Helen of Troy may have had a "face that launch'd a thousand ships", according to Christopher Marlowe, but these days her visage could launch a lot more besides. She could open her bank account with it, authorise online payments, pass through airport security, or raise alarm bells as a potential troublemaker when entering a city (Troy perhaps?). This is because facial recognition technology has evolved at breakneck speed, with consequences that could be benign or altogether more sinister, depending on your point of view. High-definition cameras combined with clever software capable of measuring the scores of "nodal points" on our faces - the distance between the eyes, the length and width of the nose, for example - are now being combined with machine learning that makes the most of ever-enlarging image databases. Applications of the tech are popping up all round the world. In China, for example, fried chicken franchise KFC recently unveiled its first "smart restaurant" that uses facial recognition to predict what meal customers are likely to want, based on their age, gender and the time of day, while payments giant Alipay is experimenting with "smile to pay" tech.

When The Six Million Dollar Man first aired in the Seventies, with its badly injured astronaut being rebuilt with machine parts, the TV show seemed a far-fetched fantasy. But fast-forward 40 years and the idea of a part-man, part-robot doesn't seem so extraordinary after all. Today, the idea of a part-man, part-robot doesn't seem so extraordinary after all. Just last week, it was reported that former policewoman Nicki Donnelly, 33, paralysed from the waist down after a driver smashed into her police car, is now able to walk her daughter to school, thanks to a robotic exoskeleton that does the walking for her. And today, the Mail reveals that robotic arms controlled by thought are now being developed in Britain.

A couple of years ago, I spent the summer in Portland, Oregon, losing things. I normally live on the East Coast, but that year, unable to face another sweltering August, I decided to temporarily decamp to the West. This turned out to be strangely easy. I'd lived in Portland for a while after college, and some acquaintances there needed a house sitter. Another friend was away for the summer and happy to loan me her pickup truck. Someone on Craigslist sold me a bike for next to nothing. In very short order, and with very little effort, everything fell into place. And then, mystifyingly, everything fell out of place. My first day in town, I left the keys to the truck on the counter of a coffee shop. The next day, I left the keys to the house in the front door. A few days after that, warming up in the midday sun at an outdoor café, I took off the long-sleeved shirt I'd been wearing, only to leave it hanging over the back of the chair when I headed home. When I returned to claim it, I discovered that I'd left my wallet behind as well. Prior to that summer, I should note, I had lost a wallet exactly once in my adult life: at gunpoint. Yet later that afternoon I stopped by a sporting-goods store to buy a lock for my new bike and left my wallet sitting next to the cash register.

A Samsung Simband displays real-time results on conversational narrative and tone. In the past few years, wearables have offered to track many things, to predict illness, and even to give us rudimentary advice on staying healthy. The makers of a new device hope to expand the role that wearables can play in helping with day-to-day life, however, by adding'conversational wing-person' and'social coach' to their list of skills. Researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) have developed programming to help those for whom conversation is difficult to navigate it with ease, and they've put it all in a wearable for real-time assistance. According to the team, the results of their study, "Predicting Latent Narrative Mood using Audio and Physiologic Data" [PDF], suggest that using such technology to pin down the tone of conversation as it happens is nearly within our reach--a potential boon for persons who experience anxiety, aspects of autism spectrum disorder, or other conditions that can make chewing the fat an intimidating prospect.

Amazon has made plans for a two-storey, automated supermarket run by robots. A staff of robots on the top floor will automatically grab shopping from shelves and bring it down to customers below meaning that each store could be run by only three staff at a time. The ground-level of the prototype store is a supermarket-sized version of the company's recently announced'Amazon Go' convenience store. Amazon has made plans for a two-storey, automated supermarket run by robots. The rumoured robot-run supermarkets are not Amazon's first foray into the world of grocery shopping.

But that could soon change: Researchers at MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain. The researchers have shown that a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm can identify and record from neurons in the living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human experimenter. The new automated process eliminates the need for months of training and provides long-sought information about living cells' activities. Using this technique, scientists could classify the thousands of different types of cells in the brain, map how they connect to each other, and figure out how diseased cells differ from normal cells. The project is a collaboration between the labs of Ed Boyden, associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and Craig Forest, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.

How would you feel about getting therapy from a robot? Emotionally intelligent machines may not be as far away as it seems. Over the last few decades, artificial intelligence (AI) have got increasingly good at reading emotional reactions in humans. If AI cannot experience emotions themselves, can they ever truly understand us? And, if not, is there a risk that we ascribe robots properties they don't have? The latest generation of AI's have come about thanks to an increase in data available for computers to learn from, as well as their improved processing power.

With the rise of machine learning, concerns are being voiced about the future involvement of humans in jobs that computers can handle. But at the same time, alternative views are being offered on ways in which the human element will influence the direction of data science, with passion playing a large role in that survival. "I think data science is one area in which a woman … will have a huge opportunity to move the needle," said Stephanie Gottlib-Zeh (pictured), president of Agyleo Sport. In her view, insularity is something more likely to damage an enterprise than to sustain it, and drawing in a diversity of viewpoints is a big step toward protecting against that sort of stagnancy. Gottlib-Zeh (pictured), president of Agyleo Sport, shared her thoughts on the ways in which data is changing business and how tech workers should aim for jobs that excite them.

If you think Americans have a love affair with cars now, just wait until people begin to treat them not merely as a means of transportation but as smartphones on wheels -- or robot servants. Automobiles are more wired than ever. But experts say the late-model cars on the road today are just a precursor to truly connected cars. In the near future this next generation of cars -- loaded with sensors and screens, feeding back to third parties huge amounts of data on vehicle performance and even driver behavior -- will communicate with other devices, be loaded with apps and even make their own decisions. While for now the smart car is lagging behind the smart home, automobile manufacturers, technology firms, ride-hailing companies and financial institutions are on course to integrate automobiles into the burgeoning Internet of Things. In the process they intend to revolutionize transportation and the fabric of people's daily lives. "The car is going to be an extension of who you are, just like the phone is," said Suresh Ramamurthi, the chairman and chief technology officer of CBW Bank, a small bank in Weir, Kan., that has attracted a national client base of fintech startups. In the more distant future, the car may become something greater still: an autonomous agent that can carry out tasks and authorize payments without requiring its owner's input.

In this teaser for an upcoming Super Bowl ad, Baldwin gets help planning a Super Bowl party from Marino and the Amazon Echo. SAN FRANCISCO – After 22 years of sitting the game out, Amazon decided to make its first Super Bowl ad about Echo -- a decision that underlined how aggressively Amazon is pushing the personal assistant/wireless speaker to the mass market. The Seattle online retailer launched Echo, a voice-driven, cloud-connected, wireless speaker last June. It ranked as a favorite entry among many tech reviewers in the new and growing Internet of Things market. But while the Echo has "a cult following, it needs more consumer awareness," said Sucharita Mulpuru, Amazon analyst for Forrester Research.