The Future of Life Institute has presented an open letter signed by over 1,000 robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers urging the United Nations to impose a ban on the development of weaponized AI with the capability to target and…
“Ban sex robots!” scream the tech headlines, as if they’re heralding the arrival of the latest artificial intelligence threat to humankind since autonomous killer robots. The campaign, led by academics Kathleen Richardson and Erik Billing, argues that the development of…
"Today there's no legislation regarding how much intelligence a machine can have, how interconnected it can be. If that continues, look at the exponential trend. We will reach the singularity in the time frame most experts predict. From that point…
The line between art and technology isn't just being blurred, it's being erased altogether. Painting or sketching from photographs and life, for example, is a technique that is now being mastered by robots. The latest, called eDavid, combines a camera,…
To learn more about the sea life that resides in the deepest depths of the ocean, scientists first have to be able to resist the eye-popping water pressure that exists hundreds of feet below the surface. Clearly, this is not…
A specially designed robot known as Cubestormer 3 has been used to break the world record for solving a Rubik’s Cube. The robot, which broke the previous record by more than two seconds, is powered by an octa-core Samsung Galaxy…
Designed in the late 1770s this incredible little robot called simply The Writer, was designed and built by Swiss-born watchmaker Pierre Jaquet-Droz with help from his son Henri-Louis, and Jean-Frédéric Leschot. Jaquet-Droz was one of the greatest automata designers to…
An idiot is a mentally deficient person, or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way. Archaically the word mome has also been used. An idiot is said to be idiotic, and to suffer from idiocy. A dunce…
Sex with a machine might not be so bad, say researchers, especially as an alternative to human trafficking and the resulting spread of sexually transmitted infections. Women solicit customers in Amsterdam's Red Light District: The Dutch city's legal sex industry…
Kids, don't try this at home: A self-described "biohacker" had a big electronic chip almost as large as a deck of cards inserted beneath the skin of his arm. Without a doctor's help. And without anesthetics. Tim Cannon is a…
The US Army is working to develop "revolutionary" smart armour that would give its troops "superhuman strength". It is calling on the technology industry, government labs and academia to help build the Iron Man-style suit. Other exoskeletons that allow soldiers…
It’s no secret that in the future robots — not all, but certain ones — will be designed to kill. Certainly, we’ll have service bots a plenty that are as safe as golden retrievers, but there’s no denying that robots…
Researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated an amazing capability for small robots to self-assemble and take to the air as a multi-rotor helicopter. Maximilian Kriegleder and Raymond Oung worked with Professor Raffaello D’Andrea at his research lab to develop the…
The existence of a race of sentient alien robots might be not just possible, but inevitable. In fact, we might be living in a "postbiological universe" right now, in which intelligent extraterrestrials somewhere have exchanged organic brains for artificial ones.…
There might not be flying cars or commercial space travel yet, but there is Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” being covered by robots. These machines have charisma, look awesome, and play all of the instruments, not just bass. And while it…
Meet Vincent and Emily. They're a robotic couple created by artists Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler and Carolin Liebl as an examination of human relationships. The two machines are programmed to react to sound and movement, moving their robotic heads or making a…
If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? The question of what happens when machines get to be as intelligent as and even more intelligent than people seems to occupy many science-fiction…
The promise of what the future will bring always makes me incredibly hopeful. I know that technology will shape our future in exciting ways that few people can imagine, but I think about this all the time. Thankfully filmmakers like…
Bossa Nova Robotics, a spin-off of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, has announced a new research platform called mObi. The mObi platform is based on a design by Professor Ralph Hollis, who developed a robot that balanced and moved on…
The technological revolution in modern warfare isn't just a matter of super-lightweight uniforms, night goggles, and ultra-computerized weaponry. Consider the unmanned aerial vehicles better known as drones. Barely a blip on military blueprints a decade ago, drones now make up…