NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 10: United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara speaks at a news conference where he announced charges against three individuals for offenses related to the computer hacking of numerous financial institutions, financial news publishers, and other companies on November 10, 2015 in New York City. If companies don't adequately protect their data, cyber attacks can do a lot of damage. Fortunately, a solution to this issue can be found in new applications of the artificial intelligence for predicting hacker attacks. From the security breach leaving VTech toys vulnerable to ransomeware holding hospital records hostage, lately cyber attacks have been in the news a lot. Companies make efforts to better protect their data, but oftentimes they cannot detect that a system is compromised until it's too late.

In recent weeks, it seems like every other day I have encountered another article or media reference to robots and to our anxiety pertaining to their growing presence and role in our life. Fears have ranged from "will they take away our jobs?" to "will they dominate and enslave us?" The latest piece I've read was "Can you trust your robot?" (an ominous and paranoia-tinged title) by a robotics professor in the US. In that article, he explained why human-robot interactions lack the instinctive aspects that human-human relations naturally have, because "we do not understand each other", and more specifically "we cannot tell each other's intentions." In a number of media references at the end of last year, 2015 was identified as the year when artificial intelligence (AI) became one of our prime concerns about the future.

US politicians are considering new legislation that would allow authorities to intercept or shut down drones that get too close to airports. The US Senate passed the measures, part of a general aviation bill, on Tuesday in response to rising concerns about drone safety. It follows a suspected collision between a drone and a British Airways plane near London's Heathrow Airport. Start-ups are already lining up to offer solutions to the problem. The FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) reauthorisation legislation, passed by the US Senate, could also pave the way for the commercial deployment of drones in national airspace - but comes with several safety caveats.

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

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

When the draft version of a federal encryption bill got leaked this month, the verdict in the tech community was unanimous. Critics called it ludicrous and technically illiterate--and these were the kinder assessments of the "Compliance with Court Orders Act of 2016," proposed legislation authored by the offices of Senators Diane Feinstein and Richard Burr. The encryption issue is complex and the stakes are high, as evidenced by the recent battle between Apple and the FBI. Many other technology issues that the country is grappling with these days are just as complex, controversial, and critical--witness the debates over law enforcement's use of stingrays to track mobile phones or the growing concerns around drones, self-driving cars, and 3-D printing. Yet decisions about these technical issues are being handled by luddite lawmakers who sometimes boast about not owning a cell phone or never having sent an email.

Infrared cameras that track eye movements could detect concussions in less than a minute, offering insight into whether athletes or children have sustained the injury. The device, called'Eye-Sync' has now been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and has been developed amid growing concerns over brain injuries in contact sports. Head trauma affects the brain's anticipatory neural network and Eye-Sync focuses on analysing visual response in this network. Infrared cameras that track eye movements could detect concussions in less than a minute, offering insight into whether athletes or children have sustained the injury. The device, called'Eye-Sync' (pictured) has now been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration The device was developed by Boston-based SyncThink. A user puts on a virtual reality headset connected to a computer tablet, with a moving circle appearing in the display.

The consumer drones that opened the skies to the public may one day be giving a bird's eye view to Chinese authorities. Chinese drone maker DJI -- the world's largest maker of small drones -- said it was in talks with Chinese officials who want access to the data collected by its products, Bloomberg reports. That data could include flight records, GPS information and even video. Whether this applied to Chinese customers only, or customers in Europe and the U.S., has not been made fully clear. "Should DJI receive a valid legal request from a government agency," spokesperson Oliver Wang said in a statement to media, "we may provide user information to that agency, just as other companies do. That is the case in the U.S., China or anywhere in the world."

In the ongoing battle against cyber attacks, a man-machine collaboration could offer a new path to security. To keep up with cyber threats, the cybersecurity industry has turned to assistance from unsupervised artificial intelligence systems that operate independently from human analysts. But the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., in partnership with the machine-learning startup PatternEx, is offering a fresh approach. Their new program, AI2, draws on what humans and machines each do best: It allows human analysts to build upon the large scale pattern recognition and learning capabilities of artificial intelligence. The industry standard right now is unsupervised machine learning, CSAIL research scientist Kalyan Veeramachaneni, who helped develop the program, says in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor.

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – Drones fired more weapons than conventional warplanes for the first time in Afghanistan last year and the ratio is rising, previously unreported U.S. Air Force data show, underlining how reliant the military has become on unmanned aircraft. The trend may give clues to the U.S. military's strategy as it considers withdrawing more troops from the country, while at the same time shoring up local forces who have struggled to stem a worsening Taliban insurgency. U.S. President Barack Obama said in 2013 that the Afghan drawdown after 2014 and progress against al-Qaida would "reduce the need for unmanned strikes," amid concerns from human rights groups and some foreign governments over civilian casualties. On one level, that has played out; the number of missiles and bombs dropped by drones in Afghanistan actually fell last year, largely because the U.S.-led NATO mission ceased combat operations at the end of 2014 and is now a fraction of the size. Yet as the force has shrunk, it has leaned on unmanned aircraft more than ever, the air force data reveal, with drone strikes accounting for at least 61 percent of weapons deployed in the first quarter of this year.