Lawrence Wintermeyer, CEO of Innovate Finance, expects to see more innovators trying to tap into the unbanked and unrepresented consumer market. He said: "The firm Pockit, for example, gives customers an account and card that they can use to manage their money and make payments. Users can deposit money into their account at thousands of locations across the UK or have their salaries or benefits paid into their account. Pockit users also get cash back deals on the high street and online." So-called "challenger banks" are popping up and Monese is the latest to make waves.

The fear of Artificial Intelligence technology replacing the human workforce is old news. Chances are, you've never heard of rag-pickers, gandy dancers, or leech collectors- that's because modern technology has eliminated the need for them. More recently, jobs like elevator operators and lamplighters are almost completely phased out. One study at the University of Oxford estimated that 47% of total American jobs could be automated and replaced by computers by 2033. The question is, do these facts spell doom for the workforce?

Drone images accumulate much faster than they can be analyzed. Researchers have developed a new approach that combines crowdsourcing and machine learning to speed up the process. Who would win in a real-life game of "Where's Waldo," humans or computers? A recent study suggests that when speed and accuracy are critical, an approach combing both human and machine intelligence would take the prize. With drones being used to monitor everything natural disaster sites, pollution, or wildlife populations, analyzing drone images in real-time has become a critically important big data challenge. Publishing in the journal Big Data, researchers, including Stéphane Joost from EPFL, present a new approach to rapidly interpret aerial images taken by camera drones that combines human crowdsourcing and machine learning.

Deep in the heart of Imperial College, London, a computer is learning how to play Pac-Man. Like many humans, it struggles to get the hang of the classic 1980s video game at first. With time though, experience helps it decide which manoeuvres will allow it to evade the clutches of a relentless gang of animated ghosts. This is just one of dozens of artificial intelligence (AI) projects slowly transforming the UK into the global hub for a technology that elicits fascination and fear in equal measure. The point of teaching a computer to master Pac-Man is to help it "think" and learn like a human.

Imagine you're the designer for an advertising campaign for a furniture store. That campaign will run on desktops, and in email newsletters, but it will also need to live on tablets and phones. You'll need different photos for different devices, and suddenly, creating one campaign is more like creating four. As screens (and screen sizes) proliferate, this is an increasingly common problem. At Adobe's digital marketing conference in Las Vegas, one of many new features the creative tools company announced is particularly poised to offer relief to anyone working in branding or marketing.

The technology industry has a problem with diversity. True to form, it thinks the solution is technological. Founders of the Future is a new venture that hopes to uncover the Mark Zuckerbergs of the future, using algorithms. "An AI doesn't know anything about your background - which school or university you went to," Tom Bowles told me. Mr Bowles, a machine learning expert, developed the software, which models the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs like Niklas Zennstrom, who set up Skype, and Natalie Massenet, who started Net-a-Porter.

Despite the various, and staggering, leaps made by computer scientists, critics argue that machines will never truly match humans until they gain consciousness. Considered a uniquely human trait, consciousness includes being sentient and self-aware, as well as aware of your surroundings. However, many scientists argue animals are as conscious as humans, and the theory of Phi could one day be used to determine if droids are capable of showing such behaviour. Matthew Davidson, PhD Candidate in the neuroscience of consciousness at Monash University has explained what the Phi theory is, and why it is significant, in an article for The Conversation. How and why circumstances may give rise to consciousness remain some of the most puzzling questions in science. Do you think that the machine you are reading this story on, right now, has a feeling of'what it is like' to be in its state?

Go 8 Bit is based on a live show in Edinburgh that shares the same name. These will range from nostalgic arcade classics (think Pong, Pac-Man and Street Fighter II) to modern masterpieces like Grand Theft Auto V. In addition, Dave is teasing "larger-than-life game-inspired physical challenges," no doubt imitating other game shows like A Question of Sport in the UK. The team captains will be Steve McNeil and Sam Pamphilon, a pair of comedians with a genuine passion for video games. They created and performed the original concept in Scotland, and will be partnered with a celebrity guest in each of the new episodes.

In Japan, humanoid robots are seen as an important part of the solution to the looming double problem of a shortage of labor and an aging society. The first challenge is for robots to be seen as a normal part of society by helping out with everyday tasks, which is why Aldebaran Robotics' diminutive NAO robot recently undertook a two week internship at the main Mitsubishi UFJ bank in central Tokyo. Gizmag called in to see how NAO was doing. NAO was created in 2006 and most recently came to our attention when helping kids learn to write in Switzerland. During the two week internship in Tokyo, NAO helped customers with questions or queries they had, in Chinese and English as well as Japanese.

The past couple of decades have seen technology forge ahead relentlessly, enabling us to communicate in unprecedented ways, work more smartly and from any location, carry our phones in our pocket and much more. And artificial intelligence has evolved somewhat too, alongside all of the'usual' tech that we use daily, bringing with it a more urgent perceived need to consider the threat that it might pose. Bill Gates has come out to state that he's firmly in the'AI is a threat camp', so too has Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest thinkers of our time. But not everyone is in agreement with them. At the Dublin Web Summit, I attended a talk – the name now escapes me unfortunately when it comes to who it was by – and when the speaker, a high profile tech name (that much I do know) was asked about the threat posed by AI, he said something that I found interesting.