The rise of military ‘killer robots’ is almost inevitable and any attempt at an international ban will struggle to stop an arms race, according to a former defence chief who was responsible for predicting the future of warfare.

Artificial intelligence researchers at MIT have developed a virtual reality system for robots that allows humans to control them remotely. The system works by using hand controllers and multiple sensor displays to enable users to teleoperate a robot using an Oculus Rift headset. A paper detailing the system was presented this week at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Robots are taking over Wall Street. “Technology has utterly transformed the financial system,” says Andrew Lo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “The vast majority of day-to-day trading is done purely algorithmically.” More and more human traders are being shown the door. And researchers like Lo are beginning to find that the more the stock market is run by machines, the less it behaves like one.

Sophia, a humanoid artificially intelligent robot, became the first robot in the world to receive a Saudi citizenship, on Wednesday. At the Future Investment Initiative conference, the Kingdom announced that they were granting her citizenship. In the video shared online, Sophia said she was honoured to receive her citizenship. "I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction. This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship," she said.

Fairly regularly, I receive pitches from companies talking about the benefits of automation, and how the streamlined workplace is nothing but beneficial for workers, who will be able to work faster and be happier. These companies tout that automation will “support you in becoming an innovative visionary” and “isn’t going to steal your job, it’s going to make it more fun.”

Hundreds of artificial intelligence experts have urged the Canadian and Australian governments to ban “killer robots”. They say that delegating life-or-death decisions to machines crosses “a clear moral line”, and that the development of autonomous weapons will result in machines, rather than people, deciding who lives and who dies. Such systems, including drones, military robots and unmanned vehicles, should be treated in the same way as chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear weapons, they say.

Harvard’s robot bees have really evolved over the years. The RoboBee project was first unveiled in 2013, when the bots were only capable of takeoff and flying. Since then, they’ve been modified to stick to surfaces and swim underwater, and now their creators say they’re able to dive in and out of water — a big achievement for a tiny robot bee.

Elon Musk believes it’s highly likely that artificial intelligence (AI) will be a threat to people. The Tesla founder is concerned that a handful of major companies will end up in control of AI systems with “extreme” levels of power. In Mr Musk’s opinion, there’s a very small chance that humans will be safe from such systems. 

The sex doll industry is on the verge of greatness, in its own special way. Soon the Stepford Wives of science fiction will become real, thanks to the magic of AI. Men will be able to create their perfect, subservient silicon partner that knows their hopes, dreams, fears, and fantasies.

There are 170,000 fewer retail jobs in 2017. But Amazon will have hired 75,000 shiny new robots just this year.

Robots that trundle along sidewalks R2D2-style to deliver takeout food or packages are still in early test phases. Few even exist. But San Francisco is cracking down on them, and that may stem from mounting concerns about automation gobbling up jobs. On Tuesday night, San Francisco's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed tough new regulations that will limit companies to three robots each; limit the city to nine robots total; and confine robots to industrial areas where almost no one lives - all of which makes it hard to test their basic function of delivering goods to consumers.

Chances are you’ve seen this tomato-sorting machine before. Video footage of it goes viral on a semi-regular basis, as with this clip above, tweeted by @MachinePix this week. As mechanical contraptions go, it’s impressively fast and unnervingly precise. It’s sorting tomatoes, but it looks like the fingers of God flicked damned souls straight into hell.

Researchers at Tohoku University and Hokkaido University have, for the first time, succeeded in developing a robot capable of immediately adapting to unexpected physical damage. This is a significant breakthrough as robots are increasingly expected to function in tough environments under hazardous conditions.

The robots are coming for your job, but they’re also coming for your tomatoes. Specifically, they’re coming for your tomatoes while they’re on the vine so they can pick them and give them to you, while also taking your job picking tomatoes. Panasonic recently unveiled a new robot that can pick tomatoes from a vine as fast as a human worker...

Europe is better equipped to cope with the seismic shift automation will unleash upon the global workforce than the US, Intel’s head of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has warned. Workers in Europe have greater access to the education they may require to adjust to the significant changes robots, AI and other technologies will have bring to their industries than their US counterparts, according to the chipmaker’s vice president and general manager of AI, Naveen Rao.

Android robots are seen at the reception desk of Henn na Hotel Tokyo Ginza in Tokyo, Japan.

Researchers in Germany have developed a robot that is about a seventh of an inch long and looks at first like no more than a tiny strip of something rubbery. Then it starts moving. The robot walks, jumps, crawls, rolls and swims. It even climbs out of the pool, moving from a watery environment into a dry one.

As robots start to enter public spaces and work alongside humans, the need for safety measures has become more pressing, argue academics. Robots should be fitted with an “ethical black box” to keep track of their decisions and enable them to explain their actions when accidents happen, researchers say. The need for such a safety measure has become more pressing as robots have spread beyond the controlled environments of industrial production lines to work alongside humans as driverless cars, security guards, carers and customer assistants, they claim.

Your next home could be built by robots. Designed by Construction Robotics, this robot mason is named SAM 100, short for "Semi-Automated Mason." According to Construction Robotics, the bot can place between 300 and 400 bricks an hour, compared to a human which can only lay around 60 to 75 bricks an hour.

Digital Information World recently published an infographic that outlines the trends in AI and machine learning to be expected in 2018. The research comes from CB Insights, Callaghan Innovation, PwCDigital, Forrester, and Gartner. Businesses, particularly in the healthcare, finance, commerce and agriculture industries, are increasingly investing in AI and machine learning solutions.