The distance between prosthetic and real is shrinking. Thanks to advances in batteries, brain-controlled robotics, and AI, today's mechanical limbs can do everything from twist and point to grab and lift. "For something like bomb disposal, why not use a robotic arm?" says Justin Sanchez, manager of Darpa's Revolutionizing Prosthetics program. Well, that would certainly be handy. Capable of: Touching hands, reaching out Mind-controlled limbs aren't new, but University of Pittsburgh scientists are working on an arm that can feel.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is an organization within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that invests in high-risk, high-payoff research to tackle some of the most difficult challenges in the Intelligence Community. As part of this mission, IARPA sponsors several applied research programs that use multidisciplinary approaches to advance our understanding of cognition and computation in the brain. IARPA is always seeking novel ideas aligned with our mission. If you are interested in working with IARPA through one of our existing solicitations, prize challenges, requests for information, or other mechanisms, please see this link for more details.

Almost a year ago, Google announced the launch of a new model for Google Translate. The company described in detail the network architecture -- Recurrent Neural Network (RNN). The key outcome: closing down the gap with humans in accuracy of the translation by 55–85% (estimated by people on a 6-point scale). It is difficult to reproduce good results with this model without the huge dataset that Google has. You probably heard the silly news that Facebook turned off its chatbot, which went out of control and made up its own language. This chatbot was created by the company for negotiations. Its purpose is to conduct text negotiations with another agent and reach a deal: how to divide items (books, hats, etc.) by two. Each agent has his own goal in the negotiations that the other does not know about.

This is a guest post. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent positions of IEEE Spectrum or the IEEE. A video created by advocates of a ban on autonomous weapons would have you believe this dystopian future is right around the corner if we don't act now. The short video, called "Slaughterbots," was released last month coinciding with United Nations meetings on autonomous weapons. The UN meetings ended inconclusively, but the video is getting traction. It's gotten over 2 million views and has sparked dozens of news stories.

Mayor of London's TechInvest Programme is an exclusive event series supported by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, in partnership with UK Business Angels Association. This four-year London-based series will showcase the Capital as a global hub for tech innovation by inviting London's tech entrepreneurs to pitch their ground-breaking tech businesses to industry leading investors – increasing their potential to access investment to support their journey to high growth and global success. Applications are open for the first of the Mayor of London's TechInvest events for 2017-18 which will take place on January 18, 2018 At each event, the top 10 entrepreneurs selected from a panel of industry experts, will be given the opportunity to present their innovative technologies to a group of over 100 leading investors, drawn from the Angel and VC community. The selected businesses will also get one to one support and guidance with pitching to and engaging with investors. The first in the TechInvest event series will focus on Artificial Intelligence.

A robot called Bina48 has successfully taken a course in the philosophy of love at Notre Dame de Namur University, in California. According to course instructor William Barry, associate professor of philosophy and director of the Mixed Reality Immersive Learning and Research Lab at NDNU, Bina48 is the world's first socially advanced robot to complete a college course, a feat he described as "remarkable." The robot took part in class discussions, gave a presentation with a student partner and participated in a debate with students from another institution. The robot is modeled mentally and physically after a woman called Bina Aspen, who is married to technology entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt. Bina48 has been the subject of extensive media coverage since its creation, and is sometimes referred to as the "world's most sentient robot."

WASHINGTON: NASA has used Google's artificial intelligence (AI) to discover a record-tying eighth exoplanet circling a Sun-like star 2,545 light-years from Earth, marking the first finding of an eight-planet solar system like ours. Kepler-90i - a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days - was found using machine learning from Google to scour data from NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Telescope. "The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system. You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer," said Andrew Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow and astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers "learn."

WASHINGTON: NASA has used Google's artificial intelligence (AI) to discover a record-tying eighth exoplanet circling a Sun-like star 2,545 light-years from Earth, marking the first finding of an eight-planet solar system like ours. Kepler-90i - a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days - was found using machine learning from Google to scour data from NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Telescope. "The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system. You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer," said Andrew Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow and astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers "learn."

WASHINGTON: NASA has used Google's artificial intelligence (AI) to discover a record-tying eighth exoplanet circling a Sun-like star 2,545 light-years from Earth, marking the first finding of an eight-planet solar system like ours. Kepler-90i - a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days - was found using machine learning from Google to scour data from NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Telescope. "The Kepler-90 star system is like a mini version of our solar system. You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer," said Andrew Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow and astronomer at the University of Texas at Austin. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers "learn."

The line between man and machine looks set to become increasingly blurred if one robot's quest to understand love is anything to go by. Bina48 is reportedly the first android to pass a college level course and her chosen subject was the philosophy of love. She participated in class discussions via Skype, before attending a final session in person. The line between man and machine looks set to become increasingly blurred if one robot's quest to understand love is anything to go by. Bina48 is the creation of American robotics expert David Hanson, who believes that artificial lifeforms can foster better connections with people if they take on a human form.