This technology will affect the quality, pace and structure of daily living for everyone. Believe it or not, robotic personal assistants at home -- particularly for older people -- will be common by 2025. With startling effect, machines increasingly will do the thinking for us. Big data, a computer's ability to gather vast amounts of information in complex databases, will be stored in the limitless spheres of Cloud technology. And the deep learning capability of artificial intelligence software, able to learn from its own mistakes and experiences to improve functionality, will progressively eliminate the need for thousands of tasks now performed by humans.

Earlier this week, Amazon unveiled its 50 internet-connected personal assistant "so you can add Alexa to any room in your home." Alexa is the online giant's artificial-intelligence powered bot that listens to what you say and answers your commands and questions: What's the weather? Can you order me a large pepperoni pizza? And the low priced Echo Dot, about the size of a hockey puck, means many more homes will soon have on-command digital listening devices that eavesdrop on – and store – family conversations, holiday celebrations, and even off-color comments (and also bickering siblings or quarreling spouses). Sure, it has its conveniences and Star Trek-like appeal and maybe you're OK with potential privacy implications.

In 2014, The European Union introduced its RoboLaw, a 1.9 million funded project to prepare relevant guidance of legal and ethical aspects for robotics. The RoboLaw has come to light with the help of engineering, philosophy, law, technology and human enhancement experts, and topics covering soft and tough regulations on privacy issues, data protection, and ethical aspects. The European Parliament is also talking about AI replacing jobs and ways of protecting society from unemployment. Mady Delvaux, the EU Parliament's Rapporteur on Civil Law Rules on Robotics, however, found a positive side of AI taking jobs, in her opinion piece she claims: 'If industry uses more automation robotics, it will become more efficient and competitive, allowing companies to relocate their production back to Europe. Of course, this will eliminate certain kinds of jobs, but it will also create new ones.'

It's official: Self-driving cars are here. This week Uber's autonomous taxi fleet picked up its first passengers in Pittsburgh, while Ford announced that its self-driving car will have no steering wheel, gas pedal, or brakes. Ford is also working on cars that can harvest drinking water from thin air -- and then dispense it from a dashboard tap. In other auto news, the Chevy Bolt scored an EPA-certified driving range of 238 miles -- further than the base Tesla Model S. Tesla sued an oil exec for allegedly impersonating Elon Musk to steal trade secrets. And design studio Duffy London debuted the solar-powered super yacht of the future.

Thank you for your missive to the Market at the start of August. I must say I totally agree with your headline message, that "London needs to be more imaginative in its quest for innovation". You also rightfully point out this will not be an easy journey for various reasons, be they political, technological or inertial. And you are on the money when it comes to not simply running after the latest fad or a shiny bit of kit. Also, of course, you hit the nail on the head with your point that the priority should not always be looking for ways to replace solid, reliable legacy systems.

The University of Nottingham is developing an artificially-intelligent sensor system to clean food manufacturing equipment more precisely, which could save 100m a year for the UK industry alone. This revolutionary AI-driven monitoring system could lead to greater production capacity and therefore cheaper food prices for consumers. Food and drink production is the largest manufacturing sector in Britain and the highest industrial user of water at approximately 430 million litres a day. As current technologies cannot accurately determine exactly how dirty food and drink processing equipment is inside, cleaning can last up to five hours a day - to minimise food safety risks. Cleaning accounts for 30 per cent of energy and water use and leads to excessive productivity down time and over-use of chemicals, at huge cost to manufacturers and the environment.

Machine-learned trading systems developed by the world's largest listed hedge fund, Man Group, are not going to make big, bold bets on financial markets because they are better suited to spreading risk over lots of smaller ideas. Anthony Ledford, who is the chief scientist at Man's AHL alternatives business, says the principle of diversification applies equally sensibly to systemic trading as it does to traditional methods of investing. He is based at Oxford University where his team of scientists are now using machined learned strategies to invest client money, having been almost cool on the idea many years ago. Man Group manages US76 billion of which AHL oversees US19 billion. The Zooniverse, a global citizen science project, was an unlikely source of inspiration for the former academic.

Isaac Asimov gave us the basic rules of good robot behaviour: don't harm humans, obey orders and protect yourself. Now the British Standards Institute has issued a more official version aimed at helping designers create ethically sound robots. The document, BS8611 Robots and robotic devices, is written in the dry language of a health and safety manual, but the undesirable scenarios it highlights could be taken directly from fiction. Robot deception, robot addiction and the possibility of self-learning systems exceeding their remits are all noted as hazards that manufacturers should consider. Welcoming the guidelines at the Social Robotics and AI conference in Oxford, Alan Winfield, a professor of robotics at the University of the West of England, said they represented "the first step towards embedding ethical values into robotics and AI".

ESPN's first experiment with drone racing coverage must have been successful, as it's committing to robotic sports in a big way. The TV network has unveiled a multi-year broadcasting deal with the Drone Racing League that will have both ESPN and ESPN2 airing races in the Americas, starting with the 2016 season. The series broadcast kicks off on October 23rd at 9PM, and will spread five races over the course of 10 episodes. It all comes to a head with two DRL World Championship episodes on November 20th. Drone racing TV is crossing the Atlantic, too. Sky has landed its own deal that will bring DRL competitions to TV this fall through the Sky Sports Mix channel, with a race coming to London in 2017.

Every organization becomes involved in the transition to the new cognitive computing technology epoch soon. This begs the question: "Does artificial intelligence need leadership?" We talked about future challenges in leadership and business with Udo Hornfeck, Vice President at LEONI, a tier-1-supplier in the automotive industry with approximately 70.000 employees worldwide and located in Kitzingen, Germany. Mr Hornfeck leads the Global Research & Development departments. Mark McGregor Leadership Center: Mr Hornfeck, how do you define leadership?