Despite being a good few decades old, the basis of the Turing test -- developed by the computer science genius Alan Turning -- remains the exact same to this day. It asks whether a computer can trick a human into believing they are speaking with another fellow human. In one part of the test, a human judge is asked to interact with two hidden objects -- one is a human and the other a machine -- to determine if they can distinguish between the two. And if not, that AI has passed the Turing test. There has been a lot of challengers who have claimed that AI has actually passed the test.

Tesla boss Elon Musk has said he is preparing to release a new top secret'master plan' that will determine the future of his electric car business. The announcement comes at a time when his company is under pressure following a fatal crash involving one of its cars running on its Autopilot feature and falling stock prices. But many expect it could help to rejuvenate the company's fortunes. CEO Elon Musk delivers a speech at the Paris Pantheon Sorbonne University as part of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Mr Musk went on Twitter to say he's working on another'Top Secret Tesla Masterplan'.

At the conference last week, there were tons of startups trying to get the attention of reporters and Venture Capitalists (VC's.) From what I saw, most software products centered around one five things, Communication Tools, Bots, Artificial Intelligence (AI), the "Gig" Economy, and Virtual Reality (VR). There used to be a hard line between tools that we used for our professional lives and tools that we used for our personal lives. That line is more blurred than ever. There is a crossover that allows us to use one device for all of our professional and personal needs.

June was kind to macro hedge funds. They were up more than 3 per cent, in what was their best month since 2010, according to data from Hedge Fund Research, buoyed by long positions on the yen and -- for the most fortunate -- long on both the yen and the dollar, and short sterling. Currencies and currency-related trades have been among the few bright spots for hedge funds recently (along with gold, which has risen more than 30 per cent since the end of 2015, according to Credit Suisse). Riding the yen and dollar up and taking on derivative trades, such as shorting Chinese companies that have lots of US dollar debt and dollar costs, have been among the few clear trends to follow. But generally, these are challenging times for the industry both in the short and longer term.

Microsoft has made some interesting moves in the education space as far as Minecraft is concerned. Notably, the company acquired Mojang for 2.5 billion in September 2015 and then later purchased MinecraftEdu in January this year with an announcement that Minecraft Education Edition would be available in summer. Leading on from these acquisitions, a team within Microsoft developed Project AIX to simulate a world where an AI can be tested out without posing a risk to humans. Originally designed as an internal tool, the company announced that it would be made fully available under an open-source license. Now, with a new name, the company has publicly unveiled Project Malmo, which has been described as "a platform that uses the world of Minecraft as a testing ground for advanced artificial intelligence research."

A designer's guide to AI. Leveraging user centered design principles, the author rightly states that AI will enable designers to create bespoke experiences right out of the box for each user. Importantly, these experiences need to a) create emotionally-aware relationships with the user, b) respond to needs that haven't yet been explicitly expressed, c) prevent negative emotional responses when a user is upset with an AI-caused result and d) be sensitive to sociology. A list of further reading resources is included. There's been a resurgence of neuroscience-inspired AI architectures in the past few years, with Numenta being one of the leaders. Their VP of Research, Subutai Ahmad, argues that environmental sensory inference and behavior generation are intricately tied together, and critical for learning really general purpose representations.

In this June 22, 2016, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures as she speaks during a rally in Raleigh, N.C. Here's the tech news you need to know to start your week. The company just brought out Pokémon Go, an augmented reality smartphone app, and it is proving wildly popular. A major scheduled change means that "miners" -- people who create new bitcoins -- will only get half as many rewards for their efforts. Its Live Video feature is trying to dominate live events, and was used last week to broadcast the aftermath of a US police shooting.

Pretty much every cinematic portrayal of artificial intelligence has been less than encouraging. HAL 9000 kills the crew members on the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey, making us all a little bit afraid of handing the reins over to computers. Sonny kills his creator in I, Robot, increasing worldwide scepticism about the integration of humans and their smart robots. Even real life AI has given us pause. For example, when an IBM computer defeated Russian chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the 1990s, it was definitely a cause for concern.

"Humans" has been renewed for Season 2. Find out what is coming to the Hawkins family and their newly acquired artificial intelligence companion or synth (synthetic human), Anita (Gemma Chan), in the upcoming season of the anticipated sci-fi series. According to AMC, the upcoming season of "Humans" will premiere in the U.K. later this year and in the U.S. by the first half of 2017. No exact premiere date has been announced as of this writing. Lead star, Gemma Chan, is expected to reprise her role as conscious synth, Anita, in Season 2. Joining her are Katherine Parkinson (Laura Hawkins), Tom Goodman-Hill (Joe Hawkins) and Lucy Carless (Mattie Hawkins). Niska (Emily Berrington), a synth, will also return and with what looks like a larger role in the upcoming season.

A few years ago I was backing an SUV into a parking spot in a Boston garage, listening for the telltale beeps of the ultrasonic parking sensors to tell me I was getting too close. Even though the parking-assist system was active, the chirps never came, so I got out to see what was the matter. Good thing I did, because I was about six inches from slamming the top of the rear hatch into an overhead concrete beam about five feet off the ground. The wall at bumper-height was still at least 10 feet back, hence the silence from the sensor-drive system. I was right not to trust it, because it wasn't designed to look up.