeps the vehicle stationary in the air," Defense One writes. "A ten-pound robot gimbal allows six degrees of movement freedom and the ability to rapidly re-target the weapon and camera." Supposedly the system can keep a UAV steady whether it has a grenade launcher for a payload, or a pistol -- so long as the weapon is under 22 pounds.

Image technologies that will reduce drudgery, help to cure disease, make transportation cheaper and safer, and make energy more efficient. Artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies are making all of that possible and more. But a world of benefit will come at a steep price. There will be waves of job loss (different by sector and geography) and growing income inequality. To understand the opportunities and challenges, we are co-hosting community conversations about the implications of AI. We think it's a good time for our #AskAboutAI series.

Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part series on AI. PDF: We made a fancy PDF of this post for printing and offline viewing. We have what may be an extremely difficult problem with an unknown time to solve it, on which quite possibly the entire future of humanity depends. Welcome to Part 2 of the "Wait how is this possibly what I'm reading I don't get why everyone isn't talking about this" series. Part 1 started innocently enough, as we discussed Artificial Narrow Intelligence, or ANI (AI that specializes in one narrow task like coming up with driving routes or playing chess), and how it's all around us in the world today. We then examined why it was such a huge challenge to get from ANI to Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI (AI that's at least as intellectually capable as a human, across the board), and we discussed why the exponential rate of technological advancement we've seen in the past suggests that AGI might not be as far away as it seems. This left us staring at the screen, ...

Support for the development and promotion of Artificial Intelligence is born from the deepest roots of state power in China that defined, for the new qualitative leap of that society, Innovation as its axis and Science and Technology as its sustenance. Li Keqiang, the Prime Minister, summed it up by stating that "science and technology change the world, innovation forms the future". The AI is expressly included. Xi Jinping, the President of China, described it this way: "We need to build an innovative world economy to generate new drivers of growth. Innovation holds the key to fundamentally unleashing the growth potential. The new round of scientific and industrial revolution with Internet at its core is gathering momentum, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality are developing by leaps and bounds. The combination of the virtual economy and the real economy will bring revolutionary changes to our way of work and way of life".

The US embassy in The Gambia has reversed its decision and granted visas for a high school robotics team to compete in an international competition in the United States. On Monday, it was reported that the team, made up of five teenagers, were denied visas to attend the FIRST Global robotics event in Washington DC on July 16-18. However, in a second interview with the US embassy, all five students were given visas. Fatoumata Ceesay, one of the engineering students, told Al Jazeera that although she and her peers weren't told the reason behind the decision's reversal, the second interview differed a lot from the first one. "It was very nice and sensible compared to the last one," the 17-year-old Ceesay said.

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Scientific American's sister publication, as "Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur." "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another." The digital revolution is in full swing. How will it change our world? The amount of data we produce doubles every year. In other words: in 2016 we produced as much data as in the entire history of humankind through 2015. Every minute we produce hundreds of thousands of Google searches and Facebook posts. These contain information that reveals how we think and feel. Soon, the things around us, possibly even our clothing, also will be connected with the Internet. It is estimated that in 10 years' time there will be 150 billion networked measuring sensors, 20 times more than people on Earth. Then, the amount of data will double every 12 hours. Many companies are already trying to turn this Big Data into Big Money. Everything will become intelligent; soon we will not only have smart phones, but also smart homes, smart factories and smart cities. Should we also expect these developments to result in smart nations and a smarter planet? The field of artificial intelligence is, indeed, making breathtaking advances. In particular, it is contributing to the automation of data analysis. Artificial intelligence is no longer programmed line by line, but is now capable of learning, thereby continuously developing itself. Recently, Google's DeepMind algorithm taught itself how to win 49 Atari games. Algorithms can now recognize handwritten language and patterns almost as well as humans and even complete some tasks better than them. They are able to describe the contents of photos and videos. Today 70% of all financial transactions are performed by algorithms. News content is, in part, automatically generated. This all has radical economic consequences: in the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today's jobs will be threatened by algorithms. It can be expected that supercomputers will soon surpass human capabilities in almost all areas--somewhere between 2020 and 2060. Experts are starting to ring alarm bells.