VIENNA – Edmund Rath, a 53-year-old from Austria, wants to do simple things such as brush his teeth and slice bread. Most people take such activities for granted but not Rath, who lost his arm just below the shoulder in a truck accident last year that ended his career as a builder. That bad luck was followed by a stroke of fortune. He was chosen by Austrian surgeons as the first person to have a single operation in May to install a click-on prosthesis that the brain controls with signals to the missing hand. The procedure, known as osseointegration (OI), involved implanting a metal rod into the bone of his residual limb.

When you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but the world starts to look more interesting if your hammer can change shape. For the builders of a class of robots called modular self-reconfigurable robots (MSRR), shape-shifting is the first step toward endowing robots with an animal-like adaptability to unknown situations. "The question of autonomy becomes more complicated, more interesting," when robots can change themselves to meet changing circumstances, said roboticist Hadas Kress-Gazit of Cornell University. The key to achieving adaptability for robots rests in centralized sensory processing, environmental perception, and decision-making software, Kress-Gazit and colleagues report this week in a new paper in Science Robotics. The authors claim their new work represents the first time a modular robot has autonomously solved problems by reconfiguring in response to a changing environment.

UK businesses are at risk of falling behind international rivals because of a failure to use more artificial intelligence, a report by Microsoft has warned. The computing giant found that more than half of UK leaders have no AI strategy in place within their organisation. More than a third admit they are not focused on AI at all, while studies suggest that organisations making use of AI are outperforming those who aren't by five per cent. UK businesses are at risk of falling behind international rivals because of a failure to use more artificial intelligence, a report by Microsoft has warned. Of the 1,000 business leaders surveyed in partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London and YouGov, four in ten said that they believe their current business model will cease to exist within five years.

The dream of having a robot deliver packages to your home is now real, provided you live in the right part of the UK. Starship Technologies has launched a ground-based robot package service (the first in the world, according to the company) in Milton Keynes. You have to tell companies to ship to a Starship facility instead of your usual destination, but after that it's just a matter of using a mobile app to schedule a robotic delivery at a convenient time. You can track the bot in the app if you're anxiously awaiting an order. You won't have to wait long to try this on the other side of the Atlantic.

In the future, you might talk to an AI to cross borders in the European Union. The EU and Hungary's National Police will run a six-month pilot project, iBorderCtrl, that will help screen travelers in Hungary, Greece and Latvia. The system will have you upload photos of your passport, visa and proof of funds, and then use a webcam to answer basic questions from a personalized AI border agent. The virtual officer will use AI to detect the facial microexpressions that can reveal when someone is lying. At the border, human agents will use that info to determine what to do next -- if there are signs of lying or a photo mismatch, they'll perform a more stringent check.

Cohda Wireless has demonstrated the ability of its driverless car technology to see around corners and locate other vehicles in an'urban canyon' as part of a world-first trial in South Australia. The trial, conducted in a two-block section in the centre of the Adelaide CBD, revealed how smart connected vehicles can detect and respond to risky situations more effectively than a human in a scenario thought to be commonplace in built-up city areas. During the trial, two vehicles approached a four-way intersection at right angles to each other. Tall buildings on each corner of the intersection obstructed the view of the other approaching car. Car 2, driven by a human, fails to adhere to the red-light signal and approaches the intersection at speed, intending to'run' the red light.

AI has broken out of the lab. It's changing how we get to work and how doctors diagnose disease. And now it promises to help prevent illnesses and speed up relief efforts after natural disasters. Kicking off the Washington edition of our GPU Technology Conference Tuesday -- our fourth such show in just over a month -- NVIDIA Vice President for Accelerated Computing Ian Buck announced a partnership between NVIDIA and Carnegie Mellon University to create AI technologies that can help during disasters. "We're now in the age of AI, where every industry will be enabled and powered by AI," Buck told an audience of more than 2,000 developers, entrepreneurs and federal employees at the start of the two-day GTC DC event.

Religious conflict can occur when a group of people who share the same belief or religion feel threatened by another expanding group. This xenophobia then becomes violent in 20 per cent of cases when people start to question their own beliefs and ideals. An international team of resarchers used artificial intelligence to create a virtual world with various'agents' that interacted with one another. This is the first time this form of AI has been used in research and the scientists claim the findings can be used to support governments address and prevent terrorism and social conflict. The software is a psychologically realistic model of a human that mimics how we think and identify with particular groups.

With Google announcing a new £19m fund for businesses using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address environmental and social issues, edie looks at nine projects that have already delivered notable benefits for business. According to PwC, the global economy could see a potential contribution of $15.7trn from AI by 2030 Google has today (30 October) issued a rallying cry to the tech-savvy businesses of the world. The technology giant has launched a $25m (£19m) Impact Challenge, where organisations of all sizes can submit concepts for how AI can be used to alleviate and address key societal and environmental challenges. "We're looking for projects across a range of social impact domains and levels of technical expertise, from organisations that are experienced in AI to those with an idea for how they could be putting their data to better use," a Google blog post reads. Successful applicants will need to consider feasibility, scalability and responsibility of the AI concept, and will gain access to the funding pool and credit and consulting from Google Cloud.

The promise of artificial intelligence (AI) suggests that machines will augment human understanding by automating decision-making. Josh Parenteau, Director of Market Intelligence at Tableau explained how artificial intelligence and machine learning will act as another perspective, "helping uncover those insights that have gone previously undiscovered." Gartner research indicates that by 2020, "85% of CIOs will be piloting artificial intelligence programs through a combination of buy, build, and outsource efforts." But as organizations become more reliant on machine learning models, how can humans be sure that these recommendations are trustworthy? Many machine learning applications don't currently have a way to "look under the hood" to understand the algorithms or logic behind decisions and recommendations, so organizations piloting AI programs are rightfully concerned about widespread adoption.