Advances in AI and automation has been making the mainstream news as of late. It's not just Filipinos or Mexicans taking white people's jobs, our robot overlords are taking over the playing field too. I mean, the former is a joke but the latter is true. AI and automation will soon actually displace many people in the workforce. Think of it like when the first automobile was invented.

For some die-hard tech evangelists, using neural interfaces to merge with AI is the inevitable next step in humankind's evolution. But a group of 27 neuroscientists, ethicists, and machine learning experts have highlighted the myriad ethical pitfalls that could be waiting. To be clear, it's not just futurologists banking on the convergence of these emerging technologies. The Morningside Group estimates that private spending on neurotechnology is in the region of $100 million a year and growing fast, while in the US alone public funding since 2013 has passed the $500 million mark. The group is made up of representatives from international brain research projects, tech companies like Google and neural interface startup Kernel, and academics from the US, Canada, Europe, Israel, China, Japan, and Australia.

A smart surveillance system that can identify criminals among a database of 2 billion faces within seconds has been revealed in China. The system connects to millions of CCTV cameras and uses artificial intelligence to pick out targets. Known as'Dragonfly Eye', it has already been used in Shanghai to track down hundreds of wanted criminals, reports suggest. A smart surveillance system (pictured) that can scan 2 billion faces within seconds has been revealed in China. The system has been helping Shanghai's police force track down criminals in a city with more than 24 million inhabitants.

If you're an employee at China's Yitu Technologies, you must be used to working in an Iron Man-like world where machines around you are smarter and more efficient than you can ever be. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) that controls the office has facial recognition capability encompassing 1.8 billion faces. It has also helped to catch criminals in China. AI will create more change in the world than the industrial revolution put together, said Zhu Long, Yitu Technologies' co-founder. His statement is evident in his company's headquarters where the elevators work by reading employees' passcards automatically and dropping them on their respective floors, without even having to press a button.

A Shanghai company has claimed to have developed an AI that can recognize a face among at least two billion people in a matter of seconds. Yitu's AI algorithm Dragon Eye not only recognizes faces but with a network of connected cameras can plot the movement of their owners. "Our machines can very easily recognize you among at least two billion people in a matter of seconds," says chief executive and Yitu co-founder Zhu Long, "which would have been unbelievable just three years ago." As of now, the Dragon Eye platform has around 1.8 billion photographs to work with: those logged in China's national database and those who have ever entered through its borders. Talking to the South China Morning Post, Zhu said the objective of the algorithm is to make the world a much safer place by curbing crime.

Advances in computer technology are one of many factors that have led to the decline of certain types of jobs. To some extent, technology has always played a role in changing how people work and live: think of the internal combustion engine or factory mechanization. But today's guest on The Next Idea wonders if advances in artificial intelligence could be a tipping point into societal unrest, even revolt, because of loss of jobs. Kentaro Toyama, the W.K. Kellogg Associate Professor of Community Information at the University of Michigan School of Information, joined The Next Idea to discuss the future of artificial intelligence and his recent article in The Conversation. Listen below for the entire conversation.

From robots that can flawlessly perform backflips to electric cars that can go over 950 km (600 miles) on a single charge, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the future is far closer than we may have previously thought. If the missteps of the industrial revolution are any indicator, we need to start planning for that future today. And it seems that this is precisely what the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is trying to do. The nation's efforts are mainly concentrated in the city of Dubai, which is already home to a number of futuristic projects, including plans to create a "Mars science city" and build a real life hyperloop, programs for renewable energy and electric vehicles, and tests for flying taxis and even flying jetpacks. Dubai even has an accelerator program aimed at expediting the creation of these various futuristic technologies.

It appears Samsung has no plans of catching up and competing with Apple's Face ID facial recognition technology, which the Cupertino giant introduced with the iPhone X. A new report is now claiming that instead of working on its own 3D facial recognition technology, the South Korea giant is focused on improving its iris scanner. On Monday, Patently Apple learned that Samsung is advancing the iris recognition feature it introduced with the Galaxy S8 earlier this year. The company is said be improving the feature so the upcoming Galaxy S9 would benefit from it. Specifically, Samsung is enhancing the way the technology recognizes the user's eyes in order for it to become a credible biometric verification technology for banking transactions.

One of the scientists behind the headline-grabbing robot Sophia is now focusing on creating an app store for artificial intelligence (AI). Ben Goertzel, the chief scientist at Hong Kong-based Hanson Robotics, the company behind Sophia, has cofounded SingularityNET, a Swiss non-profit that hopes to bring together AI and blockchain technology in a marketplace in the cloud. The company aims to let AI developers upload their work to the cloud, where it can then be tapped by others for adding capabilities to robots such as Sophia. Blockchain is the technology used for verifying and recording transactions that is at the heart of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. "It will be a decentralised app store for AI," said Goertzel.

Many local governments have been seeking to develop more specialized industries, and Wuhu has targeted e-sports. In May, the city signed a deal with Tencent to build an e-sports university and a stadium for events. Other cities, like Zhongxian in the municipality of Chongqing, are also building facilities to profit from the e-sports boom.