Though artificial intelligence experts may cringe at the portrayals of humanlike AI in science fiction, some researchers are nudging us closer to those visions. "I think it's useful that your user interface not only understand your emotions, your personality, your tone, your motivations, but that it also have a set of emotions, personality, motivations," says Rob High, the CTO of IBM Watson. "I think that makes it more natural for us." Last month, High's company unveiled Project Intu, an experimental platform that allows developers the ability to build internet of things devices using its artificial intelligence services, like Conversation, Language and Visual Recognition. Someday, the system promises to let programmers create a staple character of sci-fi: the gregarious, hyper-connected AI like J.A.R.V.I.S. of Iron Man, KITT of Knight Rider, or Star Wars' C3PO.

Satellites, aircraft, and growing numbers of drones--the U.S. Air Force has a lot of electronic eyes in the sky. Now it's exploring whether brain-inspired computer chips could give those systems the smarts to do things like automatically identify vehicles such as tanks or anti-aircraft systems. The Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) reports good results from using a "neuromorphic" chip made by IBM to identify military and civilian vehicles in radar-generated aerial imagery. The unconventional chip got the job done about as accurately as a regular high-powered computer, using less than a 20th of the energy. The AFRL awarded IBM a contract worth $550,000 in 2014 to become the first paying customer of its brain-inspired TrueNorth chip. It processes data using a network of one million elements designed to mimic the neurons of a mammalian brain, connected by 256 million "synapses."

Amazon.com hires a lot of people. But the expansion of its army of orange-wheeled robots is more than keeping pace. The world's largest e-commerce retailer said it has 45,000 robots in some 20 fulfillment centers. That's a bigger headcount than that of the armed forces of the Netherlands, a NATO member, according to World Bank data. It's also a cool 50 percent increase from last year's holiday season, when the company had some 30,000 robots working alongside 230,000 humans.

The US military is no stranger to drone development. Over the past few years we've seen everything from unhackable robot helicopters to harbor-defending pontoon platoons -- including the the means to combat them -- come out of DoD research efforts. On Tuesday, the DoD showed off its latest advancement in drone technology when it released video of the first successful aerial deployment of the Perdix swarm drone. The test itself occurred last October in the skies over China Lake, California when a trio of F/A-18 Super Hornets released 103 individual Perdix drones. First designed in 2013 at the MIT AeroAstro Department, these drones measure less than a foot tip-to-tip and weigh just over a half pound.

Yeah, the way Americans move is in a state of serious flux. And Wednesday morning, the woman expected to pilot the country through these swirling currents will sit in a Senate meeting room and answer a few questions about them. If you care about moving places (anywhere, anytime), it might be worth tuning in at 10:15 am EST to watch the confirmation hearing of Elaine Chao, president-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of transportation. Chao is a veteran of three administrations (Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II), and has worked at the DOT before. She is, especially compared to other Trump picks, non-controversial.

A stunning video released by the Department of Defense shows a swarm of micro-drones being released by fighter jets. The demonstration of the Perdix micro-UAV swarm was held at China Lake, Calif. on Oct. 26, 2016. Three F/A-18's were deployed to launch the swarm of tiny drones, according to the Department of Defense. The drones, which have a wingspan of 12 inches, can operate autonomously and share a distributed brain, the BBC reports, and could be used for surveillance. In the Department of Defense video, the drones can also be seen flying through the air like a swarm of high-tech bees.

Understanding the complex and increasingly data-intensive world around us relies on the construction of robust empirical models, i.e., representations of real, complex systems that enable decision makers to predict behaviors and answer "what-if" questions. Today, construction of complex empirical models is largely a manual process requiring a team of subject matter experts and data scientists. With ever more data becoming available via improved sensing and open sources, the opportunity exists to build models to speed scientific discovery, enhance Department of Defense/Intelligence Community's intelligence, and improve United States Government logistics and workforce management, but capitalizing on this opportunity is fundamentally limited by the availability of data scientists. The Data-Driven Discovery of Models (D3M) program aims to develop automated model discovery systems that enable users with subject matter expertise but no data science background to create empirical models of real, complex processes. This capability will enable subject matter experts to create empirical models without the need for data scientists, and will increase the productivity of expert data scientists via automation.

Nobody wants their company's core competency to be managing data in a database. We feel the same way about AI." In many ways, Hammond represents a wave of entrepreneurs who are counting on the cloud to help them make AI less exotic and more accessible.

The micro-drones use collective decision-making to execute missions. A link has been sent to your friend's email address. The micro-drones use collective decision-making to execute missions.

In today's data-rich world, companies, governments and individuals want to analyze anything and everything they can get their hands on – and the World Wide Web has loads of information. At present, the most easily indexed material from the web is text. But as much as 89 to 96 percent of the content on the internet is actually something else – images, video, audio, in all thousands of different kinds of nontextual data types. A map showing hotbeds of dark web activity related to illegal products. Tor - short for The Onion Router - is a seething matrix of encrypted websites that allows users to surf beneath the everyday internet with complete anonymity. It uses numerous layers of security and encryption to render users anonymous online.