Could Ukraine hold a presidential election right now? Will Europe use frozen Russian assets to fund war? How can Ukraine rebuild China ties? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' At least two people were injured after Russian forces launched a drone and missile attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. The attack also damaged apartment buildings, a school, and a kindergarten, he added.

There'll be a new civilization, the sum of human intelligence and artificial intelligence, where artificial intelligence will be able to analyze a problem, identify the resources needed to deal with it, plan a strategy, adapt and improve itself to resolve the problem." It will do this not only for specific, planned objectives – like the IBM computer that beat chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1996 or the vision system that recognizes obstacles in today's self-driving cars – but "in a generalized way, with any problem". This will happen soon, "within the next two or three decades". A valuable time "for us to get ready for a world that will see huge changes, and make sure the effects are positive and compatible with people's lives and aspirations". David Orban is a lecturer at the Singularity University, a Silicon Valley think tank set up six years ago in the NASA Research Park in California, and founder and manager of Network Society Venture, a fund that invests in hi-tech start-ups. He spoke to "la Lettura" in the run-up to the Turin Book Fair, where he will be a guest speaker on Saturday 14 May. Con che velocità arriverà il futuro [How quickly will the future arrive] is the subject of the debate, and also the subtitle of Orban's book, Singolarità (Hoepli). Specifically, "technological singularity", the hypothetical moment in time when, with the support of increasingly powerful computers, the world will move from so-called "restricted" artificial intelligence (such as the vision system in a driverless car) to "strong" artificial intelligence (able to adapt itself to achieve generalized goals). "In strong artificial intelligence, space colonization systems will play a leading role," says Orban. "We have already conquered Mars, but we've never set foot on the planet, our robots have done that.