Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit that offers emotional support through text messaging, has spent four years connecting people in extreme emotional duress with online counselors. Now its founder is creating a startup called Loris.ai to help companies teach employees how to communicate. "There are a lot of companies right now that are fearful of having hard conversations," says Nancy Lublin, the founder of both Crisis Text Line and Loris.ai. "Managers are nervous having a one-on-one meeting with a direct report of a different gender, and that holds women back. People worrying about inclusion worry they'll get it wrong, and that holds people back."

The UK could be hit hard by the increasing use of machine learning technology over the next few decades, new research has claimed. A report from Google has predicted that the UK economy would see an average negative growth in the years up to 2030 as artificial intelligence and machine learning take over a range of traditional job roles. Governments and policymakers were also warned that major investment needs to be made in skills and education for workers in all industries, ensuring that human productivity continues to rise in tandem with the growth of technology. The report, which evaluated three econometric scenarios affected the UK, US, Australia, Japan and developing Asia regions, also looked at the impact machine learning would have on four major industries, concluding that a number of benefits could emerge. Across transportation, healthcare, energy and manufacturing, machine learning was predicted to have a positive effect, with the report noting that such technology was already commonplace in many areas, with improvements in safety and efficiency highlighted.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the world, but is it for the better? Here, Tamara McCleary, CEO at Thulium, argues that Europe's power sector has a crucial role to play in leading the responsible application of AI. It will come as no surprise to hear that AI is used in some of the most exciting technologies around today. After all, the idea of a world populated by machines that cater to our every need has long been utopian. And now these visions look increasingly achievable.

The $711m in value accounted for 44% of the global total, a quadruple increase on the previous year (10%). AI, IoT and analytics and big data propositions collectively accounted for 56% of the total number of deals – around 70% of total value last year. UK market doubles The value of insurtech investments in the UK more than doubled year on year to almost $19m, although the total number of deals remained flat. Accenture said that Brexit had not had a material impact on the investment climate in 2016. After the UK, Germany and France are the next largest markets in Europe.

In 2020, artificial intelligence will create 2.3 million jobs and eliminate 1.8 million jobs, according to Gartner. The number of jobs affected by AI will vary by industry, and 2019 will see a growing demand for jobs in healthcare, the public sector and education, while manufacturing will be hit with job losses. By 2020, AI-related job creation will cross into positive territory, reaching two million net-new jobs in 2025, the analyst's Predicts 2018: AI and the Future of Work report found. Warnings about AI's impact on the economy are constantly in the news, and University of Oxford researchers have predicted that 35% of UK jobs are at risk of automation over the next two decades. But Gartner's findings suggest that AI could also improve the productivity of many roles.

Ten million driverless cars are expected to hit the road by 2020, according to a recent Business Insider report. Google and Apple are racing to join the automotive industry. Traditional car manufacturers are investing billions of dollars in R&D. There are many reasons to believe that the car of the...

The field of medicine has, arguably, been more positively affected by modern deep learning techniques than any other industry. And, despite the unending deluge of panic-ridden articles declaring AI the path to apocalypse, we're now living in a world where algorithms save lives every day. Thanks to AI, an iPhone can detect cancer and a smart watch can detect a stroke. Machine learning is infiltrating and optimizing nearly every aspect of medicine from the way 911 emergency services are dispatched to assisting doctors during surgery. You can even quit smoking or kick your opiate addiction with the help of AI. Emergency service dispatchers in Copenhagen are using a new voice-assistant technology called Corti.

An AI equipped robotic system that enables synthetic protocells to evolve could help unravel how complex life formed on Earth. The fully automated system, which make use of machine learning, could aid understanding of other complex chemical systems too. Oil-in-water droplets are often used as protocell models because, while chemically simple, they can exhibit complex and cell-like behaviours, such as movement and division. However, in order to work out how specific droplet properties – including viscosity, density and surface tension – result in different behaviours, droplet formulations must be varied. The problem is that the permutations are vast, even for droplets with just four ingredients.

But before autonomous cars can transform modern life, cities will have to transform themselves. Smart cities will be the linchpins of the autonomous age -- deploying the digital infrastructure necessary to connect cars to vital information, reduce traffic congestion and make roads safer. "The cities of the future are going to require intricate and complicated management systems," said Eran Shir, CEO and cofounder of Tel Aviv based Nexar, which announced today on closing $30 million in series B funding. The company is building a vehicle-to-vehicle network and collect real-time information about road conditions, traffic, infrastructure problems, crashes and road hazards. "Real-time information is crucial for cities that want to take control of their smart city initiatives, and Nexar has crowdsourced a database of over 100 million driven miles," Shir said.

Ten million driverless cars are expected to hit the road by 2020, according to a recent Business Insider report. Google and Apple are racing to join the automotive industry. Traditional car manufacturers are investing billions of dollars in R&D. There are many reasons to believe that the car of the future will be autonomous. If so, we should expect people to identify less and less with their vehicles.