The rise of on-demand startups and other fast-growing businesses like online marketplaces has created a need for reliable ways to verify new hires and customers to make sure they are cut out for the task. Onfido, one of the group of startups building software-based solutions to do just that, has raised 25 million to meet that need. The Series B round was led by Idinvest Partners, with participation also from existing backers Wellington Partners and CrunchFund (founded by TC founder Michael Arrington), and brings the total raised by the startup to just over 30 million. It's not disclosing its valuation in this round, but as a marker, its competitor Checkr, which has raised just under 50 million, is valued between 250 million and 300 million. Onfido plans to use the capital in a couple of different ways.

Scientists have compiled the biggest known library of bat sounds in an effort to identify and conserve rare species. Mexico is home to many of the world's bats, but it also has one of the highest rates of extinction. International researchers recorded more than 4,500 calls from about half of Mexico's 130 bat species. The audio library allows bat calls to be identified automatically, helping to monitor any changes in biodiversity. Co-researcher, Prof Kate Jones, of UCL and Zoological Society London, said the ability to map bats was crucial for implementing effective conservation measures.

BERLIN – Computers may have us beat at chess and checkers, but new research suggests our brains still have an edge when it comes to solving certain tricky problems thanks to a very human trait: intuition. Scientists in Denmark have found that people who played a game that simulated a complex calculation in physics sometimes did better than their silicon rivals. "The big surprise we had was that some of the players actually had solutions that were of high quality and of shorter duration than any computer algorithms could find," said Jacob Friis Sherson, a physicist at Aarhus University who co-wrote the study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Experts say the results could advance the quest to develop effective quantum computers, something most major universities and several tech companies are working on as they seek to accelerate processing power. Such computers use individual atoms to store information and it's hoped they could one day outperform even the fastest conventional silicon-based supercomputers.

As part of the 2016 Cass London Symposium, the Cass Entrepreneurs Network is hosting a discussion about the impact of robotics and artificial intelligence on the world of work. The Panel will be chaired by Oliver Smith, Senior Reporter at The Memo. Can intelligent machines make us better entrepreneurs, or will disruptors be disrupted? Opportunity to meet tech startups and see prototypes.

Peter Singer raises the questions of ethics, given new developments in AI. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google's parent company, the owner of AlphaGo, is enthusiastic about what artificial intelligence (AI) means for humanity. Speaking before the match between Lee and AlphaGo, he said that humanity would be the winner, whatever the outcome, because advances in AI will make every human being smarter, more capable, and "just better human beings." Around the same time as AlphaGo's triumph, Microsoft's "chatbot" – software named Taylor that was designed to respond to messages from people aged 18-24 – was having a chastening experience. "Tay" as she called herself, was supposed to be able to learn from the messages she received and gradually improve her ability to conduct engaging conversations.

Your math teacher lied to you. Sometimes getting your sums wrong is a good thing. So says Joseph Bates, cofounder and CEO of Singular Computing, a company whose computer chips are hardwired to be incapable of performing mathematical calculations correctly. Ask it to add 1 and 1 and you will get answers like 2.01 or 1.98. Pentagon research agency DARPA funded the creation of Singular's chip because that fuzziness can be an asset when it comes to some of the hardest problems for computers, such as making sense of video or other messy real world data. "Just because the hardware is sucky doesn't mean the software's result has to be," says Bates.

Computers may trounce humans at games like chess and Go, but there's one game we've still got a lock on: quantum physics. Scientists who had people play an online video game that mimicked a troublesome quantum mechanical problem found that the gamers were far better than the computers at working out viable solutions. The findings, published in the journal Nature, offer a surprisingly effective method of dealing with still-puzzling problems in quantum mechanics – and show that artificial intelligence may still have a lot to learn from the power of human intuition. Scientists have been working to develop quantum computers, which takes advantage of the bizarre ways in which matter behaves at the tiniest of scales. Quantum computers have the potential to vastly outstrip the abilities of conventional devices, allowing them to perform a wide range of complex tasks, from cracking encrypted codes to operating self-driving cars.

When the performance of an employee is evaluated, ideally there are no externalities to complicate the analysis. If the employee has a computer that is constantly freezing up - or the servers in the company frequently operate slowly - the employee's performance data will reflect the functionality and effectiveness of these systems. If the company occupies a highly competitive market, declining sales data is attributable at least in part to competition rather than the behaviours of employees. If managers implement significant restructuring, the outcomes would be apparent in the performance data of employees. Although it is desirable for performance data to be free of externalities, in practice this scenario seems unlikely. In performance, there is usually "internal association" of data - that is to say, the metrics are attributed to the behaviours of employees internally. But there are also "external antecedents" or determinants outside the direct control of employees. Since a worker tends to exercise little personal autonomy in many modern production settings, it is necessary to recognize how the data collected might be "internally disassociated": it is disconnected from the broader reality of production and also of the individual.

The Netherlands started the experiment to find ways to save fuel and lower carbon emissions. Two trucks traveling 160,000 kilometers (100,000 miles) could save 6,000 (approximately 6800 USD).

Facebook launched a concierge service called M through its Messenger app in 2015. M can purchase items, get gifts delivered, book restaurants, and make travel arrangements for the user. There is an element of the Mechanical Turk about it at the moment as it is powered by a combination of AI and real-life people. Siri has been around for a few years but has been upgraded in that time. It's now capable of showing the user specific photos he or she has taken, ordering things via ecommerce apps and giving directions.