Google DeepMind AI program AlphaGo defeated human Go world champion, Lee Sedol, in a five game series. The victory draws the week-long Challenge Series tournament in South Korea to a conclusion. This win marks a major milestone for artificial intelligence research, as Go is a fairly simple game, but has proven to be infamously difficult for computers to master due to the vast number of potential moves. Many Go players say the game primarily relies on intuition as a strategy. The victory is also significant, as it marks the first time in history that an AI program beat one of the best Go players in the world.

China has been the power engine of global economic growth since the Chinese Communist Party embraced free market economics some 30 years ago. What leveraged China's momentous success has been its people, or - to be more precise - the enormous number of cheap labour that migrated from the rural areas to the cities, some of which had to be built from scratch in order to accommodate millions of new residents. Low wages, foreign investment and open markets made China the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. But things have changed since those halcyon days of easy growth. Labour supply in China has become increasingly scarcer, a fact reflected in the almost exponential rise of wages since the beginning of the 2000s.

Deep in the heart of Imperial College, London, a computer is learning how to play Pac-Man. Like many humans, it struggles to get the hang of the classic 1980s video game at first. With time though, experience helps it decide which manoeuvres will allow it to evade the clutches of a relentless gang of animated ghosts. This is just one of dozens of artificial intelligence (AI) projects slowly transforming the UK into the global hub for a technology that elicits fascination and fear in equal measure. The point of teaching a computer to master Pac-Man is to help it "think" and learn like a human.

Your son is hanging out with friends behind the VR theatre when someone pulls a knife: they're being robbed. He hits a panic button on his phone, and a nearby drone is instantly dispatched. Less than 30 seconds later it's in the alley, sirens wailing and lights flashing, recording everything to be transmitted to the police. The technology for that scenario exists today. Add a dash of image recognition, or take it another step and put a taser (or a miniaturized version of the heat ray) on the device, and you have the automation of emergency response services.

With flashy AI technology like IBM's Watson and Google's driverless cars stealing headlines and outperforming their human competitors, it's clear that our economy is bracing for a fundamental shift in how we perform work. What's less obvious, however, is exactly what the workplace of the future will look like. A pair of Oxford researchers recently estimated that 47 percent of the total U.S. employment is at risk of being eliminated. On the other end of the spectrum, Mercedes announced it is trading out some of its production robots for human labor -- the machines could not keep up with the increasing options for customization. While these two camps continue to argue, in this article we'll explore three robotic trends that the prevailing media have missed in their coverage of the future of jobs -- trends that will hold true if we continue this automation trajectory.

If you have always wanted a cat, but can't choose between a plump and lazy tabby or a playful and slinky Siamese, a new online service could help. Experts have come up with an algorithm to match cats looking for a home with would-be doting owners, based on their personality. PawsLikeMe has been likened to eHarmony and hopes to make people's choices'more than fur deep' so less cats will need re-homing again. The Orlando Florida-based initiative built an algorithm to match dogs with new owners last year and since then, two million people in the US have used the'first ever human-to-pet matching algorithm' to find a furry friend. It claims to be 90 per cent accurate in predicting people-to-pet compatibility. Now it's raising money on Indiegogo to collect enough funds to roll out a version for cats.

Will a robot steal your job or help make you a better one? The evidence points to the increased role of automation in the workplace: as many as 70 per cent of executives plan to significantly increase their investments in AI-related technologies, according to consultant Accenture. What's the best way to take advantage of robotics, automation, and AI? And how can CIOs help the business to evaluate these opportunities and create a boost in productivity and performance? How can executives best understand the role of the robots?

Some of the most promising work is already taking place in healthcare, where cognitive computing is identifying insights that can be used by doctors in their fight against deadly and chronic diseases. Cancer centers in New York, North Carolina, India and Thailand are using these systems to help their doctors in their efforts to provide personalized, evidence-based cancer care tailored to each patient's unique needs. Hospitals in Colorado are helping patients with heart disease adopt--and stick with--heart–healthy behaviors, aiming to help prevent future costly hospital stays. And a new study in California is using technology to determine whether it is possible to predict veterans at risk for long-term PTSD and then customize treatment recommendations to help address the devastating condition.

Despite the various, and staggering, leaps made by computer scientists, critics argue that machines will never truly match humans until they gain consciousness. Considered a uniquely human trait, consciousness includes being sentient and self-aware, as well as aware of your surroundings. However, many scientists argue animals are as conscious as humans, and the theory of Phi could one day be used to determine if droids are capable of showing such behaviour. Matthew Davidson, PhD Candidate in the neuroscience of consciousness at Monash University has explained what the Phi theory is, and why it is significant, in an article for The Conversation. How and why circumstances may give rise to consciousness remain some of the most puzzling questions in science. Do you think that the machine you are reading this story on, right now, has a feeling of'what it is like' to be in its state?

In Japan, humanoid robots are seen as an important part of the solution to the looming double problem of a shortage of labor and an aging society. The first challenge is for robots to be seen as a normal part of society by helping out with everyday tasks, which is why Aldebaran Robotics' diminutive NAO robot recently undertook a two week internship at the main Mitsubishi UFJ bank in central Tokyo. Gizmag called in to see how NAO was doing. NAO was created in 2006 and most recently came to our attention when helping kids learn to write in Switzerland. During the two week internship in Tokyo, NAO helped customers with questions or queries they had, in Chinese and English as well as Japanese.