Recovering the planet's natural resources is hard. It's difficult, dangerous, and can be environmentally damaging. Cue an IT revolution, with smart communications, 'extreme Wi-Fi' covering vast deserts, autonomous vehicles that extract vital rocks and minerals, and geofenced employees who receive warnings if they get close to a mine's famously colossal big machinery. There's even a'smart bolt' that creates an underground support structure which is classic Internet of Things. The final goal is the autonomous mine, where humans are completely removed from the mining process.

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.

The Singularity is a term you'll find in science and in science fiction. It was coined by mathematician John von Neumann to define a theoretical moment when the artificial intelligence of computers surpasses the capacity of the human brain. The term is borrowed from physics and quantum mechanics, where the term gravitational singularity is used in the study of black holes. These events are all considered singular because we are unable to predict what happens next; the disruptive degree of change associated with the event is simply too great for our current body of knowledge. While we are far from attaining the goal of artificial intelligence, there was a brief flurry of excitement recently when a computer passed the Turing Test, to mixed reviews.

It is not every day you see a runaway robot causing traffic chaos in a city centre. The robot, named Promobot, was being put through its paces at a research lab in the city of Perm in central Russia's Perm Krai region. The robot, designed to avoid obstacles and to turn around when it reached a boundary, had been left walking around an outside yard. This is the hilarious moment a runaway robot causes traffic chaos in a city centre. The robot - called Promobot - was being put through its paces at a research lab in the city of Perm in central Russia's Perm Krai region Promobot - short for Promotional Robot - is a unique robot created by Russian scientists and is designed to work in customer relations.

Former BHS owner Sir Philip Green has given evidence to the Business and the Work and Pensions select committees, which are investigating the demise of the 164-store group. The BBC's Jamie Robertson was in the room to witness the drama of the six-hour marathon. The first thing you notice as former BHS owner Sir Philip Green walks into the Committee Room is the sun tan. Sir Philip has obviously been having more time in the sun than the MPs cross-questioning him. Maybe they should get out more, though Monaco, where Sir Philip has his home might be a bit beyond their means.

Anirudh Koul's grandfather was slowly losing his ability to see. By 2014, he was having a hard time recognizing Koul's face in their weekly Skype calls bridging the vast distance between the Silicon Valley, where Koul is a data scientist at Microsoft, and the elderly man's home in New Delhi. So Koul started reading up on the challenges of vision loss and thinking about how the recent advances in deep learning, a potential-packed area of machine learning, could help give people a new way to recognize what's around them without actually seeing it. That was the modest beginning of Seeing AI. Two years later, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced the budding technology to thundering applause at this year's Build conference.

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 trainee office manager is set to begin a two month trial, but this is a new starter with a difference - because Betty is a ROBOT. The unusual colleague is about to launch her new career at The Transport Systems Catapult, based in Milton Keynes thanks to a team from the University of Birmingham. Betty will carry out tasks including patrolling the offices, assessing how many staff members are in the office outside working hours, monitoring the environment by collating data on clutter, office temperature, humidity and noise, as well as checking fire doors are closed and desks are clear. She will also be tasked with greeting guests at reception. Friendly Betty is a highly sophisticated robot, running artificial intelligence-driven software developed by an international research team led by the university.

DeepMind was established in London by Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman in 2011. Major venture capital firms Horizons Ventures and Founders Fund have invested in the company, as well as entrepreneurs Scott Banister and Elon Musk. Jaan Tallinn was an early investor and an advisor to the company. In 2014, DeepMind received the "Company of the Year" award by Cambridge Computer Laboratory. Also on 26 January 2014 Google announced that it had agreed to take over DeepMind Technologies.

A new type of media agency that uses predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to help clients decide where they should be spending their ad dollars launched in the US last week, with the aim of challenging the traditional agency business model in order to pick up big clients. Blackwood Seven was founded in Copenhagen in 2013 but has now entered the US market, thanks to the acquisition of performance marketing agency Two Nil, which has a roster of clients including Dollar Shave Club, Groupon, Wix, Zillow, Blue Apron, and The Honest Company. Speaking to Business Insider, Blackwood Seven's chief analytics officer Dr Michael Green explained that the company doesn't rely on "gut feeling" to make media decisions on behalf of its clients. Instead, Blackwood Seven is a software platform, which charges clients a software fee, rather than taking an agreed commission on total media spend like normal agencies. Nor does the company make bulk ad spend commitments to media owners or buy media slots in advance and sell them back to its clients.