The last few years have seen numerous studies pointing to a bleak future with technology-induced unemployment on the rise. For example, a pivotal 2013 study by researchers at the University of Oxford found that of 702 unique job types in the United States economy, around 47% were at high risk of computerisation. This was backed up by similar findings in Australia suggesting 44% of occupations – representing more than five million jobs – were at risk over the coming 10 to 15 years. Is the situation really so dire? Are we heading towards mass unemployment as computers and robots do all the work?

From the story of Talos of Crete to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the concept of artificially-simulated intelligence has long fascinated humankind. This urge to replicate intelligence through synthetic measures is what is even today driving us on to greater innovations. Our online searches are now taking into account the previous'experiences' to curate more tailored results, our cars are becoming self-driven as a result of AI-based tech and robotic domestic helpers have crossed the menial tasks of cleaning homes off the list of their human masters. In short, each and every aspect of our lives is being increasingly taken over by AI, and these examples are barely scraping the tip of the iceberg. To gain a more detailed insight into how ingrained artificial intelligence, heuristic algorithm and machine learning is becoming to everyday functioning, one only needs to take a look at the global startup ecosystem. While traditional technology majors such as IBM, Google, Microsoft and Amazon do figure in prominently when it comes to AI, there are several start-ups and tech-based ventures which are focusing on the technology as a key differentiator for their services and using it to revolutionise the way that businesses are conducted.

Intelligent technology is having a significant impact on the way customers interact with the public sector. In this article the experts at Agilisys offer an opinion on the shape of citizen interactions to come. In its recent report, The Future of Jobs, the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggested that automation, software and robots are not just changing skills requirements but replacing certain jobs altogether. While this may be worrying for those with manual, repetitive or labour-intensive jobs, it's important to focus on the 2.1 million new jobs that will be created in more specialised areas. Too often shrouded in mystery and fear, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and intelligent automation could actually revitalise innovation and revolutionise working practices.

It was a fall night in 2006, when Bradley Waldroup walked out of his rural trailer in southeastern Tennessee, carrying his .22 His estranged wife and her friend, Leslie Bradshaw, had just pulled up to drop off the Waldroups' four children. Waldroup began arguing with his wife and Bradshaw, who was unloading the car. He used a knife to cut her head open. He then chased his wife with the knife and a machete, managing to slice off one of her pinkies before dragging her into the trailer. There, he told their frightened children, "Come tell your mama goodbye," because it was the last time they'd ever see her. Miraculously, his wife managed to slip his grasp and escape.

This past week was the inauguration of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative. Stephen Hawking gave a lecture, media was gathered, and millions of dollars committed. A mural was also unveiled, full of fantastical dust swirls, particle jets, and an interstellar bottle carrying Einstein's equations. The painter, Robbert Dijkgraaf, happened to know the equations already, from his day job: string theorist at, and director of, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Kurt Gödel hung their hats at the storied institution, back in the day. Einstein's grand piano even sits in Dijkgraaf's living room--"just to be able to touch it is magic," he says. Keenly aware of the historical weight of the Institute and his position in it, Dijkgraaf serves both as a physicist and as a public figure. Painting isn't his only extracurricular: A former president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a regular fixture on Dutch television, and is deeply interested in science education, policy, and outreach. He sat down with Nautilus on the campus of the Institute this April. The video interview plays at the top of the screen. The honeycombs in which they store their amber nectar are marvels of precision engineering, an array of prism-shaped cells with a perfectly hexagonal cross-section. The wax walls are made with a very precise thickness, the...READ MORE If nature had a human personality, what would it be? I think it's part of being a scientist to understand the character of nature. For instance, even if you're a theoretical physicist, you would describe certain mathematical equations to describe natural phenomena. Or, how does nature let herself be captured? And then you just notice that the specific kind of mathematics or the specific kind of reasoning is very effective.

Meet OceanOne, a robot avatar that lets humans explore deep under the Ocean's surface, without any of the dangers or time limits associated with diving. While a human diver is constrained by pesky things like air and pressure when doing underwater research or excavations, a robot can stay underwater for much longer, collecting samples in hostile underwater environments. OceanOne was tested at the archeological site of the shipwreck La Lune off the coast of France. La Lune, a flagship that sank in the Mediterranean in 1664. It lies under 300 feet of water, far beyond the reach of recreational SCUBA divers, who limit themselves to 130 feet.

Irish chip maker Movidius has created the world's first deep learning USB stick that can add artificial intelligence (AI) to future products from self-driving cars to robots, and drones that will learn to think for themselves. Entitled the Fathom Neural Compute Stick, the device will sell for less than 100 and will allow powerful neural networks to be moved out of the cloud and deployed on new products like robots and drones. It is the latest breakthrough for the Dublin company, which has been winning major multi-million dollar deals with Google and drone maker DJI. 'With Fathom, every robot, big and small, can now have state-of-the-art vision capabilities' – DR YANN LECUN, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY "Any organisation can now add deep learning or machine intelligence to devices using the USB stick and create products that will be accessible to broader markets," Movidius co-founder David Moloney told Siliconrepublic.com. "We've already seen how the auto industry has been outflanked by Tesla ...

How does the image-recognition technology in a self-driving car respond to a blurred shape suddenly appearing on the road? Researchers from KU Leuven, Belgium, have shown that machines can learn to respond to unfamiliar objects like human beings would. Imagine heading home in your self-driving car. The rain is falling in torrents and visibility is poor. All of a sudden, a blurred shape appears on the road.

We introduce a new learned descriptor for audio signals which is efficient for event representation. The entries of the descriptor are produced by evaluating a set of regressors on the input signal. The regressors are class-specific and trained using the random regression forests framework. Given an input signal, each regressor estimates the onset and offset positions of the target event. The estimation confidence scores output by a regressor are then used to quantify how the target event aligns with the temporal structure of the corresponding category. Our proposed descriptor has two advantages. First, it is compact, i.e. the dimensionality of the descriptor is equal to the number of event classes. Second, we show that even simple linear classification models, trained on our descriptor, yield better accuracies on audio event classification task than not only the nonlinear baselines but also the state-of-the-art results.

Smartwatches like the Apple Watch may have failed to generate the seismic shift seen with the arrival of the iPhone, but musician and entrepreneur will.i.am The self-confessed geek has launched his own watch-based gadget that can make calls and send texts without needing to be connected to a phone. The device, dubbed'dial', is now available to pre-order in the UK via Three, with prices starting at 22 a month. Will.i.am has launched a watch dubbed dial (shown above) that can make calls and send texts without a connected phone being nearby The Black Eyed Peas frontman first revealed his watch, at a London launch in February, having talked about an earlier version that failed to come to fruition. It is 3G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS enabled.