Apple revealed its latest iPhone lineup last week, which includes the iPhone X, and now information on possible features for future smartphones are coming in. Future iPhones (and iPads) could include front and back 3D Touch force detection, according to an Apple patent application published Thursday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, spotted by AppleInsider. The application, called "Detecting backside force in a touch-screen device," says the backside actions with 3D Touch includes "multi-tasking application switches or content or viewport manipulation." The new technology means future iPhones could be thinner. Apple is looking into a "touch-screen device that may be configured to detect when a user applies force to the back side of the device," according to the patent.

The Future of Artificial Intelligence Examine the current state of artificial intelligence and explore the future AI roadmap in this second installment of the exclusive AI series by Thomson Reuters. Guide to Conducting Internal Investigations Internal investigations have increasingly become recognized as a key element of good corporate governance. This manual provides best practices to conduct and prevent an investigation. Become the Best C&E Professional You Can Be The Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics is the association of the industry's top C&E professionals. Sexual Harassment Prevention Training for Employees Be proactive and avoid sexual harassment in the workplace by downloading this sample harassment policy and training presentation to properly prepare your employees.

A sex robot with a "resistance setting" that allows men to simulate rape should be banned, a lawyer has said. Kate Parker, who runs a charity which teaches school pupils about consent, warned the "uniquely sinister" technology normalised sexual assault. Robotics company True Companion sells a $9,995 (£7,408) sex doll with programmable personalities including "Frigid Farrah". The American manufacturer has advertised the character as "reserved and shy" and told customers "if touched in a private area, more than likely she will not be too appreciative of your advance". The company said the "Roxxxy Gold" robot offered men the chance to "realise their most private sexual dreams", a promise some critics saw as "encouraging rapists to find a supposedly safe outlet" for their crimes.

If you're struggling to decide how to vote in the next election, then help may be at hand – in the form of a robot. Scientists have created an artificial intelligence robot called Nigel that will soon be able to assist users in making political decisions. But while its designers are confident that the robot will be able to help you make these important decisions in the future, they emphasise that they are'still way off' from this goal. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is an emerging field aimed at building'thinking machines.' These are general-purpose systems with intelligence comparable to that of the human mind.

The last year has seen a move by IT vendors to introduce increasing amounts of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and cognitive systems. How well the solutions meet the claims made by vendors is not part of this article. What is important is that companies are feeding these systems vast amounts of data to do advanced analytics. The advantage of using these systems is that they are able to deliver solutions far faster than data scientists and security analysts can. For business units, this is good news.

While scenarios like The Matrix and I, Robot might seem like folly, AI picks up behaviors from we humans. As a result, some AIs adapt based on new information. Others, regrettably, can become racist, murderous, and/or sexist. Can we prevent AIs from learning negative behaviors and traits? If you're a fan of science fiction, you've no doubt seen the movie The Fifth Element.

Chinese search engine Baidu announced a 10bn yuan ($1.1bn) self-driving car fund on Thursday as part of a wider plan to speed up its technical development and compete with US rivals. The "Apollo Fund" will invest in 100 autonomous driving projects over the next three years, Baidu said in a statement. The fund's launch coincides with the release of Apollo 1.5, the second generation of the company's open-source autonomous vehicle software. After years of internal development, Baidu in April decided to open its autonomous driving technology to third parties; a move it hopes will accelerate development and help it compete with US firms Tesla and Google project Waymo. In the latest update to its platform, Baidu says partners can access new obstacle perception technology and high-definition maps, among other features. It comes amid a wider reshuffle of Baidu's corporate strategy as it looks for new profit streams outside its core search business, which lost a large chunk of ad revenue in 2016 following strict new government regulations on medical advertising.

SAN FRANCISCO – Google is biting off a big piece of device manufacturer HTC for $1.1 billion to expand its efforts to build phones, speakers and other gadgets equipped with its arsenal of digital services. The deal, announced Thursday, underscores how serious Google is becoming about designing its own family of devices to compete against Apple and Amazon in a high-stakes battle to become the technological hub of people's lives. Google will take on HTC employees including teams who have worked on its signature Pixel smartphone. The deal also comes with a nonexclusive licensing agreement for HTC intellectual property, the companies said in a statement. The deal covers half of HTC's research staff, or around 2,000 people, and is expected to be completed in early 2018 pending regulatory approval, HTC said.

With three weeks to go until the explosive Waymo vs. Uber trial begins, court-watchers got a peek Wednesday at the hefty price tag Uber could face if it loses. Waymo is seeking $2.6 billion in damages for just one of the nine self-driving car trade secrets it claims Uber put to use, lawyers disclosed at a hearing in federal court in San Francisco. It's a number that underscores the importance of the technology that's at the heart of the legal battle, as both rivals race to stake their claim in the burgeoning autonomous vehicle market. The estimated value of the other eight trade secrets hasn't been made public. The damage estimate came out as Waymo's lawyers on Wednesday bolstered their case with new, last-minute evidence showing that thousands of confidential Waymo files ended up on the personal computer of a top-level Uber engineer.

During a hearing today wherein Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo asked a judge to delay its upcoming trial against Uber in order to review new evidence, Reuters reports that one of Uber's attorneys said Waymo is seeking $2.6 billion for the alleged theft of one of the trade secrets listed in its complaint. That's a heck of a lot of money, especially considering that single trade secret -- and it's not clear which one it is -- is one of nine total. What damages Waymo is requesting for the other eight weren't disclosed. The case centers around former Google employee Anthony Levandowski who left the company to start a self-driving truck business, Otto, which was later purchased by Uber. Waymo claims that over 14,000 proprietary design files were downloaded by Levandowski six weeks before he left Google -- information that Uber then used in the development of its LiDAR circuit board.