Here's a surprise: at our Disrupt Berlin event, Ulrich Spiesshofer, the CEO of 125-year old automation giant ABB, argued that automation is nothing to fear. "I think we need to take this fear extremely seriously and get people out of this fear," he said. In his view, automation and robotics has allowed millions of people to move beyond the extreme poverty line and it's the countries that embraced automation -- including the likes of China and India -- that are doing much better than some of their counterparts that have resisted automation. "Technology can be really good if you play it right," Spiesshofer noted. "The truth is that the countries with the highest robot density -- South Korea, Germany, Japan -- have the lowest unemployment rates."

The scope and pace of technological innovation is ascendant, advancing at a pace that is impossible to keep up with. Much ado about artificial intelligence, blockchain, the internet of things, virtual reality, … the list of emerging technologies continues to grow. But for the buzz, all the investment, and all the 2017 roundups and 2018 predictions, we often fail to remember technology's secret. The most powerful disruptions rarely occur from single technologies but well-timed convergence of multiple existing technologies to foster something altogether unprecedented. In my analysis of the impacts of emerging technology, I identify how and where people, organizations, and ecosystems are being transformed by technological convergence.

Energy consumption for hot water production is a major draw in high efficiency buildings. Optimizing this has typically been approached from a thermodynamics perspective, decoupled from occupant influence. Furthermore, optimization usually presupposes existence of a detailed dynamics model for the hot water system. These assumptions lead to suboptimal energy efficiency in the real world. In this paper, we present a novel reinforcement learning based methodology which optimizes hot water production. The proposed methodology is completely generalizable, and does not require an offline step or human domain knowledge to build a model for the hot water vessel or the heating element. Occupant preferences too are learnt on the fly. The proposed system is applied to a set of 32 houses in the Netherlands where it reduces energy consumption for hot water production by roughly 20% with no loss of occupant comfort. Extrapolating, this translates to absolute savings of roughly 200 kWh for a single household on an annual basis. This performance can be replicated to any domestic hot water system and optimization objective, given that the fairly minimal requirements on sensor data are met. With millions of hot water systems operational worldwide, the proposed framework has the potential to reduce energy consumption in existing and new systems on a multi Gigawatt-hour scale in the years to come.

An advertisement for online dating site eHarmony has been banned by British ad regulator the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making claims that the service is scientifically proven to work. The ban, handed down by the ASA Wednesday, will require eHarmony remove the advertisement from the billboard display on a London Underground platform where it had first appeared in July 2017. The ad in question from eHarmony contained a headline that read, "Step aside, fate. It's time science had a go at love." The ad also included additional text that read, "Imagine being able to stack the odds of finding lasting love entirely in your favor.

It is said – often by our mothers – that we are looking a bit'peaky' or under the weather even when we do not notice ourselves. Now researchers have discovered that humans have an ability to pick up the subtle signs that show someone is sick within minutes of them getting an infection. Some signs of sickness are obvious– such as a violent cough, or the spots on the face in measles. These are obvious enough to ensure the ill person gets a wide birth. But in an illustration of the amazing power of the human brain, a glance of a few seconds was enough for observers tell if people had just caught a nasty bug.

Amanda Blanc, Axa's UK boss, lays too much of the responsibility for providing electric car charging infrastructure at National Grid's door (Report, 1 January). Electricity privatisation removed National Grid's obligation to plan provision of adequate generation capacity as the market was seen as a more efficient provider. National Grid is responsible for carrying energy from the generation companies to regional bulk supply points, where most of it is passed on to regional distribution companies' infrastructure which feeds our homes and businesses. While the Grid will require reinforcement, additional supply points and consequent investment, the impact on the distribution networks is likely to be disproportionate; banks of superchargers will require cabling to industrial amounts of energy while slower and home chargers will add cumulative demands that may require reinforcement work at street level. Grid and distribution charges are moderated by Ofgem but on the basis that necessary capital investment costs are passed on to the customer, so there will be an impact on energy costs.

As an artificial intelligence researcher, I often come across the idea that many people are afraid of what AI might bring. It's perhaps unsurprising, given both history and the entertainment industry, that we might be afraid of a cybernetic takeover that forces us to live locked away, "Matrix"-like, as some sort of human battery. And yet it is hard for me to look up from the evolutionary computer models I use to develop AI, to think about how the innocent virtual creatures on my screen might become the monsters of the future. Might I become "the destroyer of worlds," as Oppenheimer lamented after spearheading the construction of the first nuclear bomb? I would take the fame, I suppose, but perhaps the critics are right.

With intelligent automation marching steadily toward broader adoption, media coverage of this historic technology disruption is turning increasingly alarmist. "New study: Artificial intelligence is coming for your jobs, millennials,"1 announced one business news outlet recently. "US workers face higher risk of being replaced by robots,"2 declared another. These dire headlines may deliver impressive click stats, but they don't consider a much more hopeful--and likely--scenario: In the near future, human workers and machines will work together seamlessly, each complementing the other's efforts in a single loop of productivity. And, in turn, HR organizations will begin developing new strategies and tools for recruiting, managing, and training a hybrid human-machine workforce. Notwithstanding sky-is-falling predictions, robotics, cognitive, and artificial intelligence (AI) will probably not displace most human workers. Yes, these tools offer opportunities to automate some repetitive low-level tasks. Perhaps more importantly, intelligent automation solutions may be able to augment human performance by automating certain parts of a task, thus freeing individuals to focus on more "human" aspects that require empathic problem-solving abilities, social skills, and emotional intelligence. For example, if retail banking transactions were automated, bank tellers would be able to spend more time interacting with and advising customers--and selling products.

This story was first published at The Aleph Report. If you want to read the latest reports, please subscribe to our newsletter and our Twitter. Those that follow technology closely have noticed a significant trend in the field, China. The more you read, the more you encounter increasing coverage on China's tech dealings. In the last few weeks, we've seen Tencent's market capital surpass that of Facebook; Venture Capital activity reach US VC levels; LinkedIn's Chinese rival MaiMai, outperform LinkedIn in the country and the amount of Chinese Women in Tech pass that of the US.

As artificial intelligence and robotics continue to become staples of human civilisation, what does that mean for us and our jobs? According to a report conducted by the Royal Society of Arts and YouGov back in September, four million jobs in the private sector in the UK could be replaced by robots in the next decade. When you add into the mix that Stephen Hawking is delivering pessimistic warnings that AI could replace humans altogether, our future, suffice it to say, looks a little grim. Now, the effect this is likely to have on our economy is being studied. Research undertaken by the Economist Intelligence Unit suggests that if robots do take over our jobs, instead of creating a healthier financial market, the British economy could shrink by a staggering £314 billion.