Behind the numerous benefits of self-driving cars, being touted by Google and other manufacturers, an imminent danger is lurking. The technology could see criminals using the cars in high-speed chases, for example, or to shoot out of the window while the car drives itself. In fact, the FBI is so concerned about the threats they pose, the agency has dubbed them'potential leathal weapons' in a recent report. Files detail the FBI's concerns about self-driving vehicles, (Google's autonomous car pictured). The report said: 'Autonomy...will open up ways for a car to be more of a potential lethal weapon than it is today.'

Emerging from a lake, a giant amphibious drone gingerly picks its way over Russia's Rzhevka military training ground. This huge drone is the latest in a menagerie of automated robots to be developed worldwide, adding to what some have described as the creation of ground-based robotic armies. Its appearance comes as large organisations, such as Google and Amazon, invest in drone technology, with some experts claiming the it could lead to a full on robotics war by 2020. Air-based drones have been under development in Russia for some time, with reports last year that the country had been developing a new 20-tonne attack unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). These latest images, however, provide a glimpse into Russia's future capabilities in ground-based drones.

He might look like an extra member of Daft Punk, but Russia's robot humanoid is set to be joining astronauts aboard the International Space Station as early as next year. Scientists at the Gagarin Cosmonauts' Training Centre in Star City Centre, just outside Moscow, have shown off their creation, called SAR-401. Russia is working on its own version of Nasa's Robonaut, which is already lending a hand on the International Space Station – so the two robots might work together in the future. Russia's SAR-401robot humanoid could be joining astronauts aboard the International Space Station as early as next year A slightly earlier model called SAR-400 is scheduled to be blasted into space in 2014. Russia's robonaut is similar to Nasa's as it is not designed to be completely autonomous but is operated remotely from the ground, Spectrum reported.

China has built the world's fastest supercomputer - almost twice as fast as the previous U.S. record holder - with speeds equivalent to more than 338 million normal PCs. The Tianhe-2, which means Milky Way 2, was developed by the National University of Defense Technology in China's Changsha city and is capable of sustained computing of 33.86 petaflops per second. That's the equivalent of 33,860 trillion calculations per second, with the average everyday computer performing around 100 million per second (although some are faster and others may be slower). China's supercomputer Tianhe-2 has been declared the Top500 fastest supercomputer title. It was developed by the country's National University of Defense Technology and is capable of operating at the equivalent of 33,860 trillion calculations per second China's Tianhe-2 supercomputer, which means Milky Way 2, knocked the U.S. Department of Energy's Titan machine off the number one spot.

Computers and the Internet: Listening to Girls' Voices – Dorothy Ellen Wilcox concludes that "instead of socializing adolescent girls toward docility, non-hierarchical technology like the Internet may provide a discourse for development of higher-level cognitive skills and the ability to unmask inequities in power and politics."

Dr. Venu Govindaraju, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, is the founding director of the Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors. He received his Bachelor's degree with honors from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in 1986, and his Ph.D. from UB in 1992. His research focus is on machine learning and pattern recognition in the domains of Document Image Analysis and Biometrics. Dr. Govindaraju has co-authored about 400 refereed scientific papers. His seminal work in handwriting recognition was at the core of the first handwritten address interpretation system used by the US Postal Service.

We cannot increase people's living standards, or expect America to lead the world, unless we rapidly increase productivity. But productivity growth over the last decade has been the slowest since the government started measuring it in 1947. This is why the economy has been mired in sluggish growth. Productivity is the measure of how much we produce in our work days; the economy expands as each worker produces more. The recent slowdown has given fodder to a cottage industry of economic pessimists who tell us we better get used to it. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers argues we are in an age of structural stagnation.

China has built the world's fastest supercomputer, capable of making 93 quadrillion calculations a second. And for the first time, it's entirely powered by Chinese-made processors, following a US ban on exporting chips for devices suspected to be used for nuclear research. The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, which is located at the state-funded Chinese Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, a city near Shanghai in eastern China, is more than twice as powerful as previous record-holder Tianhe-2, according to TOP500, a research organization that ranks the powerful computers twice a year. The milestone comes a year after the United States barred exports of computer chips to China for use in its supercomputers, citing concerns that the machines had been used in "nuclear explosive activities." In turn, by ramping up development of its own chips, China has come to surpass the US' own achievements in supercomputing: the top-placing American creation, the Department of Energy's Titan, secured third place ranking on TOP500's list, below China's two-record breaking supercomputers. "It's not based on an existing architecture.

Can Donald Trump make artificial intelligence "great again?" A new Twitterbot is analyzing the way Mr. Trump speaks and using the data to generate tweets. The end result is intended to be an autonomous program capable of crafting tweets that sound like Mr. Trump and it has already garnered thousands of fans. "Much of my actual robotics research deals with these types of modeling techniques," Mr. Hayes said in a MIT article about the project. "I thought this would be a good way to learn more about some of the concepts, and have a little bit of fun in the process."

Like a lot of teenagers, Aanya Nigam reflexively shares her whereabouts, activities and thoughts on Twitter, Instagram and other social networks without a qualm. But Aanya's care-free attitude dissolved into paranoia a few months ago shortly after her mother bought Amazon's Echo, a digital assistant that can be set up in a home or office to listen for various requests, such as for a song, a sports score, the weather, or even a book to be read aloud. After using the Internet-connected device for two months, Aanya, 16, started to worry that the Echo was eavesdropping on conversations in her Issaquah, Washington, living room. So she unplugged the device and hid it in a place that her mother, Anjana Agarwal, still hasn't been able to find. "I guess there is a difference between deciding to share something and having something captured by something that you don't know when it's listening," Agarwal said of her daughter's misgivings. The Echo, a $180 cylindrical device that began general shipping in July after months of public testing, is the latest advance in voice-recognition technology that's enabling machines to record snippets of conversation that are analyzed and stored by companies promising to make their customers' lives better.