In 1968, America and the former Soviet Union were locked in a space race to land a man on the moon. It was during this time of Cold War tension and rivalry that 2001: A Space Odyssey come out on cinema screens and dazzled filmgoers. Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan went to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington to see an exhibition that honours the movie.

Technology is the key point for the future of all mankind. Every development brings new opportunities, opens new paths and solves already existent problems. But if we are to mention the three more disruptive ones, which are likely to change the way the world works in the years to come, we definitely need to pick the likes of Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and Blockchain -and crypto-currencies for instance-. At least, that is how they think at The Futurama Blockchain Innovators Summit, an event that will take place in Dubai from May, 3 – 6, and where these three technologies will be discussed and shared by the most representative experts on these categories. The summit will highlight "the fruits of the three most revolutionary technologies of the 21st century at once: blockchain, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. They'll showcase futuristic solutions, from the new generations tools for managing your personal health data, to a billion dollar trading algorithm that represents the most advanced artificial general intelligence that can reason and theorize."

British artificial intelligence firm BenevolentAI has raised 115 million US dollars (£80.8 million) in a move valuing the group at two billion US dollars (£1.4 billion) and marking one of the largest funding rounds in the sector. BenevolentAI, which uses artificial intelligence to make new drug discoveries, secured the funding from investors largely based in the US, as well as from existing backers including star fund manager Neil Woodford's Woodford Investment Management. The latest funding round means BenevolentAI has now raised more than 200 million US dollars (£141 million) since its launch in 2013. It said it would put the latest cash towards ramping up its drug development, broadening the disease areas on which it focuses and advance these programmes to the clinic. The group – Europe's largest private AI company – will also use some of the funds to further develop its self-learning system, while also helping the firm to expand outside the pharmaceutical sector to other science-based industries, such as energy storage and agriculture.

Recent research from Britain confirms what many people in enterprises already know, artificial intelligence (AI) is going to profoundly change the workplace. However, unlike previous research, the findings contained in the AI in the UK: Ready, willing and able? This workplace will be one where AI enhances and creates many new jobs, but also one where retraining is not just an occasional event, but something that is ongoing and continuous as AI changes the way we work. The report has a very specific focus through. It outlines what the authors believe are the opportunities for the United Kingdom in an AI-driven world and what the UK government needs to do to turn the workplace change to the advantage of its citizens.

Apache Lucene –a high-performance, full-featured text search engine library written entirely in Java.

A fresh instalment of the bombastic shooter franchise was teased in 2014 but never came to fruition. Instead, developer Croteam released The Talos Principle, a critically acclaimed puzzler about androids and AI. Now, though, we have a teaser trailer for Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass, which shows the titular hero driving through the (French? Of course, he's soon attacked by a "headless kamikaze," which Sam dispatches with a casual shotgun blast. The camera then pans back to reveal a horde of gruesome enemies and the message: See you at E3 2018.

The Munich-based Google artist-in-residence Mario Klingemann's Twitter feed is a delightful mess of neural experimentation. He shows, in near real-time, his explorations training neural nets on various types of data. The results of his attempts are often humorous, showing just how bad algorithms are at conjuring something as complex as a human face. That's the point, though: By watching how these neural nets learn from something as innocent as an old painting, we get a glimpse at the state of the art of AI. "If you look at art history, it's clear that faces have fascinated artists since the beginning of culture. I guess one of the reasons is that faces are easy and very hard at the same time–you can draw a recognizable face with just a few lines or you can try to reproduce one down to the last pore," Klingemann tells Co.Design via email.

Every discussion about artificial intelligence seems to alternate between utopia and dystopia. Some believe that the productivity unleashed through automation will lift up all of society, creating a world of superabundance and more meaningful work, while others see robots taking our jobs and an acceleration of trends favoring capital over labor. In fact, in an article in Harvard Business Review, Accenture's Mark Knickrehm describes five distinct schools of thought, ranging from both extremes to various shades of gray in between. He suggests that leaders need to reinvent operating models, redefine jobs and include employees in the process of transformation. Yet that's easier said than done.

The group – Europe's largest private AI company – will also use some of the funds to further develop its self-learning system, while also helping the firm to expand outside the pharmaceutical sector to other science-based industries, such as energy storage and agriculture. Ken Mulvany, founder and chairman of BenevolentAI, said the fundraising "reflects the rapidly growing global interest in the emerging AI pharmaceutical sector and a recognition of our place as the dominant player within it".

IBM has launched a range of new machine learning-based security tools that it says can help firms identify and fight off cyber attacks. The company has unveiled its next-generation Resilient Incident Response Platform with'Intelligent Orchestration', which is aimed at helping enterprises respond to breaches more quickly and effectively. From a single platform, companies can access case incident management, orchestration, automation, intelligence, and "deep two-way partnership" features, said IBM in an announcement. Big Blue said its experts spent around 200,000 hours in research and development to create the software. In a bid to combine machine and human intelligence, the firm has also launched X-Force Threat Management Services, a new artificial intelligence-driven solution that automates threat detection.