Recent AI advances in speech recognition, game-playing, image understanding, and language translation have all been based on a simple concept: multiply some numbers together, set some of them to zero, and then repeat. Since "multiplying and zeroing" doesn't inspire investors to start throwing money at you, these models are instead presented under the much loftier banner of "deep neural networks." Ever since the first versions of these networks were invented by Frank Rosenblatt in 1957, there has been controversy over how "neural" these models are. The New York Times proclaimed these first programs (which could accomplish tasks as astounding as distinguishing shapes on the left side versus shapes on the right side of a paper) to be "the first device to think as the human brain." Deep neural networks remained mostly a fringe idea for decades, since they typically didn't perform very well, due (in retrospect) to the limited computational power and small dataset sizes of the era.

Scientists have designed a robotic stingray that could help our understanding of the human heart. The miniature robot, one-tenth the scale of the actual fish, moves using heart cells taken from a rat. Researchers hope the robotic ray will give new insight into the heart's ability to pump blood and its potential implications in heart disease. The research is published in the journal, Science. "It turns out the musculature in the stingray has to do the same thing as the heart does: it has to move fluids," said lead researcher, Prof Kevin Kit Parker of Harvard University, US.

In a disappointing defeat against France, the human German soccer team was knocked out of the European Championship July 7. But at least the nation can take heart that its robots proved victorious in the annual RoboCup robot soccer tournament that took place this past weekend in Leipzig, Germany. The winning team, from the University of Bremen, called "B-Human," beat out the University of Texas, Austin's team--the wonderfully named "Austin Villa"--on penalties after a goalless draw in the final of the tournament, according to The Telegraph. Robot teams play two 10-minute halves on a 9-by-6-meter pitch, autonomously roving about the field trying to pass the ball to teammates and score goals. But unlike the cool efficiency that the German human soccer team is known for, the robots are a bit more ramshackle in their approach to the sport.

Artificial intelligence is all the rage right now. It's becoming more prominent because technology has moved forward to such an extent that it can be viably used in the real world. This is no longer just a concept that works in the lab. It's now time to take it out into the real world. There are many uses for artificial intelligence, and one of those is games.

Google DeepMind has appointed Ben Laurie as its new head of security. Laurie announced on his Twitter page on Thursday he has joined the artificial intelligence research company -- bought by Google for a reported 400 million in 2014 -- as head of security and transparency. Laurie is the founding director of the Apache Software Foundation, a director at the Open Rights Group, and a veteran Google software engineer. He describes himself on his LinkedIn profile as an: "Extremely proficient programmer (over 30 years experience) and system designer. Security, cryptography, privacy and civil liberties are my passions." The Cambridge University graduate wrote on Twitter that he is "excited" and "proud" to be taking on the new role.

Jessica Hall recently wrote in Extreme Tech, "Over the last few decades, medical research has shifted from treating transient illnesses to curing long-term disease.

"Make an appointment for 4pm today with Gary," I say to my assistant as I hang up from a promising phone call with a potential client. There was a time when you had to be high up in an organisation to have an assistant. My assistant is an artificially intelligent piece of software that lives in my smart phone. It makes me wonder if technologies like these could help a business grow. A report called The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to automation was published in 2013 by researchers from Oxford University. It was used last year by the BBC to create the interactive web page, Will a robot take your job?.

London's IntelligentX Brewing Company has crafted the world's first beer brewed by artificial intelligence. Consisting of machine learning company Intelligent Layer and creative agency 10x, IntelligentX has developed an algorithm that takes feedback from consumers and uses it to influence its next batch of beer. After trying one of its four bottled conditioned beers, drinkers are invited to interact with its AI, a Facebook Messenger bot called ABI (Automatic Brewing Intelligence). The AI asks users a series of questions that take the form of multiple choice, yes / no and 1-10 rating responses. The responses are used to find trends that could be used to help improve subsequent batches.

Have you ever unknowingly spoken to someone who happened to be a computer? Take Scarlett Johansson's character in Spike Jonze's romantic drama Her (2013), for example. Theodore Twombly, played by Joaquin Phoenix, falls in love with an artificial intelligence on his phone, Samantha. If one were to just listen to the audio, it would seem that Samantha is perfectly human in the way she thinks on her own and is able to carry out fully fledged conversations. As odd as that sounds, there's actually a method to test how "human" artificial intelligence appears to be: the Turing Test.

On a post-apocalyptic 2077 Earth, Tech 49 named'Jack' (played by Tom Cruise) works with drones to protect the fusion generators fueling colonists relocating to Saturn's moon. Hostile aliens capture, reprogram and arm one of the drones with a nuclear weapon. "You can't blame yourself… Drones are unreliable… Sometimes things go wrong." Sixty-two years earlier (in 2015), Google's new CEO Sundar Pichai (below) inherited the home planet of the Alphabet universe from Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Per Pichai, the post-mobile Google is "normalizing" home and car computer interactivity.