Developments in artificial intelligence often draw inspiration from how humans think, but now AI has turned the tables to teach us about how brains learn. In a paper published in Nature last week, DeepMind, Alphabet’s AI subsidiary, has used lessons from reinforcement learning to propose a new revolutionary theory about the reward mechanisms within our brains. 

In another lifetime, if they had been allowed to follow their natural development, the stem cells taken from embryonic frogs would have turned into skin and heart tissue within living, breathing animals. Instead, in configurations designed by algorithms and constructed by humans, those cells have been assembled into something new and immensely revolutionary: the first-ever robots constructed entirely out of living cells.

CES 2020 kicked off a new year, and a new decade, in some style with one of the strongest line-ups of major tech launches and weird and wonderful startups the world has seen in a long time. Some of the products that debuted at this year's Consumer Electronics Show are set to be released in the months that follow, while other technologies shown off at the event are merely a taste of things to come down the road. There is one thing you can always count on though, and it’s that they are some of the most exciting technological breakthroughs of the year.

Toyota plans to build a “prototype city of the future” on a 175-acre site at the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan to test and develop new emerging technologies such as autonomous vehicles. As described by Akio Toyoda, president of the automaker, the “Woven City” would represent a “living laboratory” that will include thousands of residents and will test autonomous vehicles, robotics, personal mobility, smart homes and artificial intelligence in a real-world environment.

The US will impose new restrictions on the export of certain AI programs overseas, including to rival China. The ban, which comes into force yoday, is the first to be applied under a 2018 law known as the Export Control Reform Act or ECRA. As The Verge reports, this requires the government to examine how it can restrict the export of “emerging” technologies “essential to the national security of the United States” - including AI.

On Monday, Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua reported that He Jiankui, the researcher responsible for creating the world's first gene-edited babies, had been sentenced to three years in prison on the charge of illegally practising medicine.

NASA scientists unveiled yesterday the Mars 2020 rover, which sets forward for the Red Planet next year. It will examine the potential of Mars to have hosted life, its so called “biological potential”, how this planet compares to and contrasts with Earth, but will also facilitate future human missions.

The first Ariane space rocket lifted off over the forests of French Guiana 40 years ago, enabling Europe to at last take its place as an independent player in the international race for space. Following a number of delays and technical setbacks, Ariane 1 finally left the launch pad in Kourou at 2:13 pm local time on 24 December, 1979.

The European Space Agency (ESA) launches today a first-of-its-kind exoplanet telescope, which will perform detailed studies of hundreds of known worlds beyond the Solar System. The mission heralds a shift from missions designed to discover such planets - some 4,000 of which have now been found - to those intended to learn about them in detail, say astronomers.

Trying to get a handle on the progress of artificial intelligence is a daunting task, even for those enmeshed in the AI community. But the latest edition of the AI Index report - an annual rundown of machine learning data points now in its third year - delineates significant dimensions related to the activity in, and technical progress of AI.