IN 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot. This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behaviour was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer.

What if machines could think like us -- comprehending social cues, visual prompts and spoken words just like a human would? For Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Professor Patrick Winston, the Ford Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science and leader of the Genesis Group at CSAIL, uncovering the true nature of human intelligence is the next grand challenge. To solve the puzzle of how humans think, Winston is employing classic engineering methodology to build systems that think and comprehend as people do using computational methods. Motivated by a desire to advance artificial intelligence and create systems that operate in a manner consistent with high-level human thinking, Winston feels there is a substantial difference between machines that actually display human-like intelligence and those that possess superb computational powers such as IBM's Watson system. For Winston, understanding what makes us different leads to questioning our uniquely symbolic nature, our ability to build descriptions using an inner language, and especially our ability to construct and tell stories, from fairy tales to case studies.

Since the 1960s, politicians and pundits have predicted the imminent arrival of a digital utopia in which robots would do the washing up and we would live in peace and harmony in an electronically connected, global village, thanks to the net. So why are the utopian visions of 40 years ago strangely similar to the ones we hold today? Because business and political leaders have consistently pushed a carefully orchestrated fantasy of the future to distract us from the present, says Richard Barbrook, who explores the subject in Imaginary Futures - From Thinking Machines to the Global Village. Barbrook, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Westminster, has been researching this topic for more than four years. What he wants is to show how ideology is used to warp time.

Once the fantasy of science fiction, battlefield robots are now a reality. "The whole idea is to take the war fighter out of harm's way," Robin Laird said. Laird is supervisor of the Unmanned Systems Branch of the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego. "In my mind, someday we'll be doing battle with robots not killing people," said Laird, whose program serves all four branches of the U.S. military. The military robots currently available, however, are not nearly as sophisticated as those that are sometimes portrayed by Hollywood films.

Tony Tether has headed up the Pentagon's way-out research arm, Darpa, since 2001. That makes him the longest-serving director in the agency's nearly 50-year history. He sat down with me for an interview in his office, on the top floor of a blandly menacing Northern Virginia office building, last December. For my story in the March issue of Wired (online next Tuesday), Tether and I talked about everything from bio-terrorists to zombie rodents to thinking machines to the golf courses in Iraq. Let's start with the big picture and talk a little bit about 9/11 -- it'?s been five years now -?-? and how, obviously, that has affected defense research hugely. What do you see as Darpa's big contributions to the war on terror? What do you think has been contributed so far, and what do you think is on the horizon that might be the most valuable? Tony Tether: We have several efforts in use in Iraq and Afghanistan today. There's been somewhat of a misunderstanding that when 9/11 unfolded that Darpa suddenly turned totally toward supplying things for the war. Now, of course, the war made us a great deal more interested in trying to find out what the issues and problems were over there so that we could develop programs along that line. Those programs are long-range and, for the most part, they'?re things that won't really come to fruition for several years. On the other hand, Darpa had started many things in the '90s, because we've been looking at this global terrorist war since probably 1994. At that time we called it the transnational threat –?? you know, a threat without a country. At the same time, there was a great push to look at the way our forces were developed and move them from huge divisions, force on force, to small units of action, back to the squad… As it turned out, 2001 came and we went into war in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and, after the major conflict in Iraq, really small units became the way we were orchestrating that war. And it was probably that way from the very beginning in Afghanistan. So the technologies that we have been developing for four or five years, some of them were already ready to go. TT: One of the major things we knew a small unit would need, especially in a city, was situational awareness. So we developed â?? we already had been developing -- a small platform that we call Wasp.

Entrepreneurs need little convincing that technology is important, rapidly evolving, and likely to have a profound impact on their businesses. But keeping track of developments, and knowing where to focus one's attention, is anything but straightforward. Analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers (pdf) say the impact of constant technological breakthroughs represent a "megatrend" – a change so big that "every business should develop an emerging technology strategy". They have highlighted eight key areas that all businesses should pay attention to. The artificial intelligence market is growing rapidly and forecast to be worth $36bn by 2025.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency on Wednesday updated rules relating to the collection, retention and dissemination of information of U.S. persons, including putting a limit of five years on holding certain sensitive data and introducing restrictions for querying the data. The announcement by the spy agency comes a couple of days before a new administration under President-elect Donald Trump takes charge, and could address to an extent concerns expressed by civil rights groups about the collection and handling of information of U.S. persons in the course of overseas surveillance. Such information is collected by the CIA under Executive Order 12333. Earlier this month the director of the CIA John Brennan and Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch approved the new rules, called the Attorney General Guidelines, to update the CIA's procedures, some of which had not been significantly updated since 1982, the agency said in a statement. The new rules come into force on March 18.

A day after pardoning NSA whistleblower Chelsea Manning on Tuesday, the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama imposed new limits on the CIA's power to gather private information on U.S. citizens. The new rules, which were also declassified, were posted on the CIA website Wednesday. The amendment to the rules known as the Attorney General Guidelines (so called because they require sanction from the Department of Justice) are the first of their kind since the rules were first introduced in 1981 through an executive order, number 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan. Classified since then, Wednesday was also the first time the veil of secrecy was lifted from the entire 41 pages of the rules, which are now public. "We are updating for the 21st century a set of rules that were previously not significantly updated since 1982," Caroline D. Krass, the general counsel of the CIA, reportedly said during a press briefing at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

South Korea proudly showed off footage of its top-of-the-line Kai KF-X fighter jet in 2015; the culmination of over 14 years of work. Unfortunately, a year and a bit later, Korea Times discovered that footage used to show off the fighter's impressive performance actually came from old video games. South Korea's military was quick to acknowledge that the footage (taken from Battlefield 3 and Ace Combat: Assault Horizon) wasn't authorized and has agreed to cease using the clips. In a bid to avoid national embarrassment, everyone involved is predictably blaming one other. While the military pointed the finger at the company that made the video, amazingly the video producers were quick to hedge their bets, claiming that both the Agency for Defence Development and Korea Aerospace Industries, stating that both companies had a final say.

EU rules for the fast-evolving field of robotics, for example, compliance with ethical standards and liability for accidents involving driverless cars, should be put forward by the EU Commission, urged the Legal Affairs Committee. Rapporteur Mady Delvaux (S&D, LU) said: "A growing number of areas of our daily lives are increasingly affected by robotics. In order to address this reality and to ensure that robots are and will remain in the service of humans, we urgently need to create a robust European legal framework". Her report, approved by 17 votes to 2, with 2 abstentions, looks at robotics-related issues such as liability, safety and changes in the labour market. MEPs stress that EU-wide rules are needed to fully exploit the economic potential of robotics and artificial intelligence and guarantee a standard level of safety and security. The EU needs to take the lead on regulatory standards, so as not to be forced to follow those set by third states, argues the report.