A report from KPMG suggests that insurers will need to take "drastic measures" in order to reinvent themselves. In Empowered for the Future: Insurance Reinvented, which was released earlier this week, KPMG argues that insurers need to make fundamental changes to their business and operating models. "Success in the insurance industry of the future will not come from simply tweaking the status quo, insurers will need to change virtually every part of their business if they hope to not just survive, but thrive," reads the report. KPMG surveyed more than 70 insurance executives and asked them about the difficulties they see ahead and how they plan to meet them. Asked about the greatest threats they face (respondents could give more than one answer), executives said they were most concerned by the prospect of regulatory changes (37%), the effect of organisations outside the insurance industry (37%), and disruptive technologies (36%).

Google is extending its push into artificial intelligence with a new European research centre dedicated to advancing the technology. Based in Zurich, the team will focus on three areas – machine learning, natural language understanding and computer perception. Emmanuel Mogenet, who will head the unit, said much of the research would be on teaching machines common sense. There was, he said, "no limit on how big I grow the team". "We are very ambitious in terms of growth. The only limiting factor will be talent," he told journalists gathered in Zurich to hear more about Google's AI plans.

You'll find the Future of Humanity Institute down a medieval backstreet in the centre of Oxford. It is beside St Ebbe's church, which has stood on this site since 1005, and above a Pure Gym, which opened in April. The institute, a research faculty of Oxford University, was established a decade ago to ask the very biggest questions on our behalf. Notably: what exactly are the "existential risks" that threaten the future of our species; how do we measure them; and what can we do to prevent them? Or to put it another way: in a world of multiple fears, what precisely should we be most terrified of? When I arrive to meet the director of the institute, Professor Nick Bostrom, a bed is being delivered to the second-floor office. Existential risk is a round-the-clock kind of operation; it sleeps fitfully, if at all. Bostrom, a 43-year-old Swedish-born philosopher, has lately acquired something of the status of prophet of doom among those currently doing most to shape our civilisation: the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley.

Google has launched a project to use artificial intelligence to create compelling art and music, offering a reminder of how technology is rapidly changing what it means to be a musician, and what makes us distinctly human. Google's Project Magenta, announced Wednesday, aims to push the state of the art in machine intelligence that's used to generate music and art. "We don't know what artists and musicians will do with these new tools, but we're excited to find out," said Douglas Eck, the project's leader in a blog post. Just as Louis Daguerre and George Eastman did not predict what Annie Leibovitz or Richard Avedon would do, "surely Rickenbacker and Gibson didn't have Jimi Hendrix or St. Vincent in mind." Google has already released a song demonstrating the technology. The song was created with a neural network -- a computer system loosely modeled on the human brain -- which was fed recordings of a lot of songs.

Joy, a tech journalist, is invited to stay for a week with a reclusive tech magnate. During her stay she meets David, a former prodigy and robotics pioneer who has spent a decade working on Adam, an android so realistic that he initially fools Joy into thinking he's human. Over the week, Joy gets to know both Adam and David, neither of whom are very well socialised, especially when it comes to women. Her week is full of uncomfortable situations but she ultimately starts to have feelings for David. This provokes jealousy in Adam, something he's never experienced before.

The 22nd annual Electronic Entertainment Expo, or "E3" – the world's largest video gaming convention held each June in Los Angeles – once again served as a glimpse into the future of the multibillion dollar interactive entertainment industry. An estimated 50,000 industry-only attendees from more than 100 countries swarmed the Los Angeles Convention Center and surrounding areas to play games not yet commercially available. Another 20,000 fans showed up. While some of the buzz at the show surrounded new hardware, such as Microsoft's surprise announcement of a new console available in 18 months (codenamed "Project Scorpio"), it was the many hundreds of upcoming games that dominated the discussion. Yours truly spent three thumb-numbing days playing tomorrow's titles, and the following are some highlights from my vantage point. Feel free to share the games you're most excited about in the Comments section.

Student developers at the Apple Worldwide Developer's conference say they're ready to bring Siri to the masses, and make the personal digital assistant more useful. SAN FRANCISCO - What are the greatest, state-of-the-art apps for Apple iPhones, iPads, TVs and the Watch? Apple this week handed out awards to 12 app makers who are stretching the boundaries in what the company calls its Design Awards. The nods are given to put a spotlight on the best and brightest in app world. We sat down with most of the winners for an extended podcast at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) here to talk about their apps, the state of the app world and their take on new app features that Apple introduced at WWDC.

GE unveiled a machine data system for power plants it claims can increase a facility's efficiency of operation by 1.5%, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 3%, and reduce coal consumption by 67,000 tons for each megawatt of electricity produced. GE's Digital Power Plant for Steam suite was introduced at the Minds Machines conference in Paris June 14, where GE executives also revealed the results of a hardware and software upgrade using the technology at the Chivasso power plant in Northern Italy. The plant, run by A2A Group, was restarted in November 2015 after a three-year shutdown. Digital Power Plant for Steam is one of the first application suites to sit atop GE's Predix machine data analytics platform and yield practical, industrial results. The reference to "steam" in the product's name reflects the fact that gas and coal-fired power plants produce steam to drive the turbines that generate electricity used in households and industry in most societies.

Boston: Scientists, including one of Indian-origin, have developed a new artificial intelligence software that can turn any smartphone into an eye-tracking device. Eye-tracking technology - which can determine where in a visual scene people are directing their gaze - has been widely used in psychological experiments and marketing research, but the required pricey hardware has kept it from finding consumer applications. In addition to making existing applications of eye-tracking technology more accessible, the system developed by researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Georgia may enable new computer interfaces or help detect signs of incipient neurological disease or mental illness. "Since few people have the external devices, there is no big incentive to develop applications for them," said Aditya Khosla, an MIT graduate student. "Since there are no applications, there's no incentive for people to buy the devices. We thought we should break this circle and try to make an eye tracker that works on a single mobile device, using just your front-facing camera," he said.

As robotic technologies continue to advance, along with related technologies such as speech and image recognition, memory and analytics, and virtual and augmented reality, better, faster, and cheaper robots will emerge. These machines – sophisticated, discerning, and increasingly autonomous – are certain to have an impact on business and society. But will they bring job displacement and danger or create new categories of employment and protect humankind? We talked to SAP's Kai Goerlich, along with Doug Stephen of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition and Brett Kennedy from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, about the advances we can expect in robotics, robots' limitations, and their likely impact on the world. Kai Goerlich: Several trends will come together to drive the robotics market in the next 15 to 20 years.