In fact, in many countries, the internet, the very thing that was supposed to smash down the walls of authoritarianism like a sledgehammer of liberty, has been instead been co-opted by those very regimes in order to push their own agendas while crushing dissent and opposition. And with the emergence of conversational AI -- the technology at the heart of services like Google's Allo and Jigsaw or Intel's Hack Harassment initiative -- these governments could have a new tool to further censor their citizens. Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, India and Uganda have all shut off internet access when politically beneficial to their ruling parties. Nations like Singapore, Russia and China all exert outsize control over the structure and function of their national networks, often relying on a mix of political, technical and social schemes to control the flow of information within their digital borders. The effects of these policies are self-evident.

Delivery drones still face an uncertain future, but there's at least one scenario where they make a lot of sense: Flying robots can be ideal for bringing small, high value, time-sensitive goods to people in low-infrastructure areas. As specific a situation as that sounds like, it's an enormous opportunity, and has the potential to make a huge difference in rural areas and disaster relief missions with deliveries of food and medical supplies, for example. One challenge with that, however, is that while drones are cheap to operate, the up-front investment is significant, especially if you need to make a lot of deliveries quickly, like right after an earthquake. With this sort of thing in mind, DARPA has funded several companies under its ICARUS (Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems) program to create cheap, disposable drones that are designed to deliver a thing to a place and then be forgotten about. One of the companies receiving DARPA funding is San Francisco research firm Otherlab, which does weird robotics-y stuff with creative materials, among other things, and they've come up with a design for a drone they're calling APSARA: Aerial Platform Supporting Autonomous Resupply/ Actions.

In what would make an excellent sidekick for Batman, scientists have built a fascinating, unconventional flying robot that moves its wings and flies just like a bat. Covered with a thin, silicon skin, the flexible wings of this mechanical creature-- called Bat Bot-- can move like bat wings do, making use of nine different artificial joints (real bats have far more joints). Anyone who's ever seen a bat flap around at dusk knows they are incredible flyers, and Soon-Jo Chung, one of the flying robot's creators, said that he gets "mesmerized" by bats' impressive flight skills, with their quick turns and perching. "Bat flight is the holy grail of aerial robotics," Chung, an associate professor at CalTech and a research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. The flying robotic creation is very different from a typical artificial flying device, like a quadrotor drone that uses spinning propellers.

Islamic State (IS) is now using drones to wreak havoc amongst Iraqi soldiers in Mosul, Iraq according to a report by the Associated Press. Iraqi security forces first reported seeing IS drones in 2015, but the sightings have become more frequent in recent months. Investigators from the AP conducted a search of a warehouse in Mosul earlier this week and uncovered parts of drones, receipts of supplies purchased and reports on IS missions. Islamic State appears to have an open budget, spending thousands of dollars a month on drone materials according to the AP report. It has purchased drones from stores and advanced their technology to fit their requirements or even bought supplies to make their own.

NHS staff using Google's search engine has triggered one of its cybersecurity defences. NHS Digital confirmed so many NHS staff use the search engine that it had started asking them to take a quiz to verify they were "not a robot". News site the Register reported one NHS Trust had told staff to "use Bing" instead. Google indicated its systems were designed to spot unusual traffic and were working as intended. Detecting suspicious traffic from one network can help defeat potential cyber-attacks, such as attempts to try to overwhelm a website.

As stories of robot teachers (2010), AI game-show winners (2011), Big Data election victories (2012) objects communicating with one another (2013), self-driving cars (2014), robot-run hotels (2015), delivery drones (2016) have become the new normal, the outgoing Obama administration has made policy recommendations premised on a future American economy deeply affected by AI-driven automation, with 47% of US jobs estimated to be at high-risk of computerization in the next 20 years. It's perhaps therefore unsurprising that there is an abundance of words, terminology and concepts floating around the automation and artificial intelligence sphere, often achieving'buzzword' status and cited in isolation – when really they ought to be considered in concert. We can think of automation as being the consolidation of a number of such'concepts', intertwined and often related to one another: this is my take on how some of these fit together and the level of maturity that flows therefrom. We begin by plotting the number and complexity of tasks performed (X-axis) as part of each'concept' against the extent to which the behaviours exhibited are'human-like' (Y-axis). Next we demarcate a zoning of primary "operation modes": concepts relating to direct interaction with humans (mode of interaction in green); gaining and producing knowledge (thinking in purple); and, finally, interaction with other systems (machine-machine interaction in orange).

WASHINGTON – Elaine Chao, a former top U.S. labor official, was sworn in on Tuesday to lead the U.S. Transportation Department, which overseas aviation, vehicle, train and pipeline safety. Chao, a former U.S. labor secretary and deputy transportation secretary, took office hours after the U.S. Senate voted 93 to 6 to confirm her. Chao, 63, will face key decisions on how to regulate the growing use of drones and automakers' plans to offer self-driving cars. She will also be a key player in President Donald Trump's Cabinet if his administration pushes ahead with a major infrastructure spending program, as the businessman-turned-politician promised during last year's presidential campaign. "Your leadership and your experience will serve well as the secretary of transportation, overseeing what we anticipate will be historic investments in our nation's roads, bridges, airports and above all in our future," said Vice President Mike Pence, who administered the oath of office to Chao.

The future of work: ABB robotic arms work on the bodyparts of Mini cars, on January 17, 2017. While trade and foreign agents received most of the blame during the presidential campaign, technological developments can have an even larger impact on income inequality. Entrepreneurs in the digital economy have generated numerous new jobs and higher incomes for many. At the same time, the Internet has put enormous pressure on local and national labor markets. If the Trump administration wants to succeed in creating sustainable jobs and income for the workers and regions bypassed by the digital transformation, it needs to implement a tech policy that boosts the positive impacts of technology while controlling its corrosive effects.

You might think it would be easy for political appointees to rally against something as unpopular as the monthly fees that cable and satellite TV services charge for their converter boxes -- particularly when federal law requires them to do something about it. Sadly, the opposite has been true for the Federal Communications Commission, which was instructed by Congress in 1996 to develop rules that would end the effective monopoly that pay-TV providers hold over set-top boxes. Years of work produced a klugey and poorly supported "CableCard" system to allow devices to perform the functions of a cable set-top, but it certainly hasn't produced the explosion of choices that lawmakers had hoped to create. Good luck finding a TV set with a CableCard slot. In the latest turn of the screw, new Chairman Ajit Pai put the commission's most recent (and highly controversial) set-top box proposal in limbo, which in this case appears to be a way station on the road to eternal damnation. That proposal would have required pay-TV providers to make their services available through a standardized app that could run on a variety of major consumer-electronics devices.

President Donald Trump will join all the past presidents of the United States at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in June this year. "Donald Trump ran a Presidential campaign on hateful speech, misogyny, racism and xenophobia. In doing so, he has tainted the legacy of the American Presidency forever," the petition by Brooklyn, New York-based Matthew Rogers reads. "The Magic Kingdom at Disney World is a place specifically designed for the enjoyment of children and families. Therefore, it is not an appropriate place for a Donald Trump speech."