Yuval Noah Harari's first book, Sapiens, was an international sensation. The Israeli historian's mind-bending tour through the triumph of Homo sapiens is a favorite of, among others, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Barack Obama. His new book, Homo Deus: a Brief History of Tomorrow, is about what comes next for humanity -- and the threat our own intelligence and creative capacity poses to our future. I spoke with Harari recently for my podcast, The Ezra Klein Show. To hear our whole conversation, subscribe on iTunes (or wherever you get your podcasts) or stream it off SoundCloud. In this excerpt, which has been edited for length and clarity, Harari and I discuss the rise of artificial intelligence, whether digital consciousness is a necessary byproduct of digital intelligence, and what it will all mean for human beings. As you'll see, I'm a bit less convinced than Harari is that the computers are coming for our jobs, and that human beings are on the edge of economic uselessness.

Early-stage venture fund, pi Ventures has secured an undisclosed amount of investment from venture capital fund Accel Partners. The World Bank's financial arm, International Finance Corporation (IFC) has also proposed to make an equity investment of $3 Mn in the fund. This investment would be made through the IFC Startup Catalyst (ISC) programme. Commenting on the development, Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures said, "Accel has played a key role as they have been good mentors and go to guys for us. We are working on some investments along with them as well. So, it is good to get them on board as investors in the fund. Also, we are excited that IFC is considering us. The process is still on."

The Bonassama District Hospital in Douala, Cameroon and six other African hospitals are adopting SOPHiA to – no matter their experience in genomic testing – get up to speed and analyze genomic data to identify disease-causing mutations in patients' genomic profiles, and decide on the most effective care. A release from the global leader in Data-Driven Medicine, Sophia Genetics, says in addition to the Bonassama district hospital, the modern technology is being adopted by Pharma Process in Casablanca, Morocco; ImmCell in Rabat, Morocco; The Al Azhar Oncology Center in Rabat, Morocco; The Riad Biology Center in Rabat, Morocco; The Oudayas, Medical Analysis Laboratory, Morocco;and The Center for Proteomic & Genomic Research (CPGR) in Cape Town, South Africa. As new users of SOPHiA, they become part of a larger network of 260 hospitals in 46 countries that share clinical insights across patient cases and patient populations, which feeds a knowledgebase of biomedical findings to accelerate diagnostics and care. Speaking about the adoption of SOPHiA in Africa, Jurgi Camblong, Sophia Genetics' CEO and co-founder, declared: "Since inception, our vision has been to develop innovative technological solutions that analyze patients' genomic profiles to offer better diagnosis and care to the greatest number of patients, wherever they live. Today, I am very proud that SOPHiA is triggering a technological leapfrog movement in healthcare across Africa."

Here are some incredibly smart people that are pushing boundaries and/or doing some incredibly inventive things in emerging technology and other areas. Whether it's healthcare, news or immersive technologies - these are the people you'll be hearing a lot more from - collaborate with them now and be a bigger part of the future. Burrell was described as "offering new thinking and fresh ideas to strengthen the future of broadcasting" after taking top honors at the National Association of Broadcasters Innovation Pilot Award for "In Your Shoes" (a broadcast and 360 VR series), Recently working with heavy-hitters like Steven Spielberg's virtual reality company ('The VR Company'), Burrell's work with Oculus has been considered for an Interactive Emmy ("Take Back the Mic: The World Cup of Hip Hop"). Recently returning from South Africa where she created a partnership with Ndaba Mandela (grandson to Nelson Mandela and Founder of Africa Rising), to bring the coding, robotics and emerging technology program permanently to the continent. IN HER OWN WORDS: "There's a strong feeling of uncertainty in the world right now, but when we ask ourselves, 'how can I use the the tools of today and the technology of tomorrow to harness something meaningful and good', we are empowered to reshape our experience of the world."

Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to hit the road in an alternative fashion to driverless cars, thanks to an AI powered concept tyre from Goodyear. The tyre maker debuted the Eagle 360 Urban, a 3D printed sensor-leaden spherical tyre with feeds back road data into an AI'brain' allowing for the tyre to by dynamically adjusted to suit changing road conditions. Covered in a super-elastic polymer that acts as a form of bionic skin for the tyre, and a morphing tread, the Eagle 360 Urban can use actuators to dynamically change the tread design of the tyre without compromising its support of the vehicles it is connected to. This allows the tyre to be adjusted for different driving conditions on the fly, for example in wet conditions dimples can be added to the treads to provide extra grip, while in dry conditions the tyre can be smoothed out to allow for smoother driving. If the bionic skin is damaged, the tyre's sensors will detect the problem and prompt the tyre to rotate to avoid contact of the damaged section with the road, thereby reducing pressure on that section of the tyre and allowing a self-healing process to start through the use of material that react physically and chemically together to form monocular bonds to repair punctures.

