Drones won't replace proper sailors anytime soon because, believe it or not, they need more manpower to operate, a Royal Navy admiral has insisted. Naval drones are "not about reducing the requirement for people", Rear Admiral Paul Bennett told a press briefing attended by El Reg on Friday. Instead, they are for putting people into positions where they add "real value". At present, unmanned systems - drones - require on average something like four or five operators each, we understand. Rather than enabling cuts in manpower, if anything they require ever more personnel aboard ships to operate them; not a good situation to be in when the Navy is already critically short of heads.

That's just one takeaway from a new 48-page report White House AI report it released to policy makers this week, according to Jim Hendler, AI expert, researcher and coauthor of the new book, Social Machines: The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking and Humanity. Addressing such concerns, the report says that fears about super-intelligent and evil computers, shouldn't have much impact on current US policy toward AI. "And it gets that part right … we all need to cut past the hype and look at what's really on in AI," he said, "so we can pay attention to the real risks and opposed to the science fiction risks," he said. The things to worry about aren't the frightening HAL 9000 or Skynet scenarios, Hendler says, "but the very real economic, societal ethical and safety concerns AI poses for the foreseeable future." The report does a fair job of addressing such issues overall, he says, "and it is good as far as it goes," Hendler says.

Rather than leading to the violent downfall of humankind, artificial intelligence is helping people around the world do their jobs, including doctors who diagnose sepsis in patients and scientists who track endangered animals in the wild, experts said Thursday (Oct. Advancements in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) haven't always been met with enthusiasm. Famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warned on several occasions that a fully developed AI could destroy the human race, and Hollywood sci-fi movies are rife with fierce robots battling humans for control. But at Thursday's conference -- attended by the country's leading researchers, innovators, entrepreneurs and students -- scientists explained how newly developed AI is accelerating research and improving lives. Here is a look at five AI inventions that are already redefining technology.

On Monday, the European Schiaparelli lander is descending to the surface of Mars. The 1,272-pound vehicle is expected to touch down on Wednesday after gliding through the Red Planet's thin atmosphere at 13,000 mph, before being slowed by atmospheric drag and then a parachute, before thrusters finally bring it to a soft landing. Schiaparelli, named for the Italian astronomer who made the first crude maps of Mars in the 19th century, will photograph Mars and carry out scientific measurements on its surface for only a few days, until its battery runs dry. Its most critical mission is to test the technology that will allow the European Space Agency (ESA) to send a sophisticated rover to Mars in 2020, this one with the capability to drill and with instruments to study the chemistry of the planet's surface. So far, only the United States has successfully landed operational rovers on Mars: most recently Curiosity, a self-driving cart loaded up with lasers, cameras, and detectors that has been traversing the Red Planet in the name of science since 2012.

Something quite concerning is happening right now that threatens to cause a monumental rift in the American public... and ultimately the world at large. Contrary to what you might be thinking, I'm not referring to our current election cycle, or anything else having to do with the common, petty politics of today. What I'm talking about is something far more consequential than any modern political squabble. It's something that promises to shake the foundations of society in a way we have never seen before. It is an event that virtually everyone in my field of study agrees is coming.

Amid Syria's five-year-old civil war and Iraq's push to expel the Islamic State group from its major cities, President Barack Obama has quietly reneged on promises of "no boots on the ground" in recent years. But another American ground battle lingers just outside of the spotlight, in Somalia. A campaign involving private contractors, drone strikes and up to 300 U.S. Special Operations troops against the al Qaeda offshoot group al-Shabab has been escalating there over the past year, the New York Times reported Sunday, citing "senior American military officials." Operations in the country, located in the eastern "Horn of Africa," are expected to expand, according to the Times, on top of efforts that have involved the Navy's SEAL Team 6, weekly raids with troops from nearby Kenya and Uganda and interrogation of prisoners. The American use of force there hasn't exactly been welcome. At the end of September, for instance, Somalia's Security Minister Osman Issa accused the U.S. of killing 22 Somali soldiers in an airstrike, the result of bad intelligence information.

The future of work in America is uncertain. What we know is that things are going to change. Technology will upend countless careers, workers across fields will be displaced, and it's not entirely clear how many jobs will be replaced. When driverless trucks are manufactured at scale, which will happen far sooner than many realize (as soon as five years), America's 3.5 million truck drivers will be suddenly dispensable. That doesn't mean that the profession of truck driving will disappear overnight, but it will shrink considerably.

Donald Trump could be planning to launch a TV station soon after the election, according to new reports. Some have suggested that Mr Trump's plan for Trump TV might be his way of seizing on the fans he has cultivated as part of his election campaign. Mr Trump's campaign may even be partly motivated by a potential plan to establish a media empire, others have said. Mr Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has approached the head of LionTree, an investment bank experienced in media deals, according to the Financial Times. The conversation was brief and hasn't moved on since they spoke in the last couple of months, the paper reported, but Mr Kushner may have consulted with other people in the time since.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released a policy statement about self-driving cars. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx boiled it all down to this: "The self-driving car raises more possibilities and more questions than perhaps any other transportation innovation under present discussion. That is as it should be. Possessing the potential to uproot personal mobility as we know it, to make it safer and even more ubiquitous than conventional automobiles and perhaps even more efficient, self-driving cars have become the archetype of our future transportation." There's a lot more, and you can download the whole document here but the take-away you care about is that the government recognizes that fully self-driving cars are coming, and it's time to decide how they're going to work, not whether they're going to be allowed.

The minute-long video, posted Monday by Iran's judiciary news agency, shows Siamak Namazi amid a montage of clips, including an Iranian drone flying over a U.S. aircraft carrier and American sailors on their knees being detained in January.