PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY – Last month, AlphaGo, a computer program specially designed to play the game go, caused shock waves among aficionados when it defeated Lee Sidol, one of the world's top-ranked professional players, winning a five-game tournament by a score of 4-1. Why, you may ask, is that news? Twenty years have passed since the IBM computer Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov, and we all know computers have improved since then. But Deep Blue won through sheer computing power, using its ability to calculate the outcomes of more moves to a deeper level than even a world champion can. Go is played on a far larger board (19 by 19 squares, compared to eight by eight for chess) and has more possible moves than there are atoms in the universe, so raw computing power was unlikely to beat a human with a strong intuitive sense of the best moves.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

In the age of ultra-high-frequency trading, financial institutions are turning to artificial intelligence to improve their stock trading performance and boost profit. One such company is Japan's leading brokerage house Nomura Securities. The company has been pursuing one goal: to simulate the insights of experienced stock traders with the help of computers. After years of research, Nomura is set to introduce a new stock trading system for institutional investors in May. The new system stores vast amounts of price and trading data in its computer.

Speculating what will cause our ultimate demise has been the stuff of science fiction for years--if it's not aliens wiping out the human race, it's probably robots. This is a proven trope that keeps moviegoers flocking to the likes of Independence Day, Ender's Game, The Terminator, or The Matrix. To deviate from the norm takes a little extra work, but one way directors can suggest a different route is with a short format proof-of-concept sales pitch. Created with nearly 40,000 in Kickstarter funding, "Rise" is a short film aspiring to feature length. Its central theme is to Terminator what District 9 was to Independence Day.

The subprime financial crisis revealed that our data is only as good as our ability to analyze and understand it. AI will be necessary to helping prevent the next crisis before it happens. In his new film "The Big Short," based on the book by Michael Lewis, Adam McKay attempts the difficult task of explaining exactly how the credit and subprime housing bubble led to the 2008 worldwide economic crash. One of McKay's main points in outlining how Michael Burry, and a handful of other Wall Street outsiders, were able to predict the impending crisis is that they simply investigated the underlying data. As Ryan Gosling's character narrates in the film: "A few did what the rest never thought to do… they looked."

Does predictability provide an overriding concept and perhaps a metric for evaluating when LAWS are acceptable or when they might be unacceptable under international humanitarian law? Arguably, if the behavior of an autonomous weapon is predictable, deploying it might be considered no different from, for example, launching a ballistic missile. This, of course, presumes that we can know how predictable the behavior of a specific autonomous weapon will be. Over the past two years, this body has focused upon ethical and legal challenges to LAWS. In addition, there are contentions that autonomous weaponry will fail to perform as expected, will behave unpredictably on occasion, and are therefore inherently risky and liable to commit acts that violate IHL, even when this is not the intention of those who deploy the systems.

Taanayel, Bekaa, Lebanon - After more than five years of brutal conflict, Hope of Syria may sound like an ambitious name - but this young team of robot engineers is eager to help shoulder the responsibility of rebuilding their country. The team, composed entirely of Syrian refugee students, recently won a national robotics competition in Lebanon, when their robot, SYR01, managed to shoot the most balls into a net. They will now compete in the Vex world robotics competition on April 20 in the US state of Kentucky, coming up against some 450 other teams from around the world. While winning the tournament is their first priority, team member Amjad al-Homsi, 17, says they also want to draw attention to the plight of Syrians. "[It's about] putting the spotlight on Syrians," Homsi, the team's engineering network manager, told Al Jazeera.

Is this the Steph Curry of robotic basket throwing? The competitors entered the arena, all clattering metal and fidgeting gears. They held balls, ready to hurl into their corner basket, and before them stretched several ball towers. Two years ago the sport didn't exist. Now, the robotic opponents built to play it were assembled and ready to play. The sport, invented by the VEX Robotics, is called "Nothing But Net," and is designed for mostly autonomous vehicles.

Autonomous cars are predicted to account for 75% of vehicles by 2040, so are robot drivers really safer than human drivers? According to Insurance Quotes more than 90% of all car accidents are caused by human error. The leader of Google's SDV project Chris Urmson has claimed that self-driving cars are a safer option: "Our car is driving more smoothly and more safely than our trained professional drivers."

It seemed like a good idea; Microsoft introduced an Artificial Intelligence (AI), Tay, to comment on social media and learn to interact with others. Within hours, Tay had become a genocidal maniac. Microsoft spent hours frantically deleting Tay's racist, misogynistic, Nazi-sympathizing tweets before finally pulling her off-line when she began advocating genocide. Some of the problems stemmed from a function where users could instruct Tay to repeat an offensive tweet verbatim--trolls thought it funny to teach Tay awful ideas. However, by the end, Tay's racist bile was self-generated; she had learned hate.