Intel isn't wasting any time now that it officially owns Mobileye. The Mobileye team has unveiled plans to build a fleet of 100 or more self-driving vehicles to conduct tests in both its native Israel as well as the US and Europe. They'll meld Mobileye's sensor, mapping and driving technology with Intel's computing platforms, data center tech and 5G wireless to make Level 4 autonomous cars (they can do all the driving themselves but may ask for intervention) that talk to the cloud. They won't be tied to any one brand -- sorry, BMW. As Intel explains, it's as much about selling the concept as actual experimentation.

Reading Stephen Buranyi's article (Rise of the racist robots, G2, 8 August) reminded me of a discussion 30 years ago with a sixth-form class (following a viewing of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey) on whether daily contact with computers would make us more machine-like. "No," said one girl: "Since humans contaminate everything they come in contact with, we'll end up by infecting machines with our irrationalities. Percipient students are always ahead of their time. If Gatlin had not been there, Bolt would still have lost. In all the press and TV commentary, Christian Coleman, who came second, was hardly mentioned.

People who played action video games that involve first-person shooters, such as Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, experienced shrinkage in a brain region called the hippocampus, according to a study published Tuesday in Molecular Psychiatry. That part of the brain is associated with spatial navigation, stress regulation and memory. Playing Super Mario games, in which the noble plumber strives to rescue a princess, had the opposite effect on the hippocampus, causing growth in it. Scientists have done dozens of studies looking to see if playing video games affects people's health and behavior. There's some evidence they may improve people's visual short-term memory and eye-hand coordination.

There are over 800,000 drones registered in the United States. Of those, around 70 percent come from Chinese dronemaker DJI, whose Phantom series is essentially the Model-T of hobbyist UAVs. For the Pentagon, this poses two challenges: the ubiquity of the cheap crafts is a potential risk to base security, and also raises questions about the reliability on the drones themselves as a military tool. In response, the Pentagon announced that bases are authorized to use force to disable drones near bases, and also ordered troops to stop using drones from China's DJI. There are, at present, 320,000 registered non-drone aircraft in the United States, according to the FAA.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is fusing disciplines across the digital and physical worlds, with legal technology the latest example of how improved automation is reaching further and further into service-oriented professions. Casetext for example--a legal tech-startup providing Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based research for lawyers--recently secured $12 million in one of the industry's largest funding rounds, but research is just one area where AI is being used to assist the legal profession. Others include contract review and due diligence, analytics, prediction, the discovery of evidence, and legal advice. Technology and the law are converging, and where they meet new questions arise about the relative roles of artificial and human agents--and the ethical issues involved in the shift from one to the other. While legal technology has largely focused on the activities of the bar, it challenges us to think about its application to the bench as well.

Artificial Intelligence (and technology at large) can improve our world, empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more! This is always true! Nevertheless, in some case, this is particularly true! The World Health Organization estimates that 285 million people worldwide are blind or visually impaired, and the vast majority of these people live in low-income settings. In the United Kingdom alone, only one in four working age adults who are blind or partially sighted are doing paid work. In many other countries, the situation is even worse.

A startup has created the world's first brain-controlled virtual reality game. The VR game from Boston-based company Neurable lets you navigate and play along in a virtual worlds, controlling the experience using only your thoughts. The company unveiled the interface this week at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles, inviting developers to create games for it. Neurable designed scalp electrodes to record electrical signals in the brain. The company applies brain-computer interfaces (BCI) in a way that allows for an'intention-based interaction.'

In the past year, you've probably heard something about machine learning. This branch of science, which involves crunching massive datasets to find hidden patterns, is helping companies solve problems that used to be unsolvable. Machine learning algorithms keep spam out of your inbox, and sound an early warning when someone else might be using your credit card. Down the road, they might save your life. At their core, machine learning tools capture lots of complex information, learn from it, then apply what they learn to better estimate unknowns and predict future events.

This story was delivered to BI Intelligence "Fintech Briefing" subscribers. To learn more and subscribe, please click here. Major financial services (FS) players have long been applying algorithms to make equity trading more efficient. Now, however, JPMorgan says it has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system to take such automation to new heights. The bank has been testing its AI program, LOXM, since Q1 2017 in Europe, and plans to roll it out across its Asian and US operations in Q4 after trials proved successful.

Some local councils – such as the London Borough of Enfield – are already embracing this shift. Last year, Enfield collaborated with IPsoft to develop Amelia, robot technology dedicated to frontline council services, such as taking resident queries or authenticating licenses. Through AI and cognitive computing, government departments can lessen the burden of administrative tasks while gaining faster access to sophisticated insights, empowering them to make better decisions for citizens. The volume of information available today continues to grow exponentially. By deploying technology to successfully navigate and manage these huge quantities of data, both structured and unstructured, local councils can speed up services, improve frontline services and reduce human error. British citizens can already anticipate the advantages.