"Algorithm" might be one of the most popular terms that almost no one understands. Not many people have PhDs in data science, and even those experts don't always know what's happening. "It's not clear even from a technical perspective that every aspect of AI algorithms can be understood by humans," says Guruduth Banavar, IBM's chief science officer for cognitive computing, which is what IBM calls AI. Artificial intelligence is making decisions by reviewing people's medical tests in hospitals, credit histories in banking, job applications in some HR systems, even criminal risk factors in the justice system. Yet it's not always clear how the computers are thinking.

Microsoft is teaming up with Elon Musk's OpenAI, the non-profit artificial intelligence research company. OpenAi announced on Tuesday it will work with Microsoft to start running the cloud platform Azure, making it the primary cloud system that OpenAI uses for deep learning and artificial intelligence, a move Microsoft said it was "excited" about. "OpenAI chose Microsoft due to our deep learning research and ongoing commitment to AI, along with Azure's support for open source technologies and its unique combination of high performance computing, big data and intelligence capabilities such as Azure Batch, Azure Machine Learning and the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (formerly CNTK)," said Microsoft in a statement. The partnership will work on "democratizing AI and making it accessible to everyone," Microsoft says. The company plans to make this happen by taking that intelligence and infusing it into everyday devices and apps.

That fake news and misinformation on Facebook could have influenced the outcome of the US presidential election is worrying (Opinion, 15 November), but, in reality, this is only tinkering around the edges of a major problem. The first amendment of the US constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press. However, for the most part, the supreme court has failed to use it to rule on libel cases: hence tabloids such as the National Enquirer can get away with printing pretty much anything they like. It is possible to police the publishing and broadcasting industry – if nations are willing to do it. Sufficient staff (not robots) need to be employed to fact-check before publishing or broadcasting.

Survival: "Our entire existence is based on having the best detection mechanism possible," says Valerie Bannert-Thurner at Nasdaq. Certain things make Valerie Bannert-Thurner raise an eyebrow when looking for signs of bad behavior on the Nasdaq exchange. "I like the example of excessive cheering because the guys just can't help themselves but cheer," said Bannert-Thurner, who is senior vice president and head of risk and surveillance at Nasdaq. Another worrisome indicator is seemingly too-good-to-be-true trading profits. "If people are excessively profitable given how they trade and in comparison to everybody else trading the same instruments with similar styles, then we ask, is this luck or something else?" Bannert-Thurner said.

Flora Robotica is a project funded by the European Union whose goal is "to develop and investigate closely linked symbiotic relationships between robots and natural plants and to explore the potentials of a plant-robot society able to produce architectural artifacts and living spaces." The overall idea seems to be that it would be cool to enhance the capabilities of plants by mixing in some robotics, and vice versa, combining plant growth with the structure and mobility of robots. The researcheres, from six research groups based in Poland, Denmark, Germany, and Austria, emphasize that their motivation is not automating gardening or harvesting using robots, which is something a number of robotics companies has focused on before; they aren't creating plant-robot hybrids for artistic purposes either (we've seen that in installations like the Telegarden, built in 1995, and, more recently, the Jurema Action Plant, among others). What the European researchers want to do is basically using robots to provide support and guidance to plants, so those plants will be healthier and more robust, and they'll also be somewhat trainable: They'll react to the stimuli coming from the robots, allowing you to incorporate them into living, hybrid structures like benches, walls, and roofs. The robots are implemented as hardware modules that allow to implement an artificial growth process and to keep pace with the natural growth of the plants.

Google is finally going ahead with its plans to build a "landscraper" headquarters in London's King's Cross, more than three years after the project was first announced. The development, which will be Google's UK headquarters, was reportedly thrown into turmoil in 2015 when bosses in California threw out the original plans, by London-based architects AHMM, for being "too boring", and brought in a Thomas Heatherwick, designer of a new London bus, the Olympic cauldron, and the Garden Bridge. Further questions were raised in the wake of Britain's vote to leave the European Union about whether or not the search engine would want to base up to 7,000 employees in London. But in a speech on Tuesday at Google's current campus in King's Cross, chief executive Sundar Pichai confirmed the plans were going ahead. "Here in the UK, it's clear to me that computer science has a great future with the talent, educational institutions, and passion for innovation we see all around us," he said.

Companies, and some governments, pay BrandsEye to alert them to significant swings in sentiment to put out fires and identify opportunities. Starting in July 2016, their machines used artificial intelligence (AI) to pull messages from social media feeds relevant to the US presidential campaign, primarily mentions of Hillary Clinton or Trump. BrandsEye then put the word out to crowdsource human analysis of individual messages. "We use people for what people are good at and machines for what machines are great at. And by using that interplay between the two, we are able to measure sentiment very deeply and by using computers we measure very deeply," says Kloppers. While AI is great for pulling in vast amounts of relevant data, it still struggles with sarcasm, innuendo and colloquial language.

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WhatsApp has introduced a new feature likely to strike fear into the hearts of its competitors: video calling. After months in the beta stage, the Facebook-owned tech giant rolled out the update on Tuesday to its more than one billion monthly users. The latest feature could be bad news for rivals such as Skype and Apple's Facetime, as Whatsapp ups the ante in its effort to position itself as a one-stop-shop for communications. Facebook employees'form secret task force' to purge fake news Russia to ban LinkedIn, leading fears of crackdown on internet freedom Yahoo admits it knew about huge data breach for two years Facebook employees'form secret task force' to purge fake news Users will be able to make video calls across Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone devices in the coming days, according to a statement posted on the company's blog. The new functionality looks similar to the normal voice calling feature, however a picture-in-picture feed will allow you to see yourself and who you're talking to.

This'Digital meets Transport' networking session will open doors to larger brands that are looking to the digital community to implement agile innovation. The session will showcase companies developing disruptive data capture technologies, innovative data-driven applications, artificial intelligence algorithms, cyber-security solutions and open-source payment systems. The event will take place from 14:00-17:00 on Thursday 8th December at the Digital Engineering Test Centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London. Up to 16 of the most innovative companies to apply to attend will be invited to meet with established industry brands, for an afternoon of facilitated networking. Nissan: The global automotive business and world-class manufacturer are looking for innovative solutions to gain improvements in cost, quality & delivery performance in a very lean, high volume manufacturing environment.