Peter Watts is the author of some of the darkest and most thoroughly researched science fiction novels ever written. One of his early fans was horror author Theresa DeLucci, who read his debut novel Starfish while working at Tor Books in the early 2000s. "I had never really read a lot of hard science fiction, but his concepts really intrigued me, and the editor at the time told me that it was really, really dark, and he thought that I would like it, and he was absolutely correct," DeLucci says in Episode 551 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Watts is best known for his 2006 novel Blindsight, about a crew of augmented humans who are sent to intercept an alien vessel. Science fiction author Sam J. Miller says that Blindsight features some of the best-written aliens in all of science fiction.

'The Big Weekend Show' panelists discuss Elon Musk offering to pay users' legal bills if they are'unfairly treated' by employers for likes or posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. That's what George Orwell would say if he could visit our world, 75 years after he wrote his final novel, "1984." Orwell sought to demonstrate the dangers not just of totalitarianism but of a world where words lose their meaning. Many of the terms he coined for the novel have since entered common discourse -- "thought police," "Big Brother," "doublethink," and the "memory hole," to name a few. And of course the adjective "Orwellian" comes to us because of this book.

When it comes to video-game adaptations, TV and film producers have historically had an unfortunate habit of using the game as a kind of Mad Libs prompt for something completely unrelated. Characters you've spent 30 hours getting to know in a game might remain in name and appearance only, given personality transplants to fit into new, incongruous plots. There has been an endemic lack of respect for video games from decades' worth of film-makers who, in the words of games satire site Hard Drive News, have been excited to take a beloved franchise and adapt it into something not for dumb little babies. HBO's The Last of Us finally marks the end of this era. There's been a shift in the tenor of game adaptations in the past few years; you could tell that Detective Pikachu was written by huge Pokémon fans, Cyberpunk 2077's Netflix series was actually better than the game, and the plot of Paramount's TV version of the military space-opera Halo is just as ponderous and self-important as the games.

AI art has already proven itself to be pretty scary, for a number a reasons. Not only are image generators like DALL-E 2 capable of churning out some pretty nightmarish images, but there's also the ethical and existential question around what the rise of automated art might mean for artists. Leaving the latter question aside for now, here's some art that takes the idea of terrifying AI art to its logical conclusion. Digital agency Evoluted has submitted horror film-related keywords into an AI tool to create alternative posters for various classics – and the results are scarier than the originals. What to give it a go for yourself?

Amazon has big plans for its virtual assistant. One day, perhaps sooner than you think, Alexa will take a proactive role in directing our lives. It'll interpret our data, make decisions for us, and summon us when it has something to say. Rohit Prasad, the scientist in charge of Alexa's development, recently gave MIT Technology Review's Karen Hao one of the most terrifying interviews in modern journalism. We know how dangerous it is to let bad actors run amok with AI and our data – if you need a refresher, recall the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

A year ago, network security specialists spotted a worrying new trend: hackers began unleashing ransomware attacks on really big targets--America's cities. Atlanta, Baltimore, and Greenville, N.C. would later grind to a halt after devastating computer outages disrupted everything from the collection of parking tickets to the sale of new homes. The next big thing that keeps computer scientist Adam Kujawa up at night? Ransomware powered by artificial intelligence, a development that could give exploits such as RobbinHood and WannaCry a potent new makeover to evade cyber defenses, burrow into computer networks and wreak mayhem. In recent years, artificial intelligence and machine learning have been a godsend to IT security professionals, enabling them to detect malware sooner--even the moment it enters the wild--keeping networks more secure and corporate assets safer. But the same technologies that are supercharging network defenses could become a powerfully destructive counter-threat in the wrong hands, experts warn.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. Dorabot has brilliant realized that machine learning requires machine teaching. Isn't it time to get a smart robot to teach your dumb robots to be less stupid?

Should we be afraid of artificial intelligence? For me, this is a simple question with an even simpler, two letter answer: no. But not everyone agrees – many people, including the late physicist Stephen Hawking, have raised concerns that the rise of powerful AI systems could spell the end for humanity. Clearly, your view on whether AI will take over the world will depend on whether you think it can develop intelligent behaviour surpassing that of humans – something referred to as "super intelligence". So let's take a look at how likely this is, and why there is much concern about the future of AI.

Robots aren't going to take over the world, but humans could use them for some scary stuff. And in the wake of Google's latest tech revelation, many experts are agreeing with him. Google revealed its human-sounding AI assistant Google Duplex during this week's I/O conference. Google Duplex can make phone calls for users to perform tasks such as scheduling appointments and reservations -- even completing those conversations with natural, human-sounding "ums" and "uhhs." Though the technology demoed at the event is still in its early stages, it has drummed up a fair share of controversy as people debate the ethics of letting robots do the talking.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and C.E.O. of Facebook, admitted recently his company knew, in 2015, that the data firm Cambridge Analytica, which assisted with Donald Trump's election campaign, had improperly acquired information on 50 million Facebook users. "This was a breach of trust," Zuckerberg said, in a Facebook post. "We need to fix that." But that's not the only thing Facebook needs to fix. "The problem with Facebook is not just the loss of your privacy and the fact that it can be used as a totalitarian panopticon," said François Chollet, an artificial intelligence and machine learning software engineer at Google DeepMind, in a tweet yesterday.