The UK government has revealed that it will invest a further £38m in driverless cars, as part of a £1bn investment in'cutting-edge' technologies - all announced in the same week that the government declared a general election for June. Business secretary Greg Clark announced that the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) would commit more than £1bn in taxpayers' money over the next four years to six key areas: Three of the areas - healthcare, energy, and robotics and AI, were announced in the 2017 Spring Budget - but Clark has now confirmed the total investment in each field, subject to business case approval. Robotics and AI will receive an investment of £93m. The government claimed that this would help "make industry and public services more productive by developing AI and robotics systems that can be deployed in extreme environments which occur in off-shore energy, nuclear energy, space and deep mining". Healthcare will get £197m to develop what the government called "first of a kind technologies for the manufacture of medicines that will speed up patient access to new drugs and treatments", while £246m will be spent on developing clean and flexible energy.

Languages are constantly evolving, and many have come and gone during the course of human history. Is Icelandic about to head into obscurity? The Associated Press reported it could be in danger of dying just like Latin, the language spoken by the once powerful ancient Romans. "The revered Icelandic language, seen by many as a source of identity and pride, is being undermined by the widespread use of English, both for mass tourism and in the voice-controlled artificial intelligence devices coming into vogue," the AP said. Asgeir Jonsson, an economics professor at the University of Iceland, told the news service, "Not being able to speak Icelandic to voice-activated fridges, interactive robots and similar devices would be yet another lost field."

We all use user-generated reviews to figure out what points of interest are worth checking out. If you're traveling in a country where you don't speak the language, however, the reviews you rely on are usually in the local tongue. Google has a new feature to help you out. The company will now automatically translate reviews into your native language without any effort on your part. When you use Google Maps or Search to find a place you're interested in, the reviews will be translated on the fly into the language you have set on your phone.

Instead of new bank holidays for each of the nations of the UK to coincide with saints' days (as proposed by Labour), why not make national elections a public holiday as in many other countries? This would help to make it as easy for many people in employment to vote, as it is for people who are retired or not in work. Alternatively, voting should take place at weekends, thereby avoiding disruption to schools. Improving turnout and making the voting process just as convenient for everyone would be a step towards a healthier democracy. At what point in this progress towards robots taking over everyone's job and leaving them without employment or, more crucially, income is someone going to notice that demand is falling off so precipitously for the goods and services that the robots have been producing (because not enough people can afford them any more) that the robots themselves are becoming redundant?

When an Icelander arrives at an office building and sees'Solarfri' posted, they need no further explanation for the empty premises: The word means'when staff get an unexpected afternoon off to enjoy good weather.' The people of this rugged North Atlantic island settled by Norsemen some 1,100 years ago have a unique dialect of Old Norse that has adapted to life at the edge of the Artic. Hundslappadrifa, for example, means'heavy snowfall with large flakes occurring in calm wind.' Linguistics experts wonder if this is the beginning of the end for the Icelandic tongue. Salome Sigurjonsdottir, 10, tests a voice-controlled television in an electronics store in Reykjavik. Linguistics experts, studying the future of a language spoken by fewer than 400,000 people in an increasingly globalized world, wonder if this is the beginning of the end for the Icelandic tongue.

Captioning your Instagrams is one of the biggest struggles of the digital realm. Instead of coming up with something witty, smart and zeitgeisty every time, we're left racking our brains for something, anything to say about our thirst trap selfies and holiday snaps. But this app could end all your caption deliberation woes. The app -- called Rubric -- analyses your Instagram photos using visual recognition technology and generates a selection of relevant captions. SEE ALSO: The Instagram'pods' using likes to fight the new algorithm Rubric founder Amber Atherton explains that the app scrapes trending words from social and Urban Dictionary while also linking in Rap Genius' API.

Spotify, the most popular music streaming service, might be getting ready to jump into the hardware game -- if a few job postings are to be believed. The company recently posted a handful of openings that make clear references to designing and selling hardware direct to Spotify users. A posting for a senior hardware product manager says that the eventual hire would work on an initiative to "deliver hardware directly from Spotify to existing and new customers." It also indicates that the hardware would be "a category defining product akin to Pebble Watch, Amazon Echo, and Snap Spectacles." Spotify indicates that this would be a "fully-connected" hardware device; the senior product manager would define both the internet-connected hardware requirements as well as its software.

Britain is at the forefront of driverless vehicles technology with autonomous shuttles and self-driving cars being tested in the streets of London. Now, the UK government has announced plans to have cars traveling autonomously from London to Oxford in 2019. Driven, a consortium led by Oxbotica, received £8 million in funding from a total of £13 million invested by the government in this area. While Oxbotica is already conducting self-driving shuttle trials in London, the aim is to develop a fleet of autonomous vehicles to travel long distances on British motorways within the next 30 months -- with safety drivers on board as a backup. Tests are being conducted at RACE, a robotics centre in Oxfordshire run by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which has 10 kilometers of roads, junctions, roundabouts, and even traffic lights and pedestrian crossings.

For many people, eSports cropped up when they weren't looking, growing out of the passionate local communities built by game creators and players. Professional teams now compete in high-stakes leagues for prestige, tournament winnings and lucrative sponsorship deals -- but only in places where eSports is encouraged to take root. Many countries don't offer pro game players the same ease of travel as traditional athletes, leading lawmakers to continue debating just how much the state should support the local video game scene. Such is the case with Sweden, but national Parliament member Rickard Nordin is rallying his peers to embrace the financial and cultural benefits eSports can bring, and he's reaching out to fans (near and far) on a platform fitting his mission. Just after Parliament members from each party hold their regular Tuesday meetings, Nordin retires to his office in Stockholm's Parliament House and loads up his current favorite competitive title, the digital card game Hearthstone. As befits a legislator keen to bridge cultural and generational gaps, he livestreams his games on Twitch at 7PM CET.

Uber drivers could soon be out of a job, as new technology is being developed that will allow members of the public to summon driverless cars with a click of a button. The UK government has handed £12.8 million ($16.4 million) to an AI firm to develop a driverless car system. The firm plans to demonstrate a fully-working system that would allow people to order driverless rides through a smartphone app, in 2019. Uber drivers could soon be out of a job, as new technology is being developed that will allow members of the public to summon driverless cars with a click of a button. This is where the issue often occurs, as the rules aren't clear as to who is responsible if a crash occurs.