But it could be a real threat, warn researchers at the recent World Economic Forum. Unlike today's drones, which are still controlled by human operators, autonomous weapons could potentially be programmed to select and engage targets on their own. "It was one of the concerns that we itemized last year," Toby Walsh, professor of artificial intelligence (AI) at the school of computer science and engineering at the University of New South Wales, told FoxNews.com. "Most of us believe that we don't have the ability to build ethical robots," he added. "What is especially worrying is that the various militaries around the world will be fielding robots in just a few years, and we don't think anyone will be building ethical robots."

A bronze bell has been recovered from a Japanese submarine that was sunk intentionally off the Hawaiian Islands by U.S. forces 70 years ago. Researchers from the Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) in two submersibles, Pisces IV and Pisces V, used a robotic arm to retrieve the bell that was resting on the seafloor. The bell was from the I-400 - a World War II-era Imperial Japanese Navy mega-submarine, lost since 1946. Longer than a football field at 400 feet, the I-400 was known as a "Sen-Toku" class submarine - the largest submarine ever built until the introduction of nuclear-powered subs in the 1960s. "It was an exciting day for the submersible operations crews of Pisces IV and Pisces V," Terry Kerby, HURL operations director and chief submarine pilot, said in a statement.

AlphaGo has won the fifth of five games of Go against South Korean grandmaster Lee Se-dol. The final game was a close-run thing, spilling into overtime with the AI just half-a-point ahead at one stage. The best-of-five tournament, which saw the software win 4-1, is considered to be a significant moment in the development of artificial intelligence. Go is a sophisticated game with more potential moves than there are atoms in the observable universe, requiring a greater capacity for on-the-fly "thinking". In a post on Google's Asia-Pacific blog, top American go player Michael Redmond said: "It was difficult to say at what point AlphaGo was ahead or behind, a close game throughout. "AlphaGo made what looked like a mistake with move 48, similar to the mistake in Game Four in the middle of the board.

If you think the pace of technology change has been speeding up, prepare for a shock -- you ain't seen nothing yet. After the transistor gave us pervasive computing and the Internet made us all digitally connected, we've started to discover how much our world can change in just a few years. Now that advances in artificial intelligence are starting to kick in, that rate of change is set to surge to unprecedented new heights. We are at the next inflection point in humanity. The rate of change is now going to be measured in years or months.

In an unassuming two-storey Victorian town house in Bristol, the occupants are being filmed, monitored, and tracked by invisible sensors as they go about their business, 24 hours a day. What they lose in privacy could be our gain in life expectancy, if the long-term data bears out. Pivotal to the 15-million Sensor Platform for Healthcare in a Residential Environment (SPHERE) project, the house has been invisibly fitted with dozens of cameras and sensors while its occupants are asked to don wearable devices. The aim is to reveal how health is related to everyday lifestyle and living conditions over time. The smart home observes how long the occupants slouch in front of the TV as opposed to sitting or walking or exercising.

Artificial intelligence (AI) may conjure up far-fetched ideas of robot assistants, or perhaps an all-seeing presence like HAL 9000, the sentient machine in the movie 2001. But the likelier truth is that AI will come in the form of software running in your data center. And it will be coming very soon: Research firm Gartner predicts that "smart machines" will have a widespread impact on business within the next four years. In general terms it's likely that AI will be able to help IT departments do their job - and help businesses be more productive – by ensuring that "processes get applied, stuff is accurate, errors are eliminated, and compliance is met," according to Dr Stuart Anderson, a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford. It will also be quite unremarkable, according to some.

While traveling in Western Samoa many years ago, I met a young Harvard University graduate student researching ants. He invited me on a hike into the jungles to assist with his search for the tiny insect. He told me his goal was to discover a new species of ant, in hopes it might be named after him one day. Whenever I look up at the stars at night pondering the cosmos, I think of my ant collector friend, kneeling in the jungle with a magnifying glass, scouring the earth. I think of him, because I believe in aliens--and I've often wondered if aliens are doing the same to us.

Most smart software in use today specializes on one type of data, be that interpreting text or guessing at the content of photos. Software in development at IBM has to do all those at once. It's in training to become a radiologist's assistant. The software is code-named Avicenna, after an 11th century philosopher who wrote an influential medical encyclopedia. It can identify anatomical features and abnormalities in medical images such as CT scans, and also draws on text and other data in a patient's medical record to suggest possible diagnoses and treatments.

This week, banker's fears were confirmed and the robot revolution has begun. The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) will sack hundreds of face-to-face advisers and replace them with a robo-advisory online service, after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approved this technology. "Our customers increasingly want to bank with us using digital technology. As a result, we are scaling back our face-to-face advisers and significantly investing in an online investing platform that enables us to help a new group of customers with as little as 500 to invest," a RBS and NatWest spokesperson said in a statement according to the BBC. More and more banks are searching for digital options because they are cheaper and easier to use, and this attitude is advocated by the FCA.

Being well-informed and able to view things in the longterm can make all the difference when it comes to financial decisions. We have already seen the likes of a tech assistant using big data to help people get the best exchange rates, and now Pefin can help even more. The artificial intelligence platform, which is currently in Beta, is a financial advisor that is significantly cheaper than its human counterparts. If you're already a member, log in to keep reading.