The last time I saw my friend James was at the townie bar near our old high school. He had been working in roofing for a few years, no longer a rail-thin teenager with lank hippie hair. I had just gotten back from a stint with the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. We reminisced about the summer after our freshman year, when we were inseparable--adventuring in the creek that sliced through the woods, debating the merits of Batman versus the Crow, watching every movie in my father's bootlegged VHS collection. I had no idea what I wanted to do next.

LIKE other human champions facing a machine opponent, Grzegorz "MaNa" Komincz rated his chances. "A realistic goal would be 4-1 in my favour," he told an interviewer before the match. One of the world's best players of video game StarCraft II, Komincz was at the height of a successful esports career. Artificial intelligence company DeepMind invited him to face its latest AI, a StarCraft II-playing bot called AlphaStar, on 19 December 2018. Komincz was expected to be a tough opponent. After being thrashed 5-0, he was less cocky.

LIKE other human champions facing a machine opponent, Grzegorz "MaNa" Komincz rated his chances. "A realistic goal would be 4-1 in," he my favour told an interviewer before the match. One of the world's best players of video game StarCraft II, Komincz was at the height of a successful esports career. Artificial intelligence company DeepMind invited him to face its latest AI, a StarCraft II-playing bot called AlphaStar, on 19 December 2018. Komincz was expected to be a tough opponent. After being thrashed 5-0, he was less cocky.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk unveils the company's newest products in Hawthorne, Calif. Elon Musk, already the CEO of two companies, appears ready to embark on his next project: a neural interface melding the human brain with computer technology. In an interview with the website Wait But Why, the head of Tesla and SpaceX says his latest endeavor -- Neuralink -- is four years away from introducing its first product to market. The initial version of the Neuralink device would focus on people with severe brain injuries. "The first use of the technology will be to repair brain injuries as a result of stroke or cutting out a cancer lesion, where somebody's fundamentally lost a certain cognitive element," said Musk. "It could help with people who are quadriplegics or paraplegics by providing a neural shunt from the motor cortex down to where the muscles are activated."