So what is machine learning? Put simply, it is the science of enabling computers to learn and take action without being explicitly programmed. This is achieved through complex algorithmic models applied to data. From this are derived data-driven predictions or decisions. What has this to do with information security?

Anyone who books an Uber in Pittsburgh in the coming weeks may discover that the person behind the wheel is also a passenger. Uber will offer customers rides in robotic taxis within a matter of weeks or days. The company has been developing the technology for the past year and has been testing it on the streets of Pittsburgh. It will launch with about a dozen taxis, with the expectation of having 100 on the road by the end of the year. The taxis will have drivers who can take control in an emergency.

From launching a yearlong anti-ISIS airstrike campaign in Syria to conducting naval exercises in the South China Sea this week, Russia's military might is showing no signs of slowing after its global expo promoting the country's brand new weapons of war concluded Sunday. The International Military-Technical Forum, an event held this past week near Moscow called "Army-2016," featured more than 11,000 pieces of modern military hardware to show "the maximum range of the export potential of Russian high-tech military products, represented in the form of natural samples on static display and in action on land, water and in the sky," the official website says. Some of the items on display included bombs, air defense systems and unmanned vehicles for both the air and ground that Sputnik News called robots. Below are photos and video of 10 key state-of-the-art weapons of war Russia had on display. The horwitzer armored truck that is also known as the "Phlox" comes with a powerful cannon mounted on top that has the ability to shoot with precision targets that are more than 6 miles away.

When we see two people meet, we can often predict what happens next: A handshake, a hug, or maybe even a kiss. Our ability to anticipate actions is thanks to intuitions born out of a lifetime of experiences. Machines, on the other hand, have trouble making use of complex knowledge like that. Computer systems that predict actions would open up new possibilities ranging from robots that can better navigate human environments, to emergency response systems that predict falls, to Google Glass-style headsets that feed you suggestions for what to do in different situations. This is your chance to join them.

Tesla is rolling out a software update to its Autopilot feature designed to prevent accidents like the one that resulted in the death of Tesla owner Joshua Brown in May. The new update will employ radar as a primary signal processing component in addition to visual image recognition via the car's cameras. Brown died when his car, running on Autopilot, collided with a tractor trailer. In that event, the car's autonomous cruise control systems failed to properly identify the obstacle. This reportedly happened due to the trailer's color blending with the bright sky.

Robots and artificial intelligence were once just the stuff of Hollywood fantasy, from the Star Wars and Terminator movies to Iron Man's JARVIS butler. However, intelligent machines that can simulate reasoning and develop knowledge to mimic human thought processes are now part of the real world -- and with that comes the risk of bias and cyber attack. Investment in artificial intelligence (AI) in the U.S. more than doubled to 587 million last year, and machine learning is expected to drive an increase in the use of robotics and software automation in coming years. AI algorithms are already used in investment, healthcare, programming, law, music, book and film recommendation services, games, and language learning -- to name but a few sectors. These uses often produce outcomes that would be unattainable by humans or do so at a far lower cost.

Moore's Law posits that the number of transistors on a microprocessor -- and therefore their computing power -- will double every two years. It's held true since Gordon Moore came up with it in 1965, but its imminent end has been predicted for years. As long ago as 2000, the MIT Technology Review raised a warning about the limits of how small and fast silicon technology can get. The thing is, Moore's Law isn't really a law. Moore didn't describe an immutable truth, like gravity or the conservation of momentum.

It's been a busy summer in the artificial intelligence (A.I.) space, but the most interesting A.I. opportunities may not come from the biggest names. You may have heard about Tesla's self-driving cars that made headlines twice, for vastly different reasons -- a fatal crash in Florida in which the driver was using the Autopilot software, and claims by a Missouri man that the feature drove him 20 miles to a hospital after he suffered a heart attack, saving his life. Or you might have heard of Apple spending 200 million to acquire machine learning and A.I. startup Turi. A smart drone defeated an experienced Air Force pilot in flight simulation tests. IBM's Watson diagnosed a 60-year-old woman's rare form of leukemia within 10 minutes, after doctors had been stumped for months.

Tesla co-chief executive Elon Musk says that a future, planned update to the semi-autonomous Autopilot system would have prevented a fatal crash this year. Musk said on Sunday in a Q&A that Autopilot will be updated over-the-air within the next week or so to improve driver safety, and will include elements such as new limits on hands-off driving and turn off the system should drivers fail to respond to warnings to take back control of an Autopilot-controlled vehicle. As reported by the Reuters news agency, the chief executive said Autopilot 8.0 will rely more heavily on vehicle radar systems to gain a better sense of obstacles and will be a "dramatic improvement" over semi-autonomous controls which currently rely on software and cameras. The tractor trailer drove across the highway but no brake was applied, and so the Tesla vehicle passed under the trailer, causing a crash and killing the driver. Musk says that it was "very likely" that the latest version of Autopilot would have prevented the death, but also reiterated that the system does not represent "perfect safety."

A company can spend all the funds it wants on the latest cybersecurity technology, like firewalls, threat detection, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, but there is one security risk that can't blocked from entering the company networks: the employee. Whether they're being coerced into doing do it or not an employee could actively be working with hackers and cybercriminals to let them inside in your network. But in many cases it's a lax or ill-informed attitude to cybersecurity by staff which is potentially putting organisations at risk, with employees falling victim to phishing one of the major reasons that data breaches occur. "The human operating system is a challenge in itself, we know human beings are the weakest link" says Philipp Amann, head of strategy at Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). And the problem is only going to become trickier to solve because people are becoming more connected than ever, offering hackers additional opportunities to find that one weakness that allows them access.