Artificial intelligence, long in the realm of science fiction and dystopian visions of the future, pushes further into our reality every day. Algorithms that Google, Facebook, and many other tech companies run are moving along their asymptotic paths toward approximating the neural firings and pathways that make the human brain so powerful. In doing so, though, they use astounding amounts of data that raise concerns from governments and private citizens about the extent to which privacy rights are compromised. As technology advances exponentially, the world is starting to grapple with the logistic and ethical considerations AI has started to raise. AI as a technological marvel serves both as a response and as a way to capitalize on the explosion of big data in the last twenty years.

Microsoft is using an experimental version of its game Minecraft to test the limits of artificial intelligence. Called Project Malmo (named after a Swedish city, as Minecraft originates out of Sweden), the new version of the game allows reinforcement-learning algorithms to control a character. Reinforcement algorithms, which are inspired by psychology, focus on putting artificial intelligences within a specific environment and letting them figure out how to gain further rewards. By making those rewards incremental, Microsoft researchers believe they can train the AI to learn goals. Minecraft's sandbox nature could turn it into the perfect training ground for AI.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

There is no denying 2015 was Fintech's year. Every start startup or VC conference had at least one panel dedicated to the subject. It is usually defined as subset of the tech universe which is focused on disrupting debt and equity transactions, payments, transfers, as well as asset management – basically applying disruptive technology to the financial services sector. According to Accenture investment in fintech reached more than 12Bn by the end of 2014 and the hottest fintech market in 2015 was Europe, where investments grew by more than 200% compared to a year earlier. In a strange twist, banks, and other financial institutions are already calling for more regulations to protect their industry from further disruption.

As you're choking down your latest serving of Trump Clinton Brexit Racism Terrorism Wealth Gap Climate Change Casserole, you could use some good news. Let's start with The Inevitable, the new best-seller by Kevin Kelly, one of our wisest technological prognosticators. "This is the moment that folks in the future will look back at and say, 'Oh to have been alive and well back then!'" Kelly writes. "There has never been a better time with more opportunities, more openings, lower barriers, higher benefit/risk ratios, better returns, greater upside than now. In the mid-2010s, we're getting the first sneak peeks at a bouquet of technologies that can vastly improve the lives of most people on the planet and solve some of our hardest problems--even climate change. Just consider for a moment how much everyday life has been transformed since 2007, when smartphones, social networks and cloud computing took off at about the same time.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most exciting and transformative opportunities of our time, argues Nathan Benaich, an investor at London-based investment firm Playfair Capital. While the field has gone through two cycles of bull ('50s-'70s and '80s) and bear ('70s and '97-'93) markets, where expectations were hyped up only to eventually fall short of their promises, I think this time is different. From my vantage point as a venture investor at Playfair Capital, where I focus on investing and building a community around AI, I think it's a fantastic time to build and invest into companies creating or leveraging AI for their products and services. There are three key reasons. First, our addictive usage of the internet, software products and smartphones – all two billion of them – has created data assets that describe our behaviours, interests, knowledge, connections (and more) at a scale and granularity that has never existed before.

Google has finally revealed a commercial use for DeepMind -- a British artificial intelligence company it acquired for over 600 million in 2014. DeepMind made headlines for beating the best human in the world at the notoriously complex board game Go and it's recently started working with hospitals in the UK on a number of healthcare projects but the startup is yet to make any money for Google, until now. Google announced on Wednesday that it has been using a DeepMind-built AI system to control certain parts of its power-hungry data centres over the last few months as it looks to make its vast server farms more environmentally friendly. Last year, a Greenpeace report predicted that the electricity consumption of data centres is set to account for 12% of global electricity consumption by 2017 and companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple have some of the biggest data centres in the world. Google said it has been able to reduce the energy consumption of its data centre cooling units -- used to stop Google's self-built servers from overheating -- by as much as 40% with the help of a DeepMind AI system.

For those suffering depression, PTSD, or other mental health challenges, a breakdown can be a slow burn, developing over days or weeks in between doctor visits. Delay in treatment can have lasting consequences. "Very likely, every single episode of depression or mania is going to damage your brain a little more," says Thilo Deckersbach, a Harvard psychology professor who practices at Massachusetts General Hospital. The hospital's online MoodNetwork recruits patients with major depression and bipolar disorder for clinical studies, including a new one with the Boston-based artificial intelligence company Cogito. They are testing the ability of a mobile app called "Companion" to flag early signs of trouble by monitoring activities like patients' movement, calling and texting behavior, and the way they speak.

Nasa has announced that it has found evidence of flowing water on Mars. Scientists have long speculated that Recurring Slope Lineae -- or dark patches -- on Mars were made up of briny water but the new findings prove that those patches are caused by liquid water, which it has established by finding hydrated salts. Several hundred camped outside the London store in Covent Garden. The 6s will have new features like a vastly improved camera and a pressure-sensitive "3D Touch" display

The Titan X, based on the company's new Pascal P102 GPU, has 12 billion transistors and runs at 250W, meaning it burns around 40 percent more power than the GTX 1080. Style-wise, it hews closely to the triangular, faceted form of the GTX 1080, but sports darker colors. It features DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b and DL-DVI ports, though the company hasn't yet detailed the configuration. NVIDIA has now unveiled four cards (the GTX 1060, 1070, 1080 and Titan X) in just over two months, which is a pretty frenetic launch rate. To hammer home the point about brute horsepower, NDIVIDA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang did a surprise unveil of the Titan X at a meetup of artificial intelligence experts at Stanford University. That's fitting, because it's starting to blur the line between its gaming cards and Tesla GPU accelerators used for deep learning in servers and supercomputers.