Seven million years ago, the first ancestors of mankind appeared in Africa and seven million years later, as we speak, mankind's existence is being traced by archaeologists in South Africa, where they believe they are finding several missing links in our history. A history traced back to the first hominid forms. What is a hominid, I hear you say, and when did it exist? Well, way back when scientists believe that the Eurasian and American tectonic plates collided and then settled, creating a massive flat area in Africa, after the Ice Age. This new massive field was flat for hundreds of miles, as far as the eye could see, and the apes that inhabited this land suddenly found there were no trees to climb. This meant that the apes found it hard going thundering over hundreds of miles on their hands and feet, so they started to stand up to make it easier to move over the land. This resulted in a change in the wiring of the brain, which, over thousands of years, led to the early forms of what is now recognized as human. The first link to understanding this chain was the discovery of Lucy. Lucy--named after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"--is the first skeleton that could be pieced together to show how these early human forms appeared on the African plains in the post-Ice Age world. The skeleton was found in the early 1970s in Ethiopia by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson and is an early example of the hominid australopithecine, dating back to about 3.2 million years ago. The skeleton presents a small skull akin to that of most apes, plus evidence of a walking gait that was bipedal and upright, similar to that of humans and other hominids. This combination supports the view of human evolution that bipedalism preceded an increase in brain size. Since Lucy was found, there have been many other astonishing discoveries in what is now called the "Cradle of Humankind" in South Africa, a Unesco World Heritage site.

More than a third of U.S. jobs could be at "high risk" of automation by the early 2030s, a percentage that's greater than in Britain, Germany and Japan, according to a report released Friday. The analysis by accounting and consulting firm PwC focused primarily on the economic outlook in Britain, but it included a section on automation in Britain and elsewhere. In the U.S., 38% of jobs could be at risk of automation, compared with 30% in Britain, 35% in Germany and 21% in Japan. The automation of factories is a big factor for job loss in the U.S. The automation of factories is a big factor for job loss in the U.S. The report emphasizes that these estimates are based on the anticipated capabilities of robotics and artificial intelligence by the early 2030s, and that the pace and direction of technological progress are "uncertain." The key issue is not that the U.S. has more jobs in sectors that are universally ripe for automation, the report says; rather, it's that more U.S. jobs in certain sectors are potentially vulnerable than, say, British jobs in the same sectors.

"Plant breeding is another interesting application we're pursuing, where robotically gathered plant phenotype data can be collected over much larger breeding experiments that current manual measurement techniques allow," said Kantor. "Machine learning tools can then combine the collected phenotype data with genetic and environmental data to help a breeders and geneticists better understand the relationships between genetics, environment, and plant performance." "This in turn accelerates the breeding process, allowing breeders to evaluate many more plants each season so that they can more quickly select for desirable traits such as yield or disease resistance," adds Kantor. Kantor says this kind of accelerated breeding program could have significant benefit in the developing world such as Subsaharan Africa. The FarmView initiative wants to develop inexpensive robotic systems that small- to medium-scale growers can afford to implement.

We have stopped thinking about AI as a domain for rocket scientists only. Last year was a hugely significant year for artificial intelligence. It was a year of spectacular achievement. For the first time a system was created with the ability to defeat a human at the impossibly strategic game of Go (a feat that has been 20 years in development). And it was the year in which deep learning became the buzzword because although neural network techniques have been used to teach machines for more than 30 years, the deep learning variant is the one that gives a machine second life.

NASA's highly experimental Earth Observing-1 satellite mission was supposed to last just a year. It did that, and then survived 16 more--all the while testing NASA's riskiest, oddball ideas. It's been a proving ground for everything from multi- and hyperspectral imagers, to a self-piloting AI. But EO-1 is finally out of fuel, and at the end of the month the craft's operating team will close up shop. Already out of fuel, EO-1 itself will continue to slowly shuffle off its orbital coil until it burns up in Earth's atmosphere.