When Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk proclaims that artificial intelligence is "our biggest existential threat," it makes headlines worldwide. But what goes unreported is that the very search engines people used to find Musk's comments are themselves an example of how AI has subtly but forcefully become a part of everyday, real-world life. When it comes to a discussion of AI, it helps to have a sense of history--as well as a sense of humor. Thanks to premonitory proclamations by Musk, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Cambridge's Stephen Hawking and other prominent technologists, AI has become a popular topic again, after a 20-year cooling-off period. It's tempting to assume that the "dire warnings" about AI being a threat to mankind were mostly tongue-in-cheek, but the end result is that just as it happened in the 1980s and '90s, the hype over AI is again outpacing the reality (virtual and otherwise). The first question that needs to be answered though is: Whatever happened to AI and why did it go underground for so many years?

It's been a busy couple of days for the worlds' of digital marketing, social media and tech! Taking the week by storm, we've seen the succession of Britain from the European Union, Apple and Facebook unveils and more. Did we miss something in this week's news? Comment below and share your own thoughts!

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be worsening inequality, given the biases being embedded within the underlying machine-learning algorithms, writes Kate Crawford, a principal researcher at Microsoft and co-chairwoman of a White House symposium on society and AI. She cites one case in which Google's photo application was found to classify images of black people as gorillas as an example of systems with prejudices built in. An even more pernicious example was referenced in a recent ProPublica investigation, which found popular software used to evaluate the probability of criminal recidivism was twice as likely to erroneously assign a high risk to black defendants and a low risk to white defendants. Crawford says AI reflects the values of those who create it, and inclusivity must be accounted for to avoid machine intelligences that mirror a narrow and elite perception of society. "We need to be vigilant about how we design and train these machine-learning systems, or we will see ingrained forms of bias built into the artificial intelligence of the future," Crawford warns.

Public confidence is also essential to stimulate economic growth through RAS. TechUK, which represents more than 900 technology companies (accounting for about half of all tech jobs in the UK), emphasize in their submission that innovation can only be achieved with the right'conditions and regulatory environment', in which'the UK population trusts and understands the opportunities afforded by ... UK global leadership in robotics and AI.'

The White House wants to hear what you think about the future of artificial intelligence. Earlier this month, the Office of Science and Technology Policy announced it was hosting several public workshops on the technology, part of an effort to promote its use in government. Now, OSTP is asking the members of the public to send in their thoughts about the social and legal implications of artificial intelligence, among other topics. While potentially useful in government, especially in fields such as criminal justice, artificial intelligence "carries risks and presents complex policy challenges," OSTP's call for information says. The public input will help OSTP recommend "directions for research."

If you ask, Alexa can tell you a joke and Siri will recite a haiku. Jibo will do that, and more: the new home robot can sense when you're feeling down and try to make you smile. Cynthia Breazeal, a social robotics expert at MIT, designed the 749 bot to exhibit something approaching empathy. It isn't the first--Pepper, a humanoid robot from Softbank, does the same thing and arrives in the US later this year. But Pepper started in customer service and was adapted to home use. The oversized head is a bit too big for its body, like a puppy.

With Australia's rates of skin cancers one of the highest in the world, IBM Research and MoleMap -- one of the world's largest melanoma screening programs -- are partnering with the Melanoma Institute Australia to help further advances in the identification of melanoma. The partnership and the planned research builds on IBM's existing research agreement with MoleMap, which uses advanced visual analytics to analyse more than 40,000 datasets including images and text. Under the new partnership, IBM Research plans to analyse dermatological images of skin lesions to help identify specific clinical patterns in the early stages of melanoma. The Melanoma Institute cites current statistics indicating that two in three Australians will be diagnosed with skin cancer before the age of 70, yet 95 to 99% of all skin cancers are preventable – with early diagnosis of skin cancer critical for survival rates, notably for melanoma which is considered among the most life-threatening. And, according to national cancer statistics, someone in Australia dies from melanoma every six hours.

Keep calm and carry on; artificial intelligence will not take all our jobs and achieve world domination, according to a report released by Forrester. Prominent figures including Elon Musk, co-chairman of OpenAI, and Professor Stephen Hawking have publicly warned people about how the advent of AI will cause an existential threat to humankind. The frenzy around AI has led to groups rallying for future safety measures. Google's DeepMind has even collaborated with Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute to develop [PDF] an AI "panic button." Forrester, a technological research and advisory firm, believes the panic is exaggerated, however, and said: "Don't believe the hype – Google AlphaGo's gaming successes and IBM Watson will not usher in a dystopian triumph of machines over humans."

IBM Watson Health is extending net to supply its artificial intelligence system by coming up with a 16-member international unit of health systems, academic medical centers and imaging technology companies to boost the development speed of products that diagnose patients rightly in the first time. IBM said that ranging from rural America's hospitals and academic medical centers in the inner city to Europe and Japan's imaging companies the collaborative will expand its effort to spot the major problems of the healthcare in'real-life' settings in daily practice. The Watson Health business presently has data on nearly 300 million patients and the collaborative is going to help record the experience of doctors and imaging centers working with numerous distinct diseases and imaging equipment used in the treatment of patients. In an interview, Steven Tolle, chief strategy officer for Watson Health Imaging, said that the collaborative is going to assist doctors in addressing different cancers such as breast and lung and also eye health, diabetes, and brain and heart diseases. Further, Tolle gave assurance to IBM Watson's observers that the collaborative is going to be wider than its rivals. While speaking about IBM Watson rivals, Tolle said, "They partner with one partner and go after one disease.

Everything in the universe is made up of elementary particles, the most fundamental building blocks of nature. Quantum physics states pairs of particles and antiparticles can be created out of empty space - but exactly how this process happens is complex, which makes it difficult to model using classical computers. Now scientists have modelled the way particles are spontaneously created using a quantum computer, for the first time. Scientists have modelled the way particles are spontaneously created using a quantum computer, for the first time. Quantum computing takes advantage of the ability of subatomic particles to exist in more than one state at any time.