WASHINGTON – Robotic systems and unmanned vehicles are playing an ever-growing role in the U.S. military -- but don't expect to see Terminator-style droids striding across the battlefield just yet. A top Pentagon official has given a tantalizing peek into several projects that not long ago were the stuff of science fiction, including missile-dodging satellites, self-flying F-16 fighters and robot naval fleets. Though the Pentagon is not planning to build devices that can kill without human input, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work hinted that could change if enemies with fewer qualms create such machines. "We might be going up against a competitor that is more willing to delegate authority to machines than we are, and as that competition unfolds we will have to make decisions on how we best can compete," he said. Work, who helps lead Pentagon efforts to ensure the U.S. military keeps its technological edge, described several initiatives, including one dubbed "Loyal Wingman" that would see the Air Force convert an F-16 warplane into a semi-autonomous and unmanned fighter that flies alongside a manned F-35 jet.

Robotic systems and unmanned vehicles are playing an ever-growing role in the US military--but don't expect to see Terminator-style droids striding across the battlefield just yet. A top Pentagon official on Wednesday gave a tantalizing peek into several projects that not long ago were the stuff of science fiction, including missile-dodging satellites, self-flying F-16 fighters and robot naval fleets. Though the Pentagon is not planning to build devices that can kill without human input, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work hinted that could change if enemies with fewer qualms create such machines. "We might be going up against a competitor that is more willing to delegate authority to machines than we are, and as that competition unfolds we will have to make decisions on how we best can compete," he said. Work, who helps lead Pentagon efforts to ensure the US military keeps its technological edge, described several initiatives, including one dubbed "Loyal Wingman" that would see the Air Force convert an F-16 warplane into a semi-autonomous and unmanned fighter that flies alongside a manned F-35 jet.

The usually sensible people at MIT's Senseable City Lab are looking at the future of the traffic light in the world of the self-driving car, and predict that its days are numbered. Instead, they propose a "slot-based intersections that could replace traditional traffic lights, significantly reducing delays, make traffic patterns more efficient, and lower fuel consumption." It's based on the principle that if all the self-driving cars are communication with each other and know they all are, they can plan speeds and courses so that they essentially pass through each other. Upon approaching an intersection, a vehicle automatically contacts a traffic management system to request access. Each self-driving vehicle is then assigned an individualized time or "slot" to enter the intersection.

Emerging technologies and their possible implications for ethics, security, and even human existence have increasingly gained ground in the past two decades. Some innovations have resulted in obvious security and existential threats: a world with nuclear arms, for example. The potential of other technological shifts, however, has been more mixed. Biotechnologies, genetic engineering, and stems cells have given rise to controversial debates in which advocacy groups on both sides have convincingly put forward pros and cons. The Internet has revolutionized everything from markets to family communication in ways both beneficial and harmful.

If you'd inadvertently unleashed a Neo-Nazi sex-bot on an unsuspecting Internet, you might be reluctant to proclaim the technology as the future of computing. Microsoft, it seems, has no such qualms. Just a few days after yanking the errant chatbot Tay from the Internet, Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, announced that he expects similar (though presumably less offensive) bots to become a commonplace. In fact, Microsoft seems to believe that "conversational computing" could be a major new paradigm in computing. "We want to take the power of human language and apply it more pervasively to all of the computing interface and the computing interactions," Nadella said during his keynote at the company's Build 2016 conference for developers.

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

What is the relationship between artificial intelligence and cybersecurity? One certainly strengthens the other. Thanks to "machine learning", which is already well known among researchers, AI makes it possible to tackle security in a different way, better suited to the changing context of cybercrime, with greater anticipation and through behavioural analyses. Applications have already been released by laboratories, particularly via open-source libraries, however new skills are required. "By improving its knowledge and understanding of the phenomena by itself, machine learning enables an attack to be detected even if it is not familiar with the signature."

It could have taken months for the systems administrators at a large bank in Rome to figure out that one of their servers was talking to Facebook, a red flag given that networks in banks don't need to know how many "likes" they've received. And they might not have noticed the streams of data the server then sent to an array of unknown computers. This kind of threat--coming from inside the network, not from outside its firewall--is difficult to detect. According to IT researcher Gartner, it can take an average 229 days for a business to figure out it's been compromised this way. What tipped off the bank's IT department was a little black box containing software from Darktrace, a U.K. startup founded in 2013 by a group of former British spooks and Cambridge University Ph.D.s.

Machine learning is being used by companies such as Netflix, Facebook, and Spotify for automated data analysis. The results are then used to create recommendations based on past consumption habits. This approach is based on algorithms that learn and adapt to the usage data and patterns that emerge, not the hard-coded rules used in traditional analytics. Netflix in particular has successfully leveraged analytics for years, and their strategy serves as an example of how machine learning can help you gain a competitive advantage. Big Data analytics, being based on manual processes to search for patterns in data, has a major flaw--humans.

We live in an era of accelerating change, when scientific and technological advancements are arriving rapidly. As a result, we are developing a new language to describe our civilization as it evolves. Here are 20 terms and concepts that you'll need to navigate our future. Back in 2007 I put together a list of terms every self-respecting futurist should be familiar with. I reached out to several futurists, asking them which terms or phrases have emerged or gained relevance since that time. These forward-looking thinkers provided me with some fascinating and provocative suggestions -- some familiar to me, others completely new, and some a refinement of earlier conceptions.