There is a school of thought that ponders a dark, dystopian future where artificially intelligent machines brutally and coldly run the world, with humans as only a biological tool. From Hollywood blockbusters, to evangelic tech entrepreneurs, we've all been exposed to the possibility of this type of future, but have we all stopped to ponder how we should avoid it? Now, of course, all of this dystopia is many many decades away, and only one of several gazillion possible future outcomes. But that doesn't preclude getting the conversation started today. For me, and many others, it boils down to one simple thing: ethics.

Apple is investigating a factory in southwest China after a labour rights group said the tech giant's supplier forced student workers to work "like robots" to assemble its popular Apple Watch. Many were compelled to work in order to get their vocational degrees and had to do night shifts, according to an investigation by Hong Kong-based NGO Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM). SACOM interviewed 28 students at the plant in Chongqing municipality over the summer, and all of them said they had not voluntarily applied to work there, according to the report published last week. They worked under the guise of "internships", SACOM said, a practice rights groups say is widespread in China as manufacturers pair up with vocational schools to supply workers and fill labour shortages when they ramp up production for new models or the Christmas rush. "Our graduation certificate will be withheld by the school if we refuse to come," said one student majoring in e-commerce, according to SACOM.

This toll booth worker really did stop traffic in China - for his eerie, almost robot-like movements. A trending video shows the man greeting and taking cash from drivers like a machine, and apparently he did so to impress his boss. But many Chinese web users claimed the worker's big grin and rigid actions have left them feeling a bit creeped out. The toll booth worker, named Deng Chuan, reportedly works in Nanjing on the Nanning-Hangzhou highway, according to reports on Chinese media. Footage of him turning his body towards the window, showing a big grin slowly and waving at passing drivers in his small office appeared on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, on June 13.

There is a school of thought that ponders a dark, dystopian future where artificially intelligent machines brutally and coldly run the world, with humans as only a biological tool. From Hollywood blockbusters, to evangelic tech entrepreneurs, we've all been exposed to the possibility of this type of future, but have we all stopped to ponder how we should avoid it? Now, of course, all of this dystopia is many many decades away, and only one of several gazillion possible future outcomes. But that doesn't preclude getting the conversation started today. For me, and many others, it boils down to one simple thing: ethics.

In Nagoya, Japan, a city that once held an entire museum dedicated to robotics, a hospital will soon add robots developed by Toyota to its medical staff. No, they won't be scrubbing in for surgery: In February, the Nagoya University Hospital will deploy four bots to ferry medicine and test samples between floors for a year. The robots are essentially mobile refrigerators with a 90-liter capacity that rely on radar and cameras to zoom through the hospital. Should they run into humans, they're programmed to dodge them or politely voice'Excuse me, please let me pass,' according to The Asahi Shimbun. Staff can summon the robots and assign a destination for their medical payload using a tablet.

Cormac McCarthy is best known to the world as a writer of novels. These include Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, and The Road. At the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) he is a research colleague and thought of in complementary terms. At SFI we have been searching for the expression of these scientific interests in his novels and we maintain a furtive tally of their covert manifestations and demonstrations in his prose. Over the last two decades Cormac and I have been discussing the puzzles and paradoxes of the unconscious mind. Foremost among them, the fact that the very recent and "uniquely" human capability of near infinite expressive power arising through a combinatorial grammar is built on the foundations of a far more ancient animal brain. How have these two evolutionary systems become reconciled? Cormac expresses this tension as the deep suspicion, perhaps even contempt, that the primeval unconscious feels toward the upstart, conscious language. In this article Cormac explores this idea through processes of dream and infection. It is a discerning and wide-ranging exploration of ideas and challenges that our research community has only recently dared to start addressing through complexity science. I call it the Kekulé Problem because among the myriad instances of scientific problems solved in the sleep of the inquirer Kekulé's is probably the best known.

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