More than one in five adults work for companies that are deploying artificial intelligence (AI)--and while these employees generally view AI positively, they also have concerns about its potential effects on their privacy, job security, and economic equality. In fact, AI users are both more optimistic about AI's benefits and more wary of its risks than nonusers. Those are the central findings of a survey of more than 7,000 people conducted in Canada, China, France, Germany, Spain, the UK, and the US by BCG GAMMA and Ipsos, a market research firm. AI adoption varies widely among countries. In China, 31% of survey respondents say they work in organisations that already use AI, followed by North America (26% in Canada, 24% in the US) and then Europe (20% in the UK; 18% in Spain, 16% in France, and 15% in Germany).

The report, in its second year having been piloted in 2017, identified artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) as technologies under the umbrella of digital transformation. The six factors for digital transformation success were determined following participation in an online survey by 1,535 c-suite executives at medium to large-sized companies based across Australia, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, the UK and the US. The six factors identified by Fujitsu were: Leadership, People, Agility, Business Integration, Ecosystem and Value from Data. The companies declaring positive outcomes from digital transformation showed showing strong capabilities in these areas. See also: Looking for leadership?

Artificial intelligence (AI) could create more jobs than it displaces in Scotland over the next 20 years, according to a report. Research by professional services firm PwC suggested AI could create 558,000 Scottish posts by 2037. Over the same period 544,000 jobs could be lost as a result of automation - resulting in a net increase of 14,000. PwC said the new jobs could come from innovations such as drones, robotics and driverless vehicles. It argued that AI would create employment as productivity and real incomes rise, and new and better products are developed. PwC's latest Economic Outlook indicated that health, education and professional, scientific and technical services would benefit most, with manufacturing, transport and storage and public administration set to be the biggest losers.

For a species that would like to see self-driving cars stick to the letter of the law, we humans don't make things easy. We let lane lines fade and stop signs fall down. We fail to mark speed limits and flag pop-up construction sites. For the most part, humans can handle this lack of clarity. For robots, it can be baffling.

Facial recognition tech is becoming more sophisticated, with some firms claiming it can even read our emotions and detect suspicious behaviour. But what implications does this have for privacy and civil liberties? Facial recognition tech has been around for decades, but it has been progressing in leaps and bounds in recent years due to advances in computing vision and artificial intelligence (AI), tech experts say. It is now being used to identify people at borders, unlock smart phones, spot criminals, and authenticate banking transactions. But some tech firms are claiming it can also assess our emotional state.

Today, we can pull out our smart phones and use various apps to enhance our everyday lives. Digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri are able to complete a number of helpful tasks in- and outside the home. Powered by complex coding and algorithms, these technologies are affecting how we interact with things around us, and even each other. But tech experts are warning that while AI has some positive impacts, these new advances could harm our environment. "Like any new innovation, we need to consider and manage potential new risks," Jahda Swanborough, a global environmental leadership fellow and lead at the World Economic Forum, told DW.

Researchers have developed a method to enable aerial drones to learn to avoid in-flight collisions. The University of Zurich in Switzerland and Intel have jointly developed a method to enable aerial drones to learn to avoid in-flight collisions. Zurich's Elia Kaufmann and colleagues sought to develop drones that could self-pilot through hoops or gates, and set up a track with such gates arranged in a circuit, altering the obstacles' positions after each lap. Camera recordings of gate images gathered over several hours enabled a neural network to learn how to pass through them on appropriate trajectories, via generalization. Kaufmann says real-world testing showed the drone could pilot itself at up to about 3.5 meters a second.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has announced plans to invest in a "whole new industry around AI in healthcare". Researchers at the University of Southern California have developed a new predictive model for heart disease, which makes use of a smartphone app. Machine-learning techniques are poised to hit the mainstream over the next few years. Machine learning has long been touted as the next big thing for healthcare. With countless startups investing in that promise, applications are emerging across everything from diagnostics to drug discovery.

"For example, is the potential for conscious experiences transmitted when the brain is copied? Does the digital brain have the ability to feel pain, and is switching off the emulated brain comparable to homicide? And what might potentially everlasting life be like on a digital platform?" Such questions can be considered science fiction, but the first breakthroughs in digitising the brain have already been made: for example, the nervous system of the roundworm (C. Recently, the creation of a functional digital copy of the piece of a somatosensory cortex of the rat brain was also successful.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will create as many jobs in the UK as it will displace over the next 20 years, a report has claimed. The analysis by accountancy giant PwC found AI would boost economic growth, creating new roles as others fell away. But it warned there would be "winners and losers" by industry sector, with many jobs likely to change. Opinion is split over AI's potential impact, with some warning it could leave many out of work in future. The pessimists argue AI is different to previous forms of technological change, because robots and algorithms will be able to do intellectual as well as routine physical tasks.