ALIAS can fly a military helicopter and then move into another aircraft and fly that too-- and ALIAS is not human. Driverless cars may have been making headlines of late, but DARPA's ALIAS program has also been making great strides in the development of "digital pilot" technology. The brainchild of the legendary institution DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), ALIAS easily drops into an aircraft and becomes an invisible, automated co-pilot for a human pilot. And ALIAS is so good that it has the potential to eventually fly all sorts of military aircraft on its own-- and it could even fly commercial jets like the ones Americans take to visit family or go on vacation. Two teams are currently joining forces with DARPA to make ALIAS a reality: Aurora Flight Sciences and Lockheed Martin Sikorsky.

If you thought chat bots might quietly disappear, think again. In August, the White House's chief digital officer announced a new way to catch President Obama's ear: a Messenger bot, allowing citizens to "speak" directly to the administration through their Facebook accounts. The U.S. government hasn't historically been an early adopter of new technology, so if it's embracing bots, you know they're having a moment. Earlier this year, I predicted that 2016 would be the year of "conversational commerce," my name for businesses introducing themselves into what had previously been personal messaging channels. Brands and companies have joined social media in droves, using the platforms as easy ways to broadcast content to their followers.

It used to be that the future was so bright you had to wear shades. This was the case for maybe a couple of decades (the final two, as it happens, of the 20th century), but then, unfortunately, the sun went in and it shows no sign of returning. The earlier, pre-shades future was very different from the current, post-shades one, but they're both apocalyptic in nature. Back in the Cold War era, it was the possible destruction of all known life on earth resulting from the use of nuclear weapons. Today, it is the possible elimination of all significant human agency from the bio- and techno-spheres resulting from the exponential proliferation of artificial intelligence.

Renee Scholato says her dog, Tank, is just friendly, though she acknowledges the animal sometimes escapes from her home and did jump on the carrier. But she says the dog wasn't attacking or biting. The Postal Service has told residents that mail won't be delivered to Scholato's block in Washington, Pennsylvania, until the dog is properly restrained. Until then, those residents can pick up their mail at the post office, where it will be held for 30 days. Neighbor Brenda Dogle says she's upset about being punished for someone else's dog, saying neighbors "have to suffer because of one house."

The Postal Service has told residents that mail won't be delivered to Scholato's block in Washington, Pennsylvania, until the dog is properly restrained. Until then, those residents can pick up their mail at the post office, where it will be held for 30 days.

In less than a decade, Uber has redefined the idea of flexible labor and gutted the American taxi industry. The company launched a fleet of self-driving cars in Pittsburgh. Within a decade, according to a 99-page white paper released today, Uber will have a network--to be called "Elevate"--of on-demand, fully electric aircraft that take off and land vertically. Instead of slogging down the 101, you and a few other flyers will get from San Francisco to Silicon Valley in about 15 minutes--for the price of private ride on the ground with UberX. These aren't flying cars in the sense that they both drive on the ground and soar through the air.

In Munich, Germany, the technology conglomerate Siemens AG is betting $1.1 billion on digital technologies, such as the proposition that blockchain data can be leveraged by machine learning to improve the secure transmission of data used in energy trading. Siemens is welcoming its employees and independent firms to bid for the money if they are willing to research how Siemens can develop businesses that use artificial intelligence. Siemens is just one of a number of companies embracing machine learning--the combination of artificial intelligence and deep analytics that enables enterprises to make predictions on large amounts of data and allows developers to experiment by incorporating features like speech and pattern recognition, as well as statistical techniques, into their analysis. And HPE's recent announcement of "machine learning as a service" (MLaaS) is aimed at helping the process really take off. Speaking at HPE Discover Las Vegas 2016, HPE Executive Vice President Robert Youngjohns called machine learning and deep analytics the most fundamental change we're ever going to see.

On June 14, 2016, four researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were preparing to ship a waist-high, ape-like robot named RoboSimian off-site. They had built the bot to rescue people from dangerous situations that human rescuers can't hack. The scientists swapped one lithium-ion battery for a fresh one, then left for lunch to let the new power supply charge. Left alone in the lab, RoboSimian's battery did what such batteries famously do: went boom. Plumes of smoke vented from the robot's exposed torso, followed by a burst of flame.

Artificial intelligence, and technology in general, will have a crucial role to play in society's progress, that is the view of the UK and American governments anyway. This Thursday President Obama announced at the first White House Frontier Conference that more than $300 million in funding, through partnerships, will be released for tech innovations that will improve healthcare, develop smart cities and enhance America's space ambition. "We may be in a slightly different period now, simply because of the pervasive applicability of AI and other technologies," said President Obama in a video shown at the start of the conference. President Obama believes AI, in particular, will be able to help solve the biggest crises that face the world, such as disease, famine, climate change and economic inequality. Others, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, suggest AI's rise will be the biggest threat to the survival of the human race.

How to get people interested in art? How to expose permanent-collection works that sit in storage? These are questions art museums constantly ponder. Recently, Tate Britain asked another one: How can artificial intelligence help? It put the question to anyone who wanted to compete for the 2016 IK Prize, which promotes the use of digital technology in the exploration of art at Tate Britain or on the Tate website.