As Carrington Institute's most promising new Agent, Joanna Dark must uncover the truth behind the dataDyne Corporation's recent technological breakthroughs - breakthroughs which could have serious consequences for mankind."

Gone are the days of milk maids on stools. At the 56,000-square-metre Arla factory in Taulov, Denmark, cheese production is moving towards complete automation - even when it comes to milking the cows. "The biggest challenge is to keep the variation small within the process," explains senior director Jørgen Greve. "About 70 per cent is automated." Once a robot arm has milked the cows, Arla analyses samples for protein and fat content.

March 9, 2017 --Physicist Stephen Hawking may be a proponent of artificial intelligence, but he has also been outspoken about the potential challenges it creates. In a recent interview, he sounded a similar tone, and offered a solution that conservatives may find hard to accept. Speaking to The Times of London to commemorate being awarded the Honorary Freedom of the City of London, a title that was conferred on him on Monday, Professor Hawking expressed optimism for the future. He added, however, that he is concerned about artificial intelligence (AI), as well as other global threats. "We need to be quicker to identify such threats and act before they get out of control," Hawking said.

For Silicon Valley, the headline was sweet nectar: Google DeepMind, the world's hottest artificial intelligence lab, embraces the blockchain, the endlessly fascinating idea at the heart of the bitcoin digital currency. The lab's re-imagining of the blockchain has very little to do with AI--or the blockchain, for that matter. If you want AI crossed with the blockchain, try wrapping your head around Numerai, the world's strangest hedge fund. To DeepMind's credit, its new project depends less on trendy ideas than an apparent desire to solve a real problem in the real world--one that involves the most private and personal information. DeepMind is building an auditing system for healthcare data. That may not sound sexy, but it matters.

This has been a dark week in the world of technology, with WikiLeaks' mammoth'Vault 7' document release making for some deeply unpleasant reading. The 8,761 files published by the whistle-blowing organisation allegedly came straight from the CIA, which is believed to have been using a variety of hacking methods to secretly spy on people through their electronic devices. The agency is also said to be capable of pinning the blame for cyber attacks on other countries. WikiLeaks is set to follow this up by publishing the redacted details of all of the CIA's cyber weapons, but will give technology companies initial exclusive access to them, to prepare themselves against hackers. Fortunately, there are also a number of simple steps that ordinary people can take to protect themselves, without going off-grid.

Keen Footwear sells its iconic boots, shoes and sandals through thousands of retailers worldwide. But the Oregon manufacturer, which is working hard to honor its commitment to become "American Built," does not have the manpower to support a dedicated information security staff. With a team of six information technology professionals -- all but two focused on handling the day-to-day client issues of its 450 employees -- the IT staff would fall behind in triaging incidents the company's security software flagged. "We fit squarely in the realm that we have the problems of all the big players, but we don't have the resources of a large enterprise," said Clark Flannery, Keen's director of IT in Portland. To solve the problem, Flannery augmented his IT staff with machines.

Will humans still drive in the future? I was recently asked to join the debate over at 2025AD, a blog focused on the year many have claimed will be the watershed for the arrival of self-driving cars. I'm pessimistic, but convinced there is a silver lining. Journalist John McElroy, with whom I disagree bigly. I'm of two minds on whether people will still drive.

Artificial intelligence enables virtual agents to learn by observation. That adaptive ability is what a Swedish bank is counting on to serve its customers. In early 2016, SEB, one of Sweden's largest banks with a presence in 20 countries around the globe, started integrating Amelia, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform from IPsoft, into its help desk. Amelia is represented by a blond female avatar and is always referred to as "she" rather than "it." The artificial intelligence platform is built on semantic understanding, which enables Amelia to interact with users through natural language to determine what actions to take in order to answer a question, fulfill a request or solve a problem.

So Philip Hammond unveiled his big hairy budget. The Chancellor had touted this as an "upbeat budget". A phrase that makes as much sense as "diet fish supper" or "talented Honey G". The snoozefest included £500million to be spent on robots and artificial intelligence. At which point Hammond's eyes flashed red and he started shouting "malfunction, malfunction" until somebody turned him off at the back.

Established as a partnership between the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Center for Autonomous Marine Operations (NTNU AMOS) and the Norwegian government, the site includes part of Trondheim Harbor and has already been used to test everything from navigation and collision avoidance systems to operational safety and risk management projects. The technologies developed in Trondheim are expected to revolutionize the shipping industry as human crews are no longer needed to literally man the ship. "As far as we know, there are no such test sites of this kind in the world so the Norwegian Coastal Authorities are taking the lead in a changing maritime world," Kongsberg Seatex President Gard Ueland said when the site opened. "We will also see technology that has the potential to enable fully autonomous cargo vessels. Much of this will come from Trondheim, thanks to the unmatched maritime expertise here and our autonomous vehicles test bed."