I've been exploring the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) collection with data visualisation (see here). After segmenting the data by photographic technique and themes, I was interested to see if I could trace visual characteristics across the photograph collection; this is not possible by relying solely on the information in our catalogue. The collection is partly digitised and, at the time of writing, I've been working with around 1,200 items with an image and date. One way to explore an image collection visually is to use a machine-learning model to extract feature vectors from the images. Feature vectors are (multi-dimensional) numerical measures that describe the visual characteristics of an image.

The Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) is preparing for the installation of a new national supercomputer which will also be accessible via the cloud to researchers across Ireland. Linux-based cloud and high-performance computing company Penguin Computing is one of the companies involved with the project along with Intel. ZDNet talked to Penguin CEO Tom Coull to find out more. ZDNet: Tell me a little about your company. Coull: We are a platform and performance scale-out company and we have been around for almost 20 years.

Earlier this month, a report warned that over 6 million workers in the UK fear losing their jobs as a result of developments in automation. The Bank of England has gone further: its own study in 2015 estimated that 15 million British jobs could be at risk; more recently Mark Carney, the bank's governor, suggested job losses caused by the technological revolution could re-create conditions seen after the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries. The response to these warnings has been a flurry of comments in national newspapers, coloured by talk of catastrophe. But really now, robots taking over human jobs – never heard that one before? How is any of this news?

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have already established their stronghold in areas like software, industries, healthcare and even the financial sectors. AI's ability to learn and predict has made it immensely successful in the above mentioned areas. Now, scientists and technology majors are using AI to try and save millions of lives that are affected due to natural calamities like floods, storms, earthquakes and forest fires every year all over the world. Making use of the data that is already available, AI will now be able to predict storms and other natural disasters thus preventing loss of lives. After the floods wreaked havoc and lead to the death of over 300 people in Kerala recently, several established IT companies are joining hands and announcing innovations to prevent such incidents in the future.

SYDNEY – A robot submarine able to hunt and kill the predatory crown-of-thorns starfish that are devastating the Great Barrier Reef was unveiled by Australian researchers on Friday. Scientists at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) said the robot, named the RangerBot and developed with a grant from Google, would serve as a "robo reef protector" for the vast World Heritage site off Australia's northeastern coast. The RangerBot has an eight-hour battery life and computer vision capabilities allowing it to monitor and map reef areas at scales not previously possible. "RangerBot is the world's first underwater robotic system designed specifically for coral reef environments, using only robot-vision for real-time navigation, obstacle avoidance and complex science missions," said Matthew Dunbabin, the QUT professor who unveiled the submarine. "This multifunction ocean drone can monitor a wide range of issues facing coral reefs including coral bleaching, water quality, pest species, pollution and siltation."

As a sector, insurance has not been good at the kind of deep data analytics we now see from machine learning. This is especially apparent in group insurance, which has traditionally lagged the investment provided to retail or individual insurance. Give or take a few key terms, we are still, in effect, asking clients all the same questions we were more than two decades ago. With the arrival in recent years of new technology, an odd contradiction has developed in insurance. Leaders in the industry know they must move to embrace artificial intelligence but they have been hesitant to commit to – and invest in – such systems.

Air is essential for our daily survival – it is more important than food or water for us. As urbanisation processes, more and more people and industries are moving into the cities, which has an impact on urban air quality. Forecasts predict that the world population will increase from seven billion to almost ten million by 2050 of which almost seventy percent will live in cities. This clearly shows the increased importance to focus on air quality in urban areas. Actually, the air quality is already low in many areas: ninety-two percent of the world population lives in cities which fail to meet the World Health Organization's air quality guidelines.

Internet-connected robots that can stream audio and video are increasingly helping housebound sick children and elderly people keep in touch with teachers, family and friends, combating the scourge of isolation and loneliness. Zoe Johnson, 16, hasn't been to school since she was 12. She went to the doctor in 2014 "with a bit of a sore throat", and "somehow that became A&E [accident and emergency]," says her mother, Rachel Johnson. The doctors diagnosed myalgic encephalomyelitis, ME for short, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - a debilitating illness affecting the nervous and immune systems. Zoe missed a lot of school but was able to continue with her studies with the help of an online tutor.

GlaxoSmithKline recently announced a radical change in R&D spending. The British drug giant will refocus on data analytics, and the link between the immune system and human disease. It is harbinger of things to come. It is also a big opportunity for investors. GSK is trying to catch bigger trends.

The Bank of England's chief economist, Andy Haldane, has warned that artificial intelligence and machines have the potential to make a huge number of jobs obsolete, with thousands of UK workers facing unemployment due to new technology. Mr Haldane told the BBC that the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" would be on a "much greater scale" than the previous three, and said the UK will need a skills revolution to avoid unemployment on a mass scale. He said that previous industrial revolutions had "a wrenching and lengthy impact on the jobs market, on the lives and livelihoods of large swathes of society". "Jobs were effectively taken by machines of various types, there was a hollowing out of the jobs market, and that left a lot of people for a lengthy period out of work and struggling to make a living," he said. "That heightened social tensions, it heightened financial tensions, it led to a rise in inequality. This is the dark side of technological revolutions and that dark side has always been there."