The Pentagon's No. 2 civilian official said Wednesday that the Defense Department is concerned that adversary nations could empower advanced weapons systems to act on their own, noting that while the United States will not give them the authority to kill autonomously, other countries might. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said the Pentagon hasn't "fully figured out" the issue of autonomous machines, but continues to examine it. The U.S. military has built a force that relies heavily on the decision-making skills of its troops, but "authoritarian regimes" may find weapons that can act independently more attractive because it consolidates the ability to take action among a handful of leaders, he said. "We will not delegate lethal authority to a machine to make a decision," Work said. "The only time we will ... delegate a machine authority is in things that go faster than human reaction time, like cyber or electronic warfare."

When TOPIO 1.0, a bipedal humanoid robot that plays table tennis against a human being, was first displayed in 2007, the news hardly received global acclaim. Artificial intelligence (AI) developments, which refer to intelligent computers and machines (equaling or surpassing human intelligence), have become increasingly widespread and commonplace. AI benefits our daily existence even in the most mundane aspects of life, and its uses are tested and applied in a variety of sectors--from medicine and healthcare to the economy, diplomacy, and war. Uses and applications of AI are extremely diverse: they range from online search engines to robotics and security. AI is the basis of unmanned vehicles (which are frequently employed by the United States abroad), space applications, and finance, where AI-based algorithms can quickly find optimal solutions or process data with speed and accuracy.

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

People who rely on satnav could be at risk of losing their ability to navigate, an expert has warned. Writing in the journal Nature, former president of the Royal Institute of Navigation Roger McKinlay argues that our reliance on GPS technology is misplaced and could be eroding our innate way-finding abilities. "If we do not cherish them, our natural navigation abilities will deteriorate as we rely ever more on smart devices," he wrote. McKinlay believes huge investment will be needed before navigation systems will be good enough to allow technologies such as autonomous vehicles to take off. In the meantime, he argues, we need better research into systems for navigation while children should be encouraged to learn how to find their way around by more traditional means.

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

First in a series of two articles about the history of signature-based detections, and how the methodology has evolved to identify different types of cybersecurity threats. Used in the context of an outdated and manually intensive technology focused on older classes of threats, there's little wonder why vendors would seek to distance the legacy term "signature" from their advanced detection technology. Vendors haven't necessarily been deceptive in the labeling of their latest generation of techniques; it's often just easier to create a new label for something than to fully explain the context and evolution of what preceded it. Over the years, signature-based systems have changed and advanced, but the core concepts still lie at the heart of all modern detection systems – and will continue to be integral for the foreseeable future. To understand what a "signature system" is in reality, we need to understand the evolution of the detection path as directed and discovered by human intervention.

Today on In Case You Missed It: DARPA's own AAA satellite service to service satellites orbiting Earth could launch in about five years, if all the testing goes as planned. A new drone is based on the form of a bat and the resemblance is uncanny. And Google is helping robotic graspers learn hand-eye coordination by giving them new objects to pick up. If you've followed along with some of the 3D-printed prosthetics we've done stories on, you'll want to see this glitter shooting, darling girl. And as always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

If you had the opportunity to vote for a politician you totally trusted, who you were sure had no hidden agendas and who would truly represent the electorate's views, you would, right? What if that politician was a robot? Futures like this have been the stuff of science fiction for decades. And, if so, should we pursue this? Recent opinion polls show that trust in politicians has declined rapidly in Western societies and voters increasingly use elections to cast a protest vote.

It may not be good news for anyone who finds insects creepy. Scientists have proved they can control how beetles fly and walk by turning them into cyborgs. Researchers fitted giant flower beetles, which measure two inches long and weigh around 0.3 ounces, with radio transmitter backpacks and wired them to their limbs. This allowed them to electrically stimulate muscles in the insects' legs so they could control their walking speed, gait and direction. Scientists have shown they can control the movement of giant flower beetles by inserting tiny electrodes into their muscles.

Tay, the Microsoft Twitter chatbot who was discontinued after she began spouting bigotry, came back to life in the early hours of Wednesday morning -- albeit as a private account. She appears to be making up for lost time, posting dozens of largely nonsensical tweets in a matter of minutes. Her return to sentience comes five days after Microsoft senior executive Peter Lee issued a statement saying Tay would be taken offline, and apologized for her behavior. What had happened was this: Microsoft launched a chatbot to learn communication skills from Internet users (specifically, millennials), but within hours, trolls had exploited the interface to refashion Tay as a white-supremacist mouthpiece. She ventured that the Holocaust was a fiction, blamed 9/11 on President George W. Bush, and described the sitting President as a "monkey."