Artificial intelligence and robots aren't coming for your job anytime soon, the U.S. White House's chief economic advisor says. Some technology experts worry about the economic impact of AI-powered computers and robots, but Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, predicts that AI will grow the economy instead of take jobs away. While some jobs may disappear, AI will create new jobs and consumer demand for new products and services, he said Wednesday at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C. Some studies have suggested that automation will replace half of all jobs in the coming years, but Furman questioned those predictions. While some jobs may disappear, AI will create new jobs and consumer demand for new products and services, he said Wednesday at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C.

For 20 years, computer scientists have been working on improving ways to search among reams of video clips for a particular shot. New research by IBM, Microsoft, and academic teams studying the problem could bring them a step closer to that goal. At a conference in Cambridge, England, last week, an IBM researcher gave the first public demonstration of a computer system called Marvel that uses statistical techniques to learn about relationships between colors, shapes, patterns, sounds, and other clues from video footage that can help identify its content. IBM's prototype then labels the footage so users can go back and find individual shots. That could be a boon not only to TV news producers but intelligence analysts watching surveillance video and even PC users editing home movies.

Robin John Popplestone, one of the early pioneers in Robotics and Computer Programming Languages, died on 14th April 2004 in Glasgow, Scotland, after a 10-year battle with prostate cancer. Robin was born in Bristol in 1938. After the war his family moved to Belfast, where he grew up. He was educated at Queen's University Belfast, receiving an honours degree in mathematics in 1960. He first worked with computing while studying for a PhD initially at Manchester University and then at Leeds University.

Born in South Africa, he was educated at the South African College High School, took a first degree at the University of Cape Town in 1934 and a doctorate in Mathematical Physics at the University of London in 1953. After a spell as demonstrator in physics at Cape Town, he emigrated to Britain. Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, he undertook ionospheric research in Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, transferring to the Government's Telecommunications Research Establishment after the outbreak of hostilities to carry out research on radar. In 1941, he enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, leaving in 1943 to go to Aberdeen University to run a special degree course for radio officers under the wartime Hankey Scheme. After the war was over, he returned to industrial research, first until 1949 in Mullard's Radio Valve Company on microwave electronics and then on television and photo-electric tubes at EMI's Research Laboratories.

It is fitting that the greatest code-breaker of World War Two remains a riddle a hundred years after his birth. Alan Turing, the brilliant, maverick mathematician, widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, invented an electromagnetic machine called the'bombe' which formed the basis for deciphering Germany's Enigma codes. The man himself has rather eluded definition: painted (too easily) as a nutty professor with a squeaky voice; as a quirky, haphazard character with a sloppy appearance by his mother and schoolmasters; by colleagues as a gruff, socially awkward man; and by his friends as an open-hearted, generous and gentle soul. The crucial contribution Turing made at Bletchley Park, one that has been credited with shortening the war by two years and saving countless lives, did not become public knowledge until twenty years after his death. His mother, brother and friends did not know until long after they'd mourned him, the extent of his heroism.

A British-led consortium is developing new computer software to help the robots of the future navigate through the messy and cluttered environments of working life, working independently for up to 120 days. Dr Nick Hawes, lecturer in intelligent robotics at the University of Birmingham, is co-ordinating the work. He says that although robots can currently work in "predictable" environments for short periods of times, he wants to push for further developments. "Recent advances in robotics and artificial intelligence have enabled mobile robots to operate intelligently in predictable environments for limited periods of time," he said. "Our challenge is to develop robots which can go way beyond this, running reliably in dynamic real-world security and care environments for as long as they're required. This will make these machines truly useful assistants in our workplaces."

Robots should be taught to appreciate human value to ensure they do not one day "kill us out of kindness", a leading futurist has warned. Nell Watson told The Conference in Malmo, Sweden, that robots will soon reach the stage where they have the same level of cognition as a bumblebee, creatures which are both socially aware and can navigate their way around their environment. This advancement in artificial intelligence will be the first example of machines exhibiting'system one' thinking used by humans to develop assumptions about the world around them. Robots currently use'system two' intelligence systems which rely on rules, according to Wired. Ms Watson said the emergence of system one robots will create "huge change" in society globally.

The news that the Turing Test has been beaten by a computer for the first time could have significant implications for artificial intelligence – but just what is the Turing test and what does beating it actually mean? The test was first proposed by the British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing who, in his 1950 paper'Computing Machinery and Intelligence', asked a simple question: 'Can machines think?' Turing later finessed this to'can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?' and proposed his eponymous test as one way of finding out. In its most simple form the test has a human interrogator speaking to a number of computers and humans through an interface. If the interrogator cannot distinguish between the computers and the humans then the Turing Test has been passed. There are many different takes on the test (in some variations the interrogator knows that one of the entities they are questioning is a computer – in others they don't) but many computer scientists and philosophers have criticized its very premises for only assessing the appearance of intelligence.

Green-eyed and diminutive, Pepper works the crowd hard as he sings, dances and tries out his small talk. "You guys seem to be foreigners – where are you from?" he asks. When we tell him we're Irish, he says: "Gosh, Europe has so many interesting countries. I'd like to go there some day." Pepper is the latest in a long line of made-in-Japan battery-powered bipeds.

Welcome to the Uncanny Valley. Sounds like a spooky, scary place to live – and that's certainly true – but it's more of a state of mind. Anyone who has been freaked out by the robots in Channel 4's new hit drama Humans knows what life in the Uncanny Valley feels like. The same goes for those who have met or seen footage of Aiko Chihira, a realistic humanoid who has just started welcoming visitors to a department store in Japan. Aiko and Anita, the renegade Synth in Humans, are both sufficiently lifelike to be approachable but sufficiently inhuman to be deeply unsettling, speaking to our deepest fears about robots taking over our lives.