Why is okra so slimy? The plant's signature goo helps it thrive in the heat. Okra gets its slime from a substance called mucilage. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Okra is one of those vegetables with a polarizing reputation.

These genetic libraries plan for worse-case scenarios. An employee at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Germany shows off a specimen of frozen plant seeds from the institute's genebank. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Amid the 872-day siege of Leningrad in the early 1940s, nine people died protecting a library. This library was not for books, but for seeds collected from around the globe.

There's a bill in US Congress right now to stop AI from gaining control of nuclear weapons, and roughly a dozen militaries around the world are investigating the possibilities of autonomous weaponry. That's why watching The Creator, a movie set roughly 40 years from now, feels surreal, jarring, and oddly welcome. From Metropolis to Terminator, sci-fi has taught us to fear the AI revolt. This one opts to wonder what would happen if AI got so empathetic to humanity it wanted to save people from themselves. In writer-director Gareth Edwards' latest, war has laid waste to both humans and robots.

In these movies, intelligent machines eventually surpass their human creators, directly threatening the very existence of humanity. The dangers of A.I. have been a long-running trope in pop-culture. What was once considered to be a fascinating and looming threat has evolved into an overplayed cheesy artifact. In lieu of more pressing, immediate threats, super-intelligent machines are just not that scary anymore. On top of this, we are still a ways away from the next levels in A.I., with some prominent figures in research saying humans may never even get there. However, the answer to whether or not humans will birth superintelligence is not so cut and dry.

Mia Dand is an instigator. She has created an important platform in AI Ethics that has proven crucial in the times we currently live. Her most recent event, Women in AI Ethics Annual Conference brought together important voices in the current state of diversity in ethics and AI. Founded in 2018, 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics (WAIE) list has cultivated an engaged community and has created an emergence of women in research, technology, culture, business – spanning across the globe. What has emanated are the stories and lessons from their important works that have spilled into the mainstream.

Sci-fi is a large and interesting genre for anyone who gets curious about what the future may hold. From flying cars to dystopian corporations, nothing is outside its range. RELATED: 10 2000s Sci-Fi Masterpieces You've Probably Never Seen There are tons of robot movies, B-grade schlock-fests like Chopping Mall, and big budget productions like Blade Runner: 2049. There's no such thing as an objective film rating, but IMDb is great for getting a consensus from the public. Let's see what they have to tell us about robots!

The possibility of man-made machines turning against their creators has become a trendy topic these days. Undoubtedly, Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are no longer fit for purpose. For the sake of the global public good, we need something serious and more specific to safeguard our limitless ambitions - and humanity itself. Today, the internet connects more than half the world's population. And although the internet provides us with convenience and efficiency, it also brings threats. This is especially true in an age in which a good deal of our daily life is driven by big data and artificial intelligence.

At 11:00pm on Halloween, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is inviting you to control a real person through a game called BeeMe. BeeMe is the first augmented reality game that will allow the internet (read: anyone and everyone) to control the actions and movement of a real life person. The mission is simple: Users must work together to form a hive mind (get it?) That real person will actually be a trained actor, whose identity will not be revealed. If you're reminded of that Black Mirror episode where Jon Hamm's character Matt can speak and see through the eyes of men who need help successfully interacting with women, you'd be bang on the mark.

Elon Musk speaks during an event at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, U.S., on Monday, Sept. 17, 2018. Facebook's chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun says that Elon Musk is "nuts" to call for regulation on AI at this relatively early stage in its development. While there have been a number of important AI breakthroughs in the last few years, AI is still fairly nascent. Try having an in-depth conversation with Siri and you'll soon see. The most sophisticated AI agents can excel at certain narrow tasks, such as games, but they lack common sense and the ability to learn across multiple domains.

For better or worse, AI will soon be integrated into almost every aspect of out lives. Meetings like these hope to make it for better. Standing on stage in front hundreds of policymakers, academics, and industry leaders in a United Nations conference room on Wednesday, Margaret Chan admitted she's probably the least knowledgeable person present on the topic of artificial intelligence. Chan, an expert in her own right as director general of the World Health Organization, was nonetheless chosen to open a panel of the first inaugural AI for Good Global Summit, a UN-hosted event that hopes to guide AI development with ethical, social, and sustainable goals in mind. And she raised some important issues about how this technology will effect society.