People have a weird obsession with games likes Chess and Go. Achievement in them has long been seen as a marker of human intellect, and yet they're among the least human test you could devise; putting players in simplified situations where everything is known, every possible course of action is laid out for them, and the test is one of concentration and logic. We pass far greater tests daily, when we recognise a face in a crowd, when we dynamically balance in motion, when we predict the response our words and expressions will have on another sentient being, or when we do all of the above, effortlessly, at the same time. We don't think of these as challenging because they're so innately human, while playing Chess or Go seems far more impressive precisely because they're more rigid and computational in nature. There's an irony in making a board game one of the'grand challenges' of AI, and it surprises me that more people don't see it.

EHang 184, the world's first passenger drone, capable of autonomously carrying a person in the air for 23 minutes, has been cleared for testing. The approval was given out by the Nevada governor's office to develop and test the vehicle at the state's Federal Aviation Administration-approved drone test site. The electric EHang 184 passenger drone by Chinese firm EHang was unveiled at CES in Las Vegas in January. The Chinese company said that the EHang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) is a 142-horsepower "personal flying vehicle" that can transport a single person at an altitude of more than 11,000 feet, China's People's Daily Online reported. According to BBC, Macquarie consultancy senior analyst Douglas McNeill gave his opinion of the flying drone concept.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

I read a few articles claiming that the windshield was possibly hit by a bullet or rock, shortly before the deadly derailment. The FBI experts say that a broken windshield will exhibit different patterns, depending on whether it was hit by an impact (rock) or because of the crash.

When you think of artificial intelligence, the first image that likely comes to mind is one of sentient robots that walk, talk and emote like humans. It's known as machine learning, and it revolves around enlisting computers in the task of sorting through the massive amounts of data that modern technology has allowed us to generate (a.k.a. One of the places machine learning is turning out to be the most beneficial is in the environmental sciences, which have generated huge amounts of information from monitoring Earth's various systems -- underground aquifers, the warming climate or animal migration, for example. A slew of projects have been popping up in this relatively new field, called computational sustainability, that combine data gathered about the environment with a computer's ability to discover trends and make predictions about the future of our planet. This is useful to scientists and policy-makers because it can help them develop plans for how to live and survive in our changing world.

There is no need to worry about whether robots might start taking our jobs. Three of the world's 10 largest employers are already replacing tens of thousands of their workers with robots: Foxconn, a key manufacturing partner for Apple, Google, and Amazon, is the world's 10th largest employer and it has already replaced 60,000 workers with robots, according to a recent note written in part by analyst John Seagrimat CLSA. Walmart, the third-largest global employer with 2.1 million workers, wants to replace its warehouse stock-checkers with flying drones that can scan miles of shelves in a fraction of the time. And the US Department of Defense, the No.1 global employer, is already; flying the world's largest fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles - drones, basically - in its various Middle East conflicts. The US DoD has at least 7,362 RQ-11 Ravens in operation for instance.

In U.S. Congress Discusses AI, Automation, Robotics and Basic Income we see senior U.S. Government people start to try and understand the changing world… Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.

As hard as it may be to believe I actually heard some intelligent discussion on this topic this morning on @MSNBC @morning_joe where it was stated that we are heading to an economy where 80% of people will have nothing to do. That may be a bit extreme but our educational and governmental institutions need to be preparing now for the impending digital revolution. Unlike the industrial revolution this one will not produce the same quantity of good paying jobs to employ the masses. I wrote this last year in response to the Baltimore riots but the content is still relevant. Smart machines enjoy full employment, but what about people? Smart machines, deep neural networks, robots, packages that know exactly where they are going, delivery drones.

In 10 years, we'll see big changes in how people live their lives and how companies operate, thanks to the innovation that's now being kindled around the world. So says Alec Ross, former innovation adviser to Hillary Clinton during her term as U.S. Secretary of State, who lays out the thesis in his new book, The Industries of the Future. In Part 1 of our interview, Ross explains how the technology underlying the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, blockchain technology, will greatly reduce the friction in financial and other transactions. Here he discusses the impact of cognitive robots and the outlook for U.S. companies trying to compete on a global scale. You talked about robotics a lot in your book and you focused for the most part on physical robots.

Now to put that fact in context, compare this to 2004, when DARPA sponsored the very first driverless car Grand Challenge. Of the 20 entries they received then, the winning entry went 7.2 miles; in 2007, in the Urban Challenge, the winning entries went 60 miles under city-like constraints. Things are clearly progressing rapidly when it comes to machine intelligence. But how did we get here, after not one but multiple "A.I. winters"? And why is Silicon Valley buzzing about artificial intelligence again?