Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking said in a speech at Oxford University Union that humanity only has about 1,000 years left of viable existence if it doesn't leave the planet and colonize the stars. The professor argued that humanity is unlikely to survive all of the different crises we will face over the next millennium. But humans can avoid extinction, he said, if we have colonized other planets by that time, giving humanity a fighting chance away from our "fragile" Earth. Dr. Hawking's prediction may seem gloomy, but much of his speech took an optimistic tone. After all, a thousand years is a long time to figure out how to colonize space, and plans are already underway for humans to visit Mars with an ultimate goal of colonizing the red planet.

A man dressed like a utility worker approaches an electrical panel. As he moves to touch the metal box a light blinks. Sensors sewn into his overalls have cut the flow of electricity to the box. He can now work without the risk of electrocution. "This is just one way technology can help workers do their jobs better and more safely," says Stephane Sireau of GE Digital, whose prototype suit was one of many demos at General Electric's Minds Machines conference, which wrapped up Wednesday. "Our mission is to integrate the worker into a digital industrial context," says Sireau, showing how the suit's sensors also provide vital sign data.

That's how Hassan Yakub, al-Shabab's most senior leader in Somalia's Galgaduud region, responded when I requested that we use a drone to film his fighters at one of the armed group's training camps. Over the past few years, drone strikes have killed dozens of al-Shabab fighters, including the group's former leader and at least 10 of its senior commanders. The last drone hit to target the al-Qaeda-linked group's leaders happened just a month ago, in the East African country's Lower Juba region. Al-Shabab fighters have been trained to hide from drones or, if the unmanned aircraft are low enough, to shoot them down. Our cameraman was also not enthusiastic about taking a drone to an area controlled by al-Shabab.

Financial institutions have a regulatory requirement to monitor account activity for anti-money laundering (AML). Regulators take the monitoring and reporting requirements very seriously as evidenced by a recent set of FinCEN fines. One challenge with AML is that it rarely manifests as the activity of a single person, business, account, or a transaction. Therefore detection requires behavioral pattern analysis of transactions occurring over time and involving a set of (not obviously) related real-world entities. For large transactions, banks file Currency Transaction Reports (CTR) that are used by FinCEN for processing and analysis.

The 30 nominees for Japan's top buzzwords of 2016 were announced Thursday by the Jiyukokuminsha publishing house, covering a variety of new popular terms ranging from the "Shin Godzilla" film to the "Zika fever." Comedian Pikotaro was just in time to make the list with his "PPAP," music video going viral on social media since September. The finalists for the 2016 U-Can Shingo Ryukogo Taisho (2016 U-Can New Words and Buzzwords Awards) included many phrases that highlighted the year's cultural trends. The augmented reality phone app "Pokemon Go," released in Japan in July, of course made the cut. But so did "aruki-sumaho," or literally, "smartphone walking," a term describing the act of walking while looking down at a smartphone screen.

KOBE – A drone crashed into World Heritage-listed Himeji Castle on Thursday following a similar incident last year, local government officials said. The small drone hit two parts of the main Daitenshu donjon and fell to the ground at around 12:45 p.m. Two groups of people preparing to fly drones had been seen at the castle site earlier, but their whereabouts were unknown, the officials said, adding no one was injured in the incident. The Himeji city government in Hyogo Prefecture collected the drone wreckage and reported the matter to police, and is checking whether the 17th century castle, a national treasure and one of the first UNESCO World Heritage sites in the country, was damaged. A guard saw a group of four people between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. and around 10 people between noon and 1 p.m. Both groups packed up their equipment after being warned, according to a city government liaison office at the site.

General Electric builds jet engines and wind turbines and medical gear. But the 124-year-old industrial giant is also transforming itself for the digital age. It's fashioning software that pulls data from all this hardware, hoping to gain an insight into industrial operations that was never possible in the past. The problem is that analyzing all this data is difficult, and the talent needed to make it happen is scarce. So GE is going shopping.

For those of you unfamiliar with my work, I write frequently about Fourth Industrial Revolution (#4IR) themes such as Tech Innovation, Agtech, and Industrial Disruption. If I had to pick one area I find most exciting, most potentially disruptive and thus the best opportunity for return on investment, it would be A.I. Artificial Intelligence is the brain that makes everything work. It's easy to get lost in #4IR Tech Innovation jargon with complex topics such as: Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), Augmented Intelligence, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Neural Networks Internet of Things (IOT), Internet of Industrial Things (IOIT), IOE (Internet of Everything) Blockchain, Fintech, Mobile Payments, Cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Big Data, Data Science, Data Mining: Especially for Healthcare and Agriculture Cybersecurity, Cyber Terrorism, Hacking, Asymmetrical Warfare Smart Cities, Smart Grid, Energy Storage, Portable Power 3D and 4D Printing: BioPrinting, Cloud Manufacturing, Bionics, and printing objects that assemble and reshape themselves over time Industrial Revolution says that, ultimately, the innovation leads to disruption, change, and economic unrest… but also leads to a new era of opportunity and invention. Or is it the other way around? The anatomy of infrastructure is not unlike that of the human body, and we all know it's possible to live long, healthy lives.

Google has built machine learning systems that can create their own cryptographic algorithms -- the latest success for AI's use in cybersecurity. But what are the implications of our digital security increasingly being handed over to intelligent machines? Google Brain, the company's California-based AI unit, managed the recent feat by pitting neural networks against each other. Two systems, called Bob and Alice, were tasked with keeping their messages secret from a third, called Eve. None were told how to encrypt messages, but Bob and Alice were given a shared security key that Eve didn't have access too.

During his first official visit to Australia, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed how the company will be working with a range of local organisations to push the next stage of Australia's investment into artificial intelligence [AI]. Among the world's first users of Microsoft's new high performance virtual and intelligent machines are the Australian Government, Cricket Australia, and Webjet. Microsoft will deliver cloud services to Australian developers that will underpin the next generation of intelligent apps. This comes as the largest Windows 10 deployment in the Asia-Pacific region, and will help companies around Australia generate deeper customer insights and learnings. Speaking at a technology developer's conference in Sydney on Wednesday, Nadella said the new intelligent technology to be deployed by Microsoft and will allow human-like interactions with complex business systems.