With the rapid growth of the Internet of Things (IoT), tens of billions of sensor devices are projected to connect in the next decade. These connected sensor devices will automate processes across a broad range of economic sectors, from industrial plants to healthcare management, delivering productivity gains and hopefully quality-of-life improvements.

With the trends in personal computing favoring software that gets to know its users, the newest version of Nuance's Dragon voice dictation suite of software--Dragon 15, announced Tuesday--is right on track. Dragon 15--including Dragon Professional Individual ( 300), Dragon Professional Individual for Mac ( 300), Dragon Legal ( 500), and Nuance Dragon Anywhere (free to install; subscriptions run 15/month or 150/year)--is based on Nuance's new machine-learning technology. The company claims that this technology has improved recognition accuracy by at least 24 percent, thanks to its algorithm that learns your distinctive speech patterns over time combined with an improved capability to pick out speech from a noisy room. Lawyers may buy the expanded Legal version, which is trained using a legal vocabulary of more than 400 million words, according to the company. But the majority of Nuance's customers will probably invest in the Dragon Professional Individual version, which is designed for a more general vocabulary.

Dr Kate Darling, a leading specialist in robot ethics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studies the psychology of how humans interact with robots and believes it's important to consider such issues. On a recent visit to Australia she noted: "Robotics is really important right now. Robots are moving from behind the scenes in factories in cages and to new areas of the world, to transportation systems and hospitals and households, and starting to interact with people in a way we haven't seen before. "There are a lot of uses that concern me and other people working in robot ethics. It might be cool to have a robot vacuum cleaner but it might be collecting a lot of data about your home as they get smarter."

Artificial Intelligence will make society smarter, leaner and more efficient. But first, startups and businesses must enable the workforce of the future and pivot business models to incorporate AI. Mundane tasks such as driving, scheduling and logistics will all be handled by an AI assistant with multiple input points, such as microphones around your house and smartphones. The AI assistant will be the central nervous system of your life and connected smart home. In the future, when you summon a shared autonomous car from your phone to go out to dinner, your AI assistant will automatically notify the restaurant of your ETA and dietary restrictions.

Woodside is Australia's largest independent oil and gas company. For more than 60 years it's been a critical thread in the nation's fabric: if its gas doesn't arrive promptly in Perth to fuel power generation the city goes dark in two days. The company no longer relies purely on gas and oil for its success, however; it relies on data. According to Woodside senior vice-president and chief technology officer Shaun Gregory: "Our people understand that data is king, that knowledge is king." However; it used to be a burden, he says.

With Google DeepMind's recent success in mastering the game of Go, Tesla's advances in autonomous driving capabilities, and voice recognition systems like Amazon's Alexa taking off, interest in AI and machine learning have reached an all-time high. Those living in the AI world in the 1980s remember what has been referred to as an "AI winter"--a time when the inflated expectations resulted in a "crash," and funding began to dry up. While it's unlikely that the current enthusiasm in AI will wane, some worry that huge attention, and expectations, about AI could have negative side effects. Some also worry about how AI is equated with machine learning--or even, more specifically, deep learning, which is a narrow subset of AI. So, what happened in the '80s?

According to the BBC, there is a mere 3% chance that solicitors' jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence and automation. For family lawyers, the risks should be even lower because particularly human skills of empathy and negotiation are integral to your work. That BBC article's a year old, and artificial intelligence is shaking up the law. In Melbourne, Settify is a new family law firm that has embraced artificial intelligence. Settify is so machine-based that it can offer many of its services, including initial advice, free.

Tim Cook believes AI is the future of smartphones, sees "enormous opportunity" for Apple Stanford programs prepare underrepresented high schoolers for careers in science, engineering ... Trader Poll: Do you fear artificial intelligence?

Elon Musk's SpaceX successfully landed a reusable Falcon 9 rocket on a floating drone ship at sea on Sunday morning. The company's eighth launch this year was part of its ongoing effort to re-use costly rocket parts instead of discarding them into the ocean. It is the fourth time SpaceX has vertically landed a Falcon 9 rocket on a floating platform at sea. The company has also landed another rocket safely on land. The rocket launched under a dark night sky from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The robots are coming, and they're getting smaller, smarter and cheaper. While today, businesses may own just a single drone, one day, large parts of whole industries could be overseen by a new generation of robots. But, how will groups of these robots perform useful tasks like collecting crop data or organizing around a common goal? That's one role for the blockchain proposed in a new white paper from MIT Media Lab research affiliate Eduardo Castello Ferrer. The eight-year robotics veteran believes that by using the blockchain to distribute information, whole armies of robots could solve problems and accomplish tasks more efficiently. The idea is that in robotic swarms, each robot follows basic rules, drawing inspiration from creatures like ants and fish that often clump together.