One day in January, Eric Wilson dashed off a message to the teaching assistants for an online course at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "I really feel like I missed the mark in giving the correct amount of feedback," he wrote, pleading to revise an assignment. Thirteen minutes later, the TA responded. "Unfortunately, there is not a way to edit submitted feedback," wrote Jill Watson, one of nine assistants for the 300-plus students. Last week, Mr. Wilson found out he had been seeking guidance from a computer.

Robots have transformed the lives of tradesmen and laborers, but lawyers, architects, and doctors tend to believe that their careers are safe from the advances of artificial intelligence. This belief is entirely wrong, according to the upcoming book, Future of the Professions: How Technology will Transform the Work of Human Experts. The authors, Richard Susskind, UK government advisor and visiting professor at Oxford Internet Institute, and his son Daniel Susskind, lecturer at Oxford University, have conducted a hundred interviews and drawn on economic and sociological theory to reach their challenging conclusion: AI will dramatically transform the middle-class working landscape. In the near-term, the Susskinds argue, artificial intelligence will simply accelerate the efficiency of professions. But then robots will start to take over more work, and humans will find the roles of "doctor" or "lawyer" replaced with such less glamorous-sounding titles as "empathizer," "knowledge engineer," or "system provider."

The German transport ministry says General Motors' Opel division has been asked to appear before a commission looking into diesel emissions controls after an environmental group claimed two of its models are able to reduce pollution controls. The environmental group, DUH, says it has tested Opel's Zafira and Astra models and claims they reduce pollution controls at some speeds and temperatures. DUH wants them taken off the road. Opel says DUH's tests weren't objective or scientifically grounded, saying "our software was never designed to cheat or deceive." Apparently referring to the computer expert who examined the software for DUH, the company said that "the isolated conclusions of a hacker do not reflect the complex interdependencies of a modern exhaust after-treatment system."

Chinese technology giant Huawei is preparing for a world where people live forever, dead relatives linger on in computers and robots try to kill humans. Huawei is best known as one of the world's largest producers of broadband network equipment and smartphones. But Kevin Ho, president of its handset product line, told the CES Asia conference in Shanghai that the company used science-fiction movies such as "The Matrix" to envision future trends and new business ideas. "Hunger, poverty, disease or even death may not be a problem . . . 25 years from now," he said. "In the future, you may be able to purchase computing capacity to serve as a surrogate, to pass the baton from the physical world to the digital world."

As medical marijuana becomes both more socially acceptable and available, a growing number of people are looking to learn more about its benefits – but the search for reliable and timely information is not always easy. Decades of misinformation about cannabis has made searching the web for answers a cumbersome and time-consuming process. Further, because new research and new cannabis products are being released at an ever-increasing rate, individuals find themselves having to scroll through numerous sites to find exactly what they're looking for. To help address these problems, Vancouver-based Lift Cannabis Co. has developed the world's first cannabis-specific chatbot. Elevator (www.elevator.ai) is a text-based artificial intelligence (AI) app that enables individuals to ask questions and get instant answers.

This was how it happened for me, and I guess for a lot of people at the time. In 1993 I was working part-time at a game development studio while studying English and Drama at Warwick university. The studio, Big Red Software, was five guys in a small office above a printers in Leamington Spa. We ate, drank and breathed video games. If we weren't making them, we were playing them.

Games used to be harder. It sounds like the same sort of nostalgic elitism that music snobs indulge in, criticising current bands for lacking the legendary quality of yesterday's heroes. As the industry has grown, the big titles have moved towards toning down the difficulty, in order to give a smooth experience to as wide a range of players as possible. Nowadays, if you want a real challenge, you have to select "hard" mode, which usually just means more enemies and less ammo. But difficulty is at its best when it's an intrinsic part of the design: players have to think about the game in another way – and earn their progress.

To call Didi Chuxing an Uber competitor would be selling it short. While it offers broadly the same service, Didi is far more successful than the American startup is in China. It currently has an 87 percent