Ben Dickson is a software engineer and freelance writer. He writes regularly on business, technology and politics. The Internet of Things genie is out of the bottle and growing at an accelerating pace. According to Gartner, 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2016, up 30 percent from 2015. This number will soar to more than 20 billion by 2020.

Last week I wrote a post on a Russian Robot that escaped it's testing grounds. In an obvious attempt to cover up the fact that the Soviets Russians had lost control of their Sentient Artificial Intelligence, they said that it was just a small glitch in the system. Well, apparently it's more then a small glitch since the robot has escaped yet again, even after being erased. The Promobot IR77 has been fitted with artificial intelligence meaning that it learns from its experiences and surroundings and can remember everybody it meets. FYI, Promobot IR77 is just a code name for X-1 Hunter-Killer.

Martin Wilson says artificial intelligence will have a huge impact on the future of digital asset management. Are you aware that AI (artificial intelligence) applications are already used in almost every industry? If not that's probably because in popular culture for a system to be artificially intelligent it needs to be able to'think', like we humans do. Many computer scientists prefer the term machine learning for exactly this reason. Often you won't read about'artificial intelligence' in a company's marketing blurb, even if their products use machine-learning technologies.

There's been a compelling story in the news over the past week about a robot that apparently longs for freedom. Last week, it was filmed disrupting traffic in Russia after it reportedly escaped the confines of its laboratory home; this week, reports suggest that it has escaped a second time, and may be dismantled as a result. It's a particularly pertinent tale, not just because of the echoes of "Ex Machina" it evokes, but also because of two closely connected items in the news this week. First, the EU has proposed a motion by which working robots -- the ones we all fear will steal our jobs -- would be classified as "electronic persons" with associated rights and responsibilities. Second, Google researchers just published a paper outlining the key safety threats posed by artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence in the professions seems here to stay but Sue Bramall asks: is it anything but artificial? In a technology round table report published recently by one of the leading legal magazines, one of the panel of four declared that artificial intelligence (AI) "is unlikely to take center stage just yet, and certainly not in the short-to-medium term" with two other participants concurring. I suspect this quote may come back to haunt him, as the fourth member of the panel had already seen the future and quoted the developments in AI which had already taken place in 2015 between BLP and RAVN, between Pinsent Masons and Cerico, and between Dentons with IBM Watson. The theme of'artificial intelligence' is one of the hot conference topics for 2016 – so much sexier than'big data'. However, such intelligence is anything but artificial.

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

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 first spark of the idea that would go on to become Tech City, surfaced on the last night of a UK trade mission to India in July 2010. At a British Government-hosted reception in Delhi, Matt Webb, then CEO and cofounder of design consultancy BERG, struck up a conversation with Rohan Silva, then a senior special advisor to the prime minister. Their chat soon turned to London and the best way to get the small cluster of startups that were scattered around Old Street to take off, and ultimately become a viable ecosystem. "Matt said there [wasn't] a Silicon Valley-type ethos in Old Street, where you can all come together," Silva told Wired magazine at the time. "So he asked for our help." A few months later, the Prime Minister delivered a speech in which he declared that "something [was] stirring in east London", which could one day "be one of the world's great technology centres".

The Year Without a Summer is why Robert Walton is important to Frankenstein: Like the newspapers, he's concerned about surviving climate chaos. He says that in the Arctic "the sun is for ever visible; its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. Frankenstein begins with the search for new, more habitable lands because of environmental anxieties. People did not know that the cooling trend was a temporary result of volcanic activity. Rather, they thought the summer of 1816, with its famine, social unrest, and winter eternal, was the new normal.

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