Although the recent wave of AI models, known as Large Language Models (LLMs), are seamlessly surpassing the Turing Test, this milestone has been overshadowed by their rapid commercialization and the profound ways they are already reshaping society. The pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)--commonly defined as human-level intelligence--is touted as the next major milestone. Yet whether the continued progress within the current framework could ever lead to agency and meaning at the scale of AI itself remains an open and contested question. Critics argue that current LLMs operate through algorithmic mimicry, that is simulating intelligent behavior without embodying the principles behind it (Jaeger, 2024; Jaeger et al., 2024) . Artificial Neural Networks--the main framework behind LLMs--operate on behaviorist assumptions: a framework that focuses exclusively on observable input-output patterns while treating internal states as part of a "black box" to be optimized (Brooks, 1991; Sutton & Barto, 2015) . This does not mean LLMs do not have sophisticated engineering, but their structure is designed to optimize internal states based on input-output feedback loops. Even though the logic behind behaviorism is likely one of the key principles supporting an intelligent system, it likely is not sufficient for intelligence and is not what enables agency and intelligence in the first place (Dreyfus, 1992; Searle, 1980) . Furthermore, it would be naive to consider outward behavior of intelligence as having acquired intelligence or sentience since a good simulation can be powerful and convincing. To address such issues, alternative approaches grounded in organismal intelligence are emerging to instead explain the principles behind intelligence through intrinsic and goal-directed models of the body and its relationship to the environment (Deacon, 2012; Jacob, 2023; Jaeger et al., 2024; Levin, 2019; Roli et al., 2022; Varela et al., 1993; Watson, 2024) .

Just as a federated government system consists of a central government and smaller political entities, a federated learning algorithm collects data from several edge devices rather than from a single database. Federated learning involves training data and storing it locally. By eliminating the sharing of IoT data, it becomes secure. "Federated learning means you are learning by distributing the data to different stakeholders without revealing the identity and the sources of the data," Das says. He adds, "The algorithm itself gives the power because of the way we develop the algorithm. We are not sharing the entire data set and the content to every device or every stakeholder, and everybody only sees a partial view of it."

Fans of "The Walking Dead" will likely relish "Days Gone," the new video game thriller out Friday for Sony PlayStation 4. The post-apocalyptic premise is similar: Your character has survived a global pandemic, while millions have died or turned into ferocious predatory humanoids. If you've only seen the game depicted in TV commercials, at first glance you might be excused for considering these creatures as cousins of those "Walking Dead" zombies. But no, these beasts are transformed humans called "Freakers." "Days Gone" creative director and writer John Garvin explains: "What we have done here is actually create something that is new. They are not really mutants, they are certainly not demons or aliens or robots. They are not zombies either. They are their own thing."

After only 10 minutes, you realise something about Days Gone that will come to mind throughout the next 20 hours or so: it is as if Far Cry was set in a B-movie version of The Last of Us universe. If you're okay with that, you're going to have a heck of a ride. The latest title from Sony's SIE Bend Studio (responsible for the Syphon Filter series) is set in the beautiful, rural Pacific Northwest, after the spread of a virus that turns victims into the kind of absolutely-not-zombies we saw in Danny Boyle's film 28 Days Later. Survivors either hole up together in paranoid communities or drift from one compound to the next, killing the infected for bounties. Lead protagonist Deacon St John is a rootless biker who takes on tasks for these fragile clans, blasting monsters and thieves while grieving his lost wife, Sarah, a botanist who arrived in the area to study plant life before the pandemic and ended up falling for our sullen hero.

Who knows what could possibly be driving this, but post-apocalyptic video games are having a moment. In the past year we've already seen Fallout 76, Anthem and Metro Exodus, while an open beta for Ubisoft's online shooter The Division 2, set in a ruined Washington DC, started on 1 March. Arguably, however, the two most anticipated genre pieces are still to come on PlayStation 4: Days Gone and The Last of Us 2. Both set after most of the population has been wiped out by a pandemic, their different approaches tell us a lot about what it takes to stand out from the shambling, undead crowd. Days Gone, out April 26 from Sony Bend Studios, takes an open-world approach. Set after a virus has turned most of humanity (and a lot of animals) into bloodthirsty monsters, you play as roving bounty hunter and motorcycle fanatic Deacon St John.

Robots are primed to change the way home shopping services operate, but the most substantive shift will happen in the warehouse, not at your front door. Ocado, a UK-based online grocer that logged $1.5 billion USD in revenue in 2014 and turned its first profit after 15 years this February, recently announced that it's developing autonomous humanoid robots to augment and assist its human workforce. The SecondHands project, as it is known internally, is being carried out in partnership with a consortium of research universities and is part of the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, an ambitious bid to position the EU as a technology hotbed, particularly in the field of robotics. AI might be a hot topic but you'll still need to justify those projects. "The ultimate aim is for humans to end up relying on collaborative robots because they have become an active participant in their daily tasks," says Dr Graham Deacon, Robotics Research Team Leader at Ocado Technology.

It's been a rough year for Imagination Technologies. The CEO resigned in February, layoffs followed in the next month, and the cloud of a takeover hung over the company with rumored negotiations to purchase the company. The company is best known as a provider of PowerVR GPUs for Apple's iPhone and the MIPS CPU architecture, which competes with Intel's X86 and ARM. Imagination has its eyes set on a strong 2017 by taking an approach much like Intel did last year and refocusing on areas of growth, which include graphics and the internet of things. Imagination next year will release new PowerVR and MIPS chip designs, with the goal of driving growth in those areas.