The mention of the words Artificial Intelligence (AI) conjures up science fiction-like images in the minds of many people, but it is becoming a very real part of day to day life without us even realising it. AI is and has been making a lasting impression on a number of key industries, not only streamlining otherwise tedious processes but also changing the way business is conducted on a much larger scale. Elnur Amikishiyev via 123RF 1. Education AI will likely be used predominantly to take the labour out of admin during the early stages of implementation, taking over things like grading assignments, recording marks, and any other computational tasks where machines could surpass people. The human element, however, will remain a constant in the form of teachers who will have greater freedom to focus on students' individual needs and finding ways to fill gaps in learning. Most notably AI is used to mark multiple-choice tests, but advancements in machine learning could soon enable it to evaluate and efficiently mark written responses. The technology could also be utilised to make the enrollment and admissions processes at educational institutions more efficient.

At Callaway, the high-end golf-equipment stalwart, the process of making clubs has always been quite labor-intensive--from grinding and polishing clubheads to crafting wood-and-steel-shafted irons and wedges. The company has also long combined such artisanal handwork with technological innovation, even partnering with aerospace titan Boeing recently to codesign several aerodynamic clubs. So when the company set out about four years ago to make its latest club line, called Epic Flash, it took the next evolutionary technological step, turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning for help. A typical club-design process might involve five to seven physical prototypes; for Epic Flash, Callaway created 15,000 virtual ones. From those, an algorithm determined the best design, selecting for peak performance--i.e., ball speed--while also conforming to the rules set forth by the U.S. Golf Association.

The British-led mission to test techniques to clear up space junk has demonstrated a harpoon in orbit. The RemoveDebris satellite fired the projectile into a target board held at a distance on the end of a boom. Video of the event shows the miniature spear fly straight and true, and with such force that it actually breaks the target structure. But, importantly, the harpoon's barbs deploy and hold on to the board, preventing it from floating away. Prof Guglielmo Aglietti, from the University of Surrey in Guildford, is the principal investigator on the mission.

Killer robots are a'grave threat to humanity' and should be banned, the world's largest gathering of scientists was told. As yet, robot soldiers and security guards armed with lethal weapons are largely science fiction concepts. But advances in artificial intelligence mean it is only a matter of time before robots with the power to select and attack targets without human input become widespread. Killer robots, similar to the Terminator played by Arnold Schwarzenegger (pictured), are a'grave threat to humanity' and should be banned, the world's largest gathering of scientists was told (stock image) Scientists and human rights campaigners told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Washington DC lethal droids able to select targets without human help represent the'third revolution' in warfare after gun powder and nuclear weapons. Just as international agreements greatly restricted the use of landmines, similar international agreements should be used to prevent robotic killers becoming established.

So read the T-shirt sported by Ben Recht, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, as he collected an award at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference this week. Dr Recht, pictured above in lecture mode, was protesting against the flood of corporate money pouring into NIPS, aping the words Kurt Cobain wrote on a T-shirt when he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1992. "It's not an academic conference anymore," Dr Recht says wistfully, perched in the Californian sun on the steps of the Long Beach Convention Centre. He complains that folk would rather go to corporate-sponsored parties these days (Intel's featured Flo Rida, a rapper), than poster sessions. AI, it seems, is the new rock and roll.

The U.S. Department of Defense on Feb. 12 released its roadmap for artificial intelligence, and the most interesting thing about it might be what's missing from the report: The military is nowhere close to building a lethal weapon capable of thinking and acting on its own. As it turns out, the military applications of artificial intelligence today and in the foreseeable future are much more mundane. The Defense Department has several pilot projects in the works that focus on using AI to solve everyday problems such as floods, fires, and maintenance, said U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who heads up the Pentagon's new Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. "We are nowhere close to the full autonomy question that most people seem to leap to a conclusion on when they think about DoD and AI," Shanahan said during a briefing Tuesday. It's not that Department of Defense hasn't given the idea of fully autonomous weapons much thought.

The expanding use of AI is attracting new attention to the importance of workforce diversity. Although tech companies have stepped up efforts to recruit women and minorities, computer and software professionals who write AI programs are still largely white and male, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. Developers testing their products often rely on data sets that lack adequate representation of women or minority groups. One widely used data set is more than 74% male and 83% white, research shows. Thus, when engineers test algorithms on these databases with high numbers of people like themselves, they may work fine.

Ecosia, a German startup with an internet search engine, today, has brought in enough revenues to enable it to plant 50 million trees. This equates to the removal of 2.5 million tonnes of Co2 from the atmosphere, according to the company. Ecosia has used the profits from advertisements on its search engine to plant trees in Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, Spain, Tanzania, Madagascar, Colombia, Peru, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Morocco, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana and Nicaragua. Ecosia has partnered with Bing, Microsoft's search engine, to get results for users, but receives a majority portion of any revenues. After covering its internal costs, everything left goes towards planting trees; Ecosia is a non-profit organization.

A new WIPO flagship study has documented a massive recent surge in artificial intelligence-based inventions, with U.S.-based companies IBM and Microsoft leading the pack as AI has moved from the theoretical realm toward the global marketplace in recent years. The first publication in the "WIPO Technology Trends" series defines and measures innovations in artificial intelligence (AI), uncovering more than 340,000 AI-related patent applications and 1.6 million scientific papers published since AI first emerged in the 1950s, with the majority of all AI-related patent filings published since 2013. This inaugural Technology Trends report provides a common information base on AI for policy and decision makers in government and business, as well as concerned citizens across the globe, who are grappling with the ramifications of a new technology that promises to upend many areas of economic, social and cultural activity. "Patenting activity in the artificial intelligence realm is rising at a rapid pace, meaning we can expect a very significant number of new AI-based products, applications and techniques that will alter our daily lives – and also shape future human interaction with the machines we created," said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. "AI's ramifications for the future of human development are profound. The first step in maximizing the widespread benefit of AI, while addressing ethical, legal and regulatory challenges, is to create a common factual basis for understanding of artificial intelligence. In unveiling the first in our "WIPO Technology Trends" series, WIPO is pleased to contribute evidence-based projections, thereby informing global policymaking on the future of AI, its governance and the IP framework that supports it," said Mr. Gurry.

Man's closest animal relative, chimps, communicate in a distinctly'human-like' way, scientists have found. The primates use gestures that follow some of the same rules as basic human language. One was Zipf's law of abbreviation, which says commonly used words tend to be shorter, and the other is Menzerath's law, which predicts that larger linguistic structures are made up of shorter parts - such as syllables within spoken words. Experts made the discovery after studying videos of wild chimps living in Uganda's Budongo Forest Reserve. Chimpanzee sign language apes the way humans communicate, research has shown.