Move over, Cher and Madonna. Within the pantheon of one-name only celebrities, Sophia has arrived, making her debut at SXSW Interactive earlier this month. According to all reports, she was a success, charming her way into all nearby hearts. Like any starlet, though, she made a misstep or two. When playfully asked if she wanted to destroy humans, she unhesitatingly responded, "OK, I will destroy humans."

CAMBRIDGE, United States, March 19 (Xinhua) -- Google's computer program AlphaGo stunned the world this week by defeating a top professional player at Go, a board game that has trillions of possible moves and often requires players' intuition. "The AlphaGo success shows again that this is a golden era for the development of intelligent software that can be as intelligent or more intelligent than humans in narrow domains of intelligence," Tomaso Poggio, professor of Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told Xinhua. While many people around the world witnessed the achievement accomplished by artificial intelligence (AI) with excitement, some also expressed a renewed wariness over the technology and wonder: It is a boon or a bane for mankind? AI, a field that has existed for more than 50 years, grows along with the development of cognitive science and neuroscience. Poggio regards the subject of intelligence as the greatest one in science, because it has to do with the question of how human brain works and what is the mind.

Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. Look at you: you're the Prodigal Son; you're quite a prize! Tyrell: Also extraordinary things; revel in your time. There are lessons to learn from Microsoft's most recent public demonstration of AI. First background: Microsoft launched a demonstration of their AI prowess by turning on "Tay", an AI designed to converse with, learn from and mimic the speech patterns of humans.

Science fiction authors have long contemplated the development of artificial intelligence. Typically, it is imagined as an application for military technology or some high-minded academic pursuit. However, in our real world, artificial intelligence may emerge for a much more pedestrian reason. Libreri argued that it's essential for VR to make human characters more believable. Sony Computer Entertainment announced a price and release date for its Playstation VR at the conference.

Wonder Woman can still draw a crowd. After this weekend's debut of the long-awaited Wonder Woman (played by actress Gal Gadot) the WonderCon panel "She's Finally Here! Wonder Woman: Her Fandom's Perspective," was packed to the gills (some attendees started waiting 30 minutes before the scheduled time) with people ready to discuss the new Diana Prince. And if the stakes weren't high enough for this character, just read at what the panel was previously labeled in the paper WonderCon program, "Wonder Woman: Will She Finally Be Done Right?" Moderated by Jessica Tseang, the lineup featured Steven L. Sears (executive producer, writer "Xena: Warrior Princess"), Lisa Klink ("Star Trek Voyager," "Roswell"), Barbra Dillon (managing editor of Fanboy Comics), Eric Diaz (writer for Nerdist, Topless Robot), Michael Fitzgerald Troy ("Going Gaga!," "Adele #1," Prism Comics) and Drew Johnson (who worked with Greg Rucka on DC's "Wonder Woman"). So what did this panel of experts think about "Batman v Superman's" new Wonder Woman? See more of Entertainment's top stories on Facebook Here's what the pop culture experts had to say.

The createPairwiseMatches() function shown in Figure 7 above, extracts features in parallel mapping images to vertical and horizontal luminosity histograms. Furthermore, the histograms for each image are saved in a hash table for quick reference since each image's features will be repeatedly matched to other images. Once the match features are extracted, the match is immediately placed in a thread safe blocking collection for further downstream reduction processing. While the mapping functions shown in Figure 7 are executing in a background thread, parallel reduce functions simultaneously execute processing each completed match produced to calculate the similarity between the match images.

The six astronauts at the International Space Station got an early Easter treat this weekend with the arrival of a supply ship full of fresh food and experiments. Instead of the usual bunny, Saturday's delivery came via a swan -- Orbital ATK's Cygnus capsule, named after the swan constellation. The cargo carrier rocketed away from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday night. NASA astronaut Timothy Kopra used the station's big robot arm to grab the capsule, as the two craft soared 250 miles above the Indian Ocean. Four hours later, the capsule was bolted firmly to the complex.

Google built its empire by establishing itself as a monolith of search. Now, it intends to build another by doing the opposite: fragmenting its efforts to secure a multitude of "smaller" victories, each of them worth billions. Leveraging its colossal reserves and analytic prowess, Google is becoming, in effect, the largest healthcare startup incubator in history -- so who are these leading analytic minds at the helm of this effort? They're actually not minds at all, but advanced computers that can make decisions based on technology called "machine learning." While that particular development may sound a bit uncanny, the truth is far more heartening than scary.

By now, the fact that transatlantic democratic capitalism, once the engine of postwar prosperity, has run into trouble can hardly be denied by anyone with the courage to browse a daily newspaper. Hunger, homelessness, toxic chemicals in the water supply, the lack of affordable housing: all these issues are back on the agenda, even in the most prosperous of countries. This appalling decline in living standards was some time in the making – 40 years of neoliberal policies are finally taking their toll – so it shouldn't come as a shock. However, coupled with the spillover effects of wars in the Middle East – first the refugees, now the increasingly regular terrorist attacks in the heart of Europe – our economic and political malaise looks much more ominous. It's hardly surprising that the insurgent populist forces, on both left and right, have such an easy time bashing the elites.

Robotics company Boston Dynamics released a new video showcasing its upgraded Atlas robot, and the footage features a slew of impressive (and somewhat unsettling) new capabilities. The humanoid Atlas robot, which has been overhauled with a sleeker design, can be seen at the beginning of the video walking around untethered before it opens the front door to Boston Dynamics' office and steps outside. The bot is then seen walking on uneven and snowy terrain, maneuvering around trees and correcting its balance several times. The new-and-improved robot is "designed to operate outdoors and inside buildings," Boston Dynamics wrote in a description of the video posted on YouTube. "It is specialized for mobile manipulation. It is electrically powered and hydraulically actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and manipulate objects."