As a UK-focused venture capital investor, Oxford Capital is fortunate that the UK is a world leader in AI (although to avoid topical accusations of British exceptionalism, it's definitely worth mentioning that there are centres of excellence in AI and machine learning (ML) throughout Europe). We have just completed an as-yet undisclosed investment in the AI space, and we're evaluating several other opportunities. Along with taking an interest in AI companies that approach us for funding, we've mapped out recent activity in the sector across the UK. Innovation starts with talented individuals, and AI is no exception. Many of the UK's most respected universities have AI research groups, such as the Intelligent Systems group within UCL and the joint Oxford-Cambridge Strategic AI Research Centre.

The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

A sinister threat is brewing deep inside the technology laboratories of Silicon Valley, according to Professor Stephen Hawking. Artificial Intelligence, disguised as helpful digital assistants and self-driving vehicles, is gaining a foothold, and it could one day spell the end for mankind. The world-renowned professor has warned robots could evolve faster than humans and their goals will be unpredictable. Professor Stephen Hawking (pictured) claimed AI would be difficult to stop if the appropriate safeguards are not in place. During a talk in Cannes, Google's chairman Eric Schmidt said AI will be developed for the benefit of humanity and there will be systems in place in case anything goes awry. 'We've all seen those movies,' he said.

Tomorrow's graduates will be applying for jobs working in virtual worlds and outer space, experts claim, following the release of a new report predicting career trends for the next ten years. Research conducted by a group of leading technologists, academics and industry analysts suggests that a host of new job options will become available to those graduating in less than a decade's time, including "ethical technology advocates", "sustainable power innovators" and "virtual habitat designers". Contrary to common fears that robots will render human employment worthless, the expansion of new technology will provide countless more as yet unheard of career paths, experts believe, using virtual reality environments and better connected remote office environments. Ryan Asdourian, Microsoft's Windows and Surface Lead said of the report: "While these jobs may seem like the realms of science fiction, in reality they are indicative of changes that we are already seeing today." "The job market is changing at a more rapid pace than ever before, partly because of artificial intelligence."

It doesn't look like a place to make groundbreaking discoveries that change the trajectory of society. But in these simulated, claustrophobic corridors, Demis Hassabis thinks he can lay the foundations for software that's smart enough to solve humanity's biggest problems. "Our goal's very big," says Hassabis, whose level-headed manner can mask the audacity of his ideas. He leads a team of roughly 200 computer scientists and neuroscientists at Google's DeepMind, the London-based group behind the AlphaGo software that defeated a world champion at Go in a five-game series earlier this month, setting a milestone in computing. It's supposed to be just an early checkpoint in an effort Hassabis describes as the Apollo program of artificial intelligence, aimed at "solving intelligence, and then using that to solve everything else."

Many business leaders recognise that developments in robotics and AI are coming and that they will bring significant changes for business and society. These developments are not happening slowly and are all around us. Take my friend for example. When I called him recently, he was in his Tesla, driving up the A3, having a bowl of cereal. This shows how quickly technology is moving.

You know what I love on a Monday? Coming into work to be handed a lengthy machine learning paper by my editor and asked to write up its findings by lunchtime. Any human reader out there can probably identify hints of sarcasm in these sentences (as it happens, this is a double sarcasm bluff: the paper's actually pretty darn interesting). A computer, however, takes things literally -- which is exactly the problem. "The goal of my present work is sarcasm detection," Silvio Amir at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, told Digital Trends.

The idea of automated customer service is nothing new – from speech recognition technology on dreaded call center phone lines, to Apple's groundbreaking Siri personal assistant system, AI has been in our lives and in our pockets for a while now. Yet, young as 2016 still is, it's already defined itself as the year of the Chatbot – from Microsoft's experimental and indeed controversial (more on that later) attempt to engage millennials with the creation of'Tay', a chatbot designed to imitate a teenage girl, in March, to April's recent inundation of announcements from companies eager to trial Chatbots, this year could be the year Chatbots go mainstream. But in a world where the search for authenticity seems increasingly futile and more and more of our meaningful interactions take place via a screen, will the public really welcome Bots? Are they even ready for widespread release? And how are businesses going to capitalize on them? Put simply, a Bot is a piece of software which performs automated tasks and simple, time-consuming or repetitive errands, and this is exactly what a ChatBot does – except (you guessed it), it simulates human interaction.

Dear, Wall Street: Silicon Valley is increasingly coming for you. A machine intelligence system, dubbed Emma AI, is starting a fund that hopes to outsmart the humans and computers that make a living trading stocks. It's part of a wave of tech startups aiming advanced machine learning at financial markets. Automation is not new to Wall Street. But Shaunak Khire, Emma's creator, claims his system differs from current finance computing -- high-frequency trading and "quant" data science -- because its system of neural nets takes into account a more complex set of factors affecting stocks, like management changes or monetary policy in Europe, that other programs miss.

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton spelled out their economic visions in high-profile speeches in Michigan this week. They delved into taxes and regulations, trade deals and job growth. Yet perhaps most notable about their speeches is what they left out. Mostly unmentioned were major challenges that have slowed the U.S. economy and made good-paying jobs harder to find, particularly in struggling pockets of the country. Automation and increasingly high-skilled jobs that require technological know-how that many people lack. They are problems that analysts say require a transformative vision.