The US Supreme Court is considering a law banning convicted sex offenders from social media sites such as Facebook. The lawsuit was sparked by a North Carolina sex offender who posted on Facebook after his traffic ticket was dismissed. Thanks, Jesus," Lester Packingham Jr wrote. Mr Packingham was forbidden by a 2008 North Carolina law from using social networking sites that children could join, because he is a registered sex offender. He was convicted of indecent liberties with a minor when he was 21 and served 10 months in prison. A Durham police officer investigated the post and determined Mr Packingham used an alias rather than his real name. He was prosecuted, convicted of a felony and received a suspended prison sentence. However, his lawyers say no evidence pointed to him using Facebook or his computer to communicate with minors, or that he posted anything inappropriate or obscene. The Supreme Court will now decide whether the law, meant to prevent communications between sex ...

The UK government is set to announce new measures to support the country's artificial intelligence sector as part of a'bold' Digital Strategy. With the measures, the government will seek to spur growth and deliver a "thriving, outward-looking digital economy that works for everyone". Due to be published on 1st March by culture secretary Karen Bradley MP, the new proposals will build on plans set out in the government's Industrial Strategy. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said: "Britain has a proud history of digital innovation – from the earliest days of computing to Sir Tim Berners-Lee's development of the World Wide Web. Bradley continued: "We are already pioneers in today's artificial intelligence revolution and the Digital Strategy will build on our strengths to make sure UK-based scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs continue to be at the forefront.

Universities are to get £17 million to help develop pioneering robotics. Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics which can "transform how we live, work, travel and learn" are in line for a boost in the Government's digital strategy. Universities will get £17 million to help them develop pioneering robotics and AI as part of the plans to support the "booming" sector, which is behind smartphone voice and touch recognition technology and digital assistants such as the iPhone's Siri. AI also forms the bedrock of video games and music and film recommendations services, as well as improving online customer services, and is used in fraud detection tools used by banks. Among the projects supported with the money from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is a move by the University of Manchester to develop autonomous robots for hazardous environments such as nuclear facilities.

Just over a week ago, Donald Trump gathered members of the world's press before him and told them they were liars. "The press, honestly, is out of control," he said. "The public doesn't believe you any more." CNN was described as "very fake news… story after story is bad". That night I did two things. First, I typed "Trump" in the search box of Twitter. My feed was reporting that he was crazy, a lunatic, a raving madman. But that wasn't how it was playing out elsewhere. The results produced a stream of "Go Donald!!!!", and "You show'em!!!" There were star-spangled banner emojis and thumbs-up emojis and clips of Trump laying into the "FAKE news MSM liars!" Trump had spoken, and his audience had heard him. Then I did what I've been doing for two and a half months now. I Googled "mainstream media is…" And there it was.

BILL GATES is an unlikely Luddite, however much Microsoft may have provoked people to take a hammer to their computers. Yet in a recent interview with Quartz, an online publication, he expressed scepticism about society's ability to manage rapid automation. To forestall a social crisis, he mused, governments should consider a tax on robots; if automation slows as a result, so much the better. It is an intriguing if impracticable idea, which reveals a lot about the challenge of automation. In some distant future robots with their own consciousnesses, nest-eggs and accountants might pay income taxes like the rest of us (presumably with as much enthusiasm).

After years of frustration with its relatively slow pace of progress, artificial intelligence (AI) is finally beginning to deliver on expectations. Depending on who you ask, this is either cause for optimism – or horror. Putting dystopian visions of robots taking over the world aside, most observers are worried about the implications of how a workforce composed increasingly of robots will transform society and the economy. Bill Gates has now jumped into the fray, suggesting that governments should tax robots to fund training for people replaced by robots. Rather than having a knee-jerk reaction to news of advances in AI, however, we should take a wider view of how technological advances have impacted human welfare over the past two centuries.

The US billionaire who helped bankroll Donald Trump's campaign for the presidency played a key role in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, the Observer has learned. It has emerged that Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund billionaire, who helped to finance the Trump campaign and who was revealed this weekend as one of the owners of the rightwing Breitbart News Network, is a long-time friend of Nigel Farage. He directed his data analytics firm to provide expert advice to the Leave campaign on how to target swing voters via Facebook – a donation of services that was not declared to the electoral commission. Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of a British company, SCL Group, which has 25 years' experience in military disinformation campaigns and "election management", claims to use cutting-edge technology to build intimate psychometric profiles of voters to find and target their emotional triggers. Trump's team paid the firm more than $6m (£4.8m) to target swing voters, and it has now emerged that Mercer also introduced the firm – in which he has a major stake – to Farage. The communications director of Leave.eu,

Britain is betting that the rise of the machines will boost the economy as the country exits the European Union. As part of its strategy to champion specific industries, the U.K. government said in a statement on Sunday that it would invest 17.3 million pounds ($21.6 million) in university research on robotics and artificial intelligence. The government cited an estimate from consultancy Accenture that AI could add 654 billion pounds to the U.K. economy by 2035. "We are already pioneers in today's artificial intelligence revolution and the digital strategy will build on our strengths to make sure U.K.-based scientists, researchers and entrepreneurs continue to be at the forefront," Culture Secretary Karen Bradley said in the statement, which referenced AI's contribution to smartphone voice and touch recognition technologies. The announcement is part of U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's plan to identify industries worth supporting to help transform the economy and boost productivity.

The dramatic drop in the cost of genome sequencing, combined with rapidly evolving artificial intelligence, is moving precision medicine into mainstream healthcare. Sanjay Chikarmane, senior vice president at Illumina, told an briefing at HIMSS17 in Orlando on Monday that the US$100 genome is now in sight. Illumina is an US company focused on genetics sequencing and analysing big data for biological insights. The company is also the major partner for the UK Government's 100k Genome project, providing most of the infrastructure through a £78 million partnership with the Genomics England. During the briefing, Illumina announced a new partnership with Philips.

The so-called Islamic State has used drones in the battle for Mosul in Iraq.