Scientists have developed a programme that uses artificial intelligence to decipher a website's data protection policies in the blink of an eye, and can help you protect your personal information. The programme developed by researchers, including those from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, can let people know which websites and apps collect and subsequently sell their personal data. People do not always take the time to read website terms and conditions before accepting them. Not only are they extremely lengthy, they are also convoluted and written in opaque legalese, researchers said. However, they can contain surprising clauses about a website's or app's right to use the data it collects, such as the user's IP address, age and online preferences.

Gone are the days of building just another boring website to have a digital presence. We have entered a new era where everything is connected to build next-generation digital experiences. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 marked the mobile revolution which has entirely changed users' expectations of the web and the digital experiences it generates. This situation started a ripple effect and with the rise of the mobile Internet, we shifted away from installed software on our desktops to mobile apps at our fingertips. The explosion of mobile apps reached a tipping point in 2008, and just like every other technology trend, it settled in over time.

Where the smart money is International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that by 2020 organizations that analyze both structured and unstructured data, that is all relevant data, and deliver actionable information will achieve an extra $430 billion in productivity gains over their competitors that do not perform such data analysis. And businesses that understand this are not waiting until 2020. An executive at a multinational insurance company based in Germany refers to unstructured data as their greatest risk. They understand the numbers involved, and are working to ensure they're not caught off-guard by writing insurance policies that expose them to liabilities they could have avoided.

The Priberam Machine Learning Lunch Seminars are a series of informal meetings which occur every two weeks at Instituto Superior Técnico, in Lisbon. It works as a discussion forum involving different research groups, from IST and elsewhere. Its participants are interested in areas such as (but not limited to): statistical machine learning, signal processing, pattern recognition, computer vision, natural language processing, computational biology, neural networks, control systems, reinforcement learning, or anything related (even if vaguely) with machine learning. The seminars last for about one hour (including time for discussion and questions) and revolve around the general topic of Machine Learning. The speaker is a volunteer who decides the topic of his/her presentation.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a lecture at the Oxford Martin School given by Prof. David Clifton, who is Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Science of the University of Oxford. The lecture was thought for a wide audience, therefore it left many open questions, but was a great description of David's extraordinary work. The introducing point was that healthcare spending has increased over time (on percentage of GDP) almost everywhere from 5% to 20% and it is (or will be) unsustainable for long periods. Without entering evaluations of governments' past decisions, one key point is that we are still trying to provide standard healthcare to a change word. For instance, in the 90s 99% of the hospitals had a four-hour stay in the E&A room, while this percentage has decreased to 85% today.

In the tech world in 2017, several trends emerged as signals amid the noise, signifying much larger changes to come. As we noted in last year's More Than Noise list, things are changing--and the changes are occurring in ways that don't necessarily fit into the prevailing narrative. While many of 2017's signals have a dark tint to them, perhaps reflecting the times we live in, we have sought out some rays of light to illuminate the way forward. The following signals differ considerably, but understanding them can help guide businesses in the right direction for 2018 and beyond. When a team of psychologists, linguists, and software engineers created Woebot, an AI chatbot that helps people learn cognitive behavioral therapy techniques for managing mental health issues like anxiety and depression, they did something unusual, at least when it comes to chatbots: they submitted it for peer review. Stanford University researchers recruited a sample group of 70 college-age participants on social media to take part in a randomized control study of Woebot. The researchers found that their creation was useful for improving anxiety and depression symptoms.

The world's most powerful rocket may be good for more commercial missions than Mars supply trips. One astronomer says it could open access to lots of asteroids on which humans could strike it rich mining metals. Backstory: Earlier this month, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy rocket. It's twice as powerful, and costs a quarter the price to launch, as its closest competitor, Delta IV Heavy. What's new: Falcon Heavy's power could get humans to more asteroids to tap them for supplies.

Falling incomes will have grave consequences in places like the United States and Europe, where consumption accounts for 56 per cent and 69 per cent of gross domestic product, respectively, requiring new social supports, such as a universal basic income.

Think that human augmentation is still decades away? This week, government leaders met with experts and innovators ahead of the World Government Summit in Dubai. To determine the future of artificial intelligence. It was an event that attracted some of the biggest names in AI. Managers from IBM Watson, Microsoft, Facebook, OpenAI, Nest, Drive.ai, and Amazon AI.

As e-commerce goes mainstream, more product searches take place on Amazon every day than on Google or Facebook. The online economy is growing and growing but more evidence shows that Amazon's intricate engine, which now includes voice AI interfaces such as Echo, is threatening traditional retailers. The most recent study by digital marketing agency Wolfgang Digital has found that e-commerce transactions are up 32pc on last year and traffic is up 14pc. 'Amazon is now actively listening to you in your home so it can sell you more things next time you log on to Amazon on a screen. What's more, consumers are paying for the privilege of welcoming this 21st-century Trojan horse into their home' – ALAN COLEMAN It estimates that Ireland's online economy is worth €12.3bn, or 6pc of GDP in 2017.