Artificial Intelligence (AI) is developing fast and its application across industries could, and arguably should, be about to reshape the way we structure our approach to labour and the workforce. Given this proposition, we need to examine exactly what so-called'machine intelligence' in the shape of AI could bring to modern business processes. The World Government Summit has tabled precisely this kind of question across its futurist and information intelligence tracks this year, so who benefits first and which industries could put AI to work hardest? The important thing to remember about AI is that it can eradicate'donkey' work. Or to put it in more refined terms, AI can help reduce some of the base-level functions and roles that every business structures itself around.

Nvidia is on a quest to find the most disruptive artificial intelligence startups. This quest is part of a larger contest dubbed Nvidia Inception, which is screening more than 600 entrants to cull the best AI startups in three big categories. We wrote about the first four candidates for the hottest emerging startup on Friday. And now we're focusing on the next five candidates in the category dubbed the "most disruptive" startups. Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia, hosted a Shark Tank-style event this week as part of the search to find the best AI startups.

Businesses in general recognize the critical need to believe in, and invest in, disruptive, innovative technologies. Yet many are plagued by inertia and indecision. Many banks certainly suffer from this pair of troubles. However, it also seems that the banking industry, as a whole, is breaking out of tech ennui in a very particular way--by adopting artificial intelligence applications. On the downer side, a survey sponsored by Dell EMC and conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group collected responses from 1,000 executives at a variety of large global companies.

I keep hearing that 2017 will be the year bots really take off. There is no question that they offer numerous benefits, especially when it comes to reducing costs and improving customer service. More and more brands are waking up to the benefits bots deliver for enhancing customer engagement platforms. For many of the most common inquiries, delivering responses either through enhanced text messaging on mobile applications, through secure presentation of customer information and records, and through voice recognition and automated voice response can deliver a much faster and more satisfying experience for the consumer, while also dramatically lowering the cost to serve customers as fewer agents, and less infrastructure are required. That isn't the goal; instead bots are growing as cost-effective human helpers.

Fans of a golden era of 90s gaming can rejoice, Yooka-Laylee is here to offer a trip down memory lane without the need to dust off your old N64 controller. Billed as a spiritual successor to the likes of Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong Country, the game was brought to life by a group of ex-Rare staffers and hundreds of nostalgic 20-somethings who pumped £2 million into their Kickstarter. With its cheeky script, googly-eyed talking objects, and catchy soundtrack, this is a third Banjo game in all but name. You play as both Yooka amd Laylee, a patient lizard and mouthy bat who rounding up missing Pagies to keep them from the grasp of baddie Capital B, a Donald Trump-esque publishing mogul who's stealing books for profit. Tracking these down sees the duo explore a series of ever-expanding worlds, including an icy castle and gloomy bog.

The chances of a government shutdown just went up. After all of the news over the past week -- North Korea, the special congressional election in Georgia, the White House trying to resuscitate health care (again) -- this could be the story that drives the weekend and next week: The chances of a government shutdown just increased. "White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that he hopes to use negotiations to keep the government open past April 28 in an effort to force Democrats to back some funding for creating a new wall along the U.S.-Mexico border," the Washington Post writes. "Mulvaney said the White House would be open to funding some of the Democrats' priorities -- such as paying insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act -- if Democrats agree to fund some of the more controversial parts of President Trump's agenda, notably the border wall." If this is the White House's position, it could be precarious: Democrats (and even some Republicans) are opposed to spending money for Trump's border wall.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis (R) greets an airman as he boards a U.S. Air Force C-17 for a day trip to a U.S. military base in Djibouti from Doha, Qatar April 23, 2017. DJIBOUTI -- U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Sunday visited Djibouti to bolster ties with the tiny and impoverished African country that is home to an important base for U.S. counterterrorism forces, including drones. Mattis, the first Trump administration official to visit Djibouti, planned to meet with President Ismail Omar Guelleh and greet U.S. and French troops. He was accompanied by Marine Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, head of U.S. Africa Command. The U.S. operates drone aircraft from Djibouti for surveillance and combat missions against al-Qaida-affiliated extremists in Somalia and elsewhere in the region.

Agriculture has come a long way in the past century. We produce more food than ever before -- but our current model is unsustainable, and as the world's population rapidly approaches the 8 billion mark, modern food production methods will need a radical transformation if they're going to keep up. But luckily, there's a range of new technologies that might make it possible. In this series, we'll explore some of the innovative new solutions that farmers, scientists, and entrepreneurs are working on to make sure that nobody goes hungry in our increasingly crowded world. In Thomas Malthus' seminal -- though oft criticized -- 1798 work, An Essay on the Principle of Population, the economist took a long view of human history, observing that human populations, when they have an abundance of food, grow until they strain their resources, at which point scarcity sets in.

By Aakar Patel There is a cliff approaching fast that India is unprepared for. It's in the near future and will be upon us in 25 or 30 years, according to the people who have understood it best. In brief it is the creation of an artificial intelligence that is smarter than man. Once this is created, it will replicate itself and improve itself faster than we can imagine, leave alone compete with. Science writers call this moment the technological singularity.

From driverless cars to smartphone apps offering instant translation, the evidence of rapid progress in artificial intelligence is now clear to see. On this week's Tech Tent we report on two tech giants, Facebook and Baidu, which are spending heavily on artificial intelligence research. And we meet the man who was among the first to predict just how disruptive the automation revolution was going to be. When a book called The Second Machine Age was published in 2014 it had a far greater impact than most academic works. But the timing of Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee's book about the wave of automation sweeping through the workplace was perfect, as the world woke up to the rapid progress of computing and robotics and grew anxious about it.