BenevolentBio's CMO, Dr Patrick Keohane, says the industry is on the cusp of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution… Medical research is entering a period of rapid transformation, driven by the explosion of scientific data, rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), and the development of extremely powerful computers. This convergence enables researchers to access enormous and diverse datasets to rapidly form and test scientific hypotheses. It is disrupting the way we identify, validate, and transform scientific concepts into potential Healthcare solutions – ultimately revolutionising the scientific process. AI enables access and the more effective use of existing information for the discovery and development of better drugs at a speed previously unimagined. This is helping to meet the high demand from society to provide better medicines at a reasonable cost, but also influencing how we are looking to treat rarer forms of disease.

A Japanese company has created an unusual new service that lets customers book fake friends to pose with them in photos intended for social media, according to reports. Real Appeal was created by Family Romance as a means for Facebook and Instagram users to appear more popular online than they actually might be. Customers can choose one or more fake friends from a photo catalogue, according to RocketNews24, and can specify certain characteristics, such as gender, age and fashion sense. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

WhatsApp has rolled back its biggest update in years. Just weeks ago, Facebook announced that it would be adding its'stories' feature to the app, and removing text statuses at the same time. It brought WhatsApp in line with its other major apps, which all now include the stories tool that was once Snapchat's most famous feature. But immediate backlash has led WhatsApp to move the change back and add the text statuses that had been part of the app since its beginning, and have now been removed. Stories will continue to exist in the app, but they will work alongside the traditional text updates.

When Judy Norman walks on stage for the play'Spillikin', she performs beside a somewhat different cast member - a humanoid robot. The robot can talk, make facial expressions, blink its eyes, move its hand and turn its head. It has even been described as'affectionate' by leading lady Norman, who works closely with the robot throughout the performance. When Judy Norman (right) walks on stage for the play'Spillikin', she performs beside a somewhat different cast member - a humanoid robot (left). RoboThespian is the creation of Cornish engineer Will Jackson who had an idea to develop an artistic robot that could react with its audiences. Six years ago he embarked on a project to create a robot that would save tour guides from tediously repeating the same script each day.

"Machine learning is really not dark magic, it's just another tool." As the leading professor involved in the development of Google Brain, and Google's Director of Augmented Intelligence Research, he worked on their release of their open-source library for machine learning, Tensorflow. "Our main hurdle is to get people educated on how this works in practice." He shared that practical advice last week at TQ in Amsterdam (disclaimer: TQ is part of TNW), alongside three startups that each have their own hands-on experience with machine learning as well. For years now, the decreasing costs of computation power and data storage have gone hand in hand with the explosive birth of tech startups.

Headquartered in the US, with ecommerce sites in the UK, Australia, Germany, France, Italy and Canada, Cosabella decided to engage Adgorithms (the creator of Albert) out of frustration with its digital ad agency. "We know our brand best and communicating it to the advertising agency became time-consuming and difficult," Courtney Connell, marketing director of Cosabella, said, declining to name the agency as they really were "very lovely people" who she had no wish to disparage. Connell grew concerned when the retailer went through a flat quarter. "It was very scary, particularly when we enjoyed double-digit growth all the previous quarters." After parting ways with the agency, Connell looked around for alternatives and decided to try using an AI platform instead of building up a larger in-house team.

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Scientific American's sister publication, as "Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur." "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another." The digital revolution is in full swing. How will it change our world? The amount of data we produce doubles every year. In other words: in 2016 we produced as much data as in the entire history of humankind through 2015. Every minute we produce hundreds of thousands of Google searches and Facebook posts. These contain information that reveals how we think and feel. Soon, the things around us, possibly even our clothing, also will be connected with the Internet. It is estimated that in 10 years' time there will be 150 billion networked measuring sensors, 20 times more than people on Earth. Then, the amount of data will double every 12 hours. Many companies are already trying to turn this Big Data into Big Money. Everything will become intelligent; soon we will not only have smart phones, but also smart homes, smart factories and smart cities. Should we also expect these developments to result in smart nations and a smarter planet? The field of artificial intelligence is, indeed, making breathtaking advances. In particular, it is contributing to the automation of data analysis. Artificial intelligence is no longer programmed line by line, but is now capable of learning, thereby continuously developing itself. Recently, Google's DeepMind algorithm taught itself how to win 49 Atari games. Algorithms can now recognize handwritten language and patterns almost as well as humans and even complete some tasks better than them. They are able to describe the contents of photos and videos. Today 70% of all financial transactions are performed by algorithms. News content is, in part, automatically generated. This all has radical economic consequences: in the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today's jobs will be threatened by algorithms. It can be expected that supercomputers will soon surpass human capabilities in almost all areas--somewhere between 2020 and 2060. Experts are starting to ring alarm bells.

The US has brought hacking charges against Russian officials for the first time ever. The decision comes as federal officials continue to investigate whether Russian spies interfered with the 2016 presidential election by hacking the Democratic party, among others. The country launched cyber attacks that were calculated to help Donald Trump win the election, it has been claimed by intelligence agencies and some politicians. Though the Justice Department has previously charged Russians with cyber crime – and brought prosecutions against hackers sponsored by the Chinese and Iranian governments – the new indictments are the first time a criminal case has been brought against Russian government officials. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Facebook is finally adding Stories to its news feed, completing its project to steal Snapchat's most famous picture. The company had already added the feature to the rest of its other apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. But the addition to the Facebook news feed is the biggest of all of those changes, shaking up the way that the app works entirely. At the top of the news feed, instead of the posts or the status update box, users will now see a series of circles with their friends faces in them. It will work the exact same as Instagram stories, which was added to the app last summer, and has gone on to become as big as Snapchat itself and taken many of the smaller app's most popular users. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

The US has charged two Russian spies with the biggest cyber attack ever carried out. The Department of Justice said that two "state-sponsored" Russian hackers were responsible for breaking into Yahoo and stealing 500 million accounts. The case would be the first ever brought against Russian officials. The charge comes amid increasing tensions between Russia and the US over the use cyber weapons and hacking. Multiple US intelligence agencies have accused Russian state-sponsored hackers of running a co-ordinated campaign to upset the result of the US election and increase the chances that Donald Trump would become president.