And – why we aren't ready for Superintelligence, DeepMind created an AI with memory, Facebook's ideas for VR and more! Last weekend we saw Cybathlon, the world's first "bionic Olympics", where disabled athletes assisted with exoskeletons, prosthetic robotic hands or brain-computer interfaces competed in a series of challenges. This article from BBC describes the games and lists all the winners. Some amputees want to have a prosthetic limb that can do a bit more or just looks better.Waterproof, dustproof, customized to client's skin color, matching to the owner's tattoos. And there are companies that are ready to help them for an appropriate price.

Scientists at Google have created an artificial intelligence program that can compute problems requiring strategic reasoning, The Guardian reports. The algorithm, part of an emerging field called deep learning, is able to master tasks independently using external memory, similar to the way humans work through a new recipe, according to the study published in Nature. In this case, it was able to figure out on its own the quickest route between stops on the London Underground and reassess if the destination was overshot. This could pave the way to more efficient virtual assistant applications, which might be bad news for Apple's sassy sidekick.

Using software to compare genetic information in bacterial isolates from animals and people, researchers have predicted that less than 10% of Escherichia coli 0157:H7 strains are likely to have the potential to cause human disease. According to Nadejda Lupolova, from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and colleagues, "machine-learning approaches have tremendous potential to interrogate complex genome information for which specific attributes of the organism, such as disease or isolation host, are known." The researchers published the results of their study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Although most E. coli strains live in the gastrointestinal tracts of people and animals without causing disease, infection with E. coli 0157 is associated with serious illness in people. E. coli 0157 was first identified as a cause of disease in the United States in 1982, during an investigation into an outbreak of hemorrhagic colitis.

Despite computers performing increasingly impressive feats, when it comes to recognising real world objects, they have fallen short. But the machines are learning that just like the robots of sci-fi blockbusters, being able to tell one thing from another is a key skill. A team of UK researchers has created software which has taught itself to recognise objects around it, with impressive accuracy. UK researchers have created software, called RadarCat, which can teach itself to recognise objects around it with impressive accuracy . Called the RadarCat, short for radar categorisation for input and interaction, the software scans the world around it uses radar to scan the world around it.

While many advances have been made, it still has been difficult for non-programmers to create objects made of many materials (or mixtures of materials) without a more user-friendly interface. But this week, a team from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) will present "Foundry," a system for custom-designing a variety of 3-D printed objects with multiple materials. "In traditional manufacturing, objects made of different materials are manufactured via separate processes and then assembled with an adhesive or another binding process," says PhD student Kiril Vidim?e, who is first author on the paper. "Even existing multi-material 3-D printers have a similar workflow: parts are designed in traditional CAD [computer-aided-design] systems one at a time and then the print software allows the user to assign a single material to each part." In contrast, Foundry allows users to vary the material properties at a very fine resolution that hasn't been possible before.

What is driving the'robot age' and how can businesses leverage the capabilities being produced? Artificial intelligence is one of the 21st century's dominant fields of innovation. So it's no surprise that cutting-edge robots and other advanced smart machines fall under the rapidly expanding Internet of Things, which is projected to reach 25 billion devices by 2020. Every day we're reading headlines on machines getting'smarter' and robotics transforming a variety of industries, but what's driving this'robot age' and how can businesses successfully integrate and leverage this advanced automation? It's clear that artificial intelligence (AI) is a new industrial revolution, one that's driving the rise of robotics. But AI won't just be an industry – it will be part of every industry.

Palo Alto, California-based Nauto uses deep learning to enable dashboard-mounted cameras and other image sensors to alert drivers about oncoming traffic, lights, and other hazards. Deep learning also enables Nauto's cameras to recognize when a collision is imminent, so they can record the events. Images and data about the accident are stored in the cloud for sharing with a fleet manager, insurance company, and/or the police via Nauto's mobile app. Founded in 2015 by Stefan Heck and Fredrick Soo, Nauto raised 12 million in Series A funding in April and has received additional investments from Toyota, BMW, and Allianz. Many more are injured and maimed.

Years of evolution got something right. Scientists at the University of Tokyo found that, in trying to keep their humanoid robot cool, the most effective way to avoid overheating was to make it sweat. Kengoro is made up of 108 motors, with a frame laser sintered from aluminum, and researchers found that making the robot sweat was an effective cooling system for a bot filled to the brim with bolts. Even with the space-saving technique, the bot weighs 123 pounds and stands 5 feet 7 inches tall. "Usually the frame of a robot is only used to support forces," lead author Toyotaka Kozuki told IEEE Spectrum in an interview published Friday.

Artificial intelligence needs transparency so humans can hold it to account, a researcher has claimed. Virginia Dignum, associate professor at the Delft University of Technology, told an audience at New York University on Friday that if we don't understand why machines act the way they do, we won't be able to judge their decisions. Dignum cited a story by David Berreby, a science writer and researcher, that was published in Psychology Today: "Evidence suggests that when people work with machines, they feel less sense of agency than they do when they work alone or with other people." The trolley problem, Dignum explained, is an area where people may place blind faith in a machine to choose the right outcome. The question is whether to switch the lever on a hypothetical runaway train so that it kills one person instead of five.

Residential real estate site Zillow stormed onto the market in the 2000s, letting consumers check on the property value of their own homes and those of all their friends, family members, and acquaintances, too, much to the dismay of real estate professionals. Founded by a couple of former Microsoft executives who went on to start travel site Expedia and then Zillow, this site threatened to disrupt the real estate market when it debuted in 2006. It gave people access to information that had previously only been available through real estate pros. Ten years later Zillow has proven it has staying power. Built on the idea of ingesting, processing, and serving data from multiple sources to consumers, the company has made a name for its "Zestimate" -- its secret data-driven formula for predicting the value of a piece of real estate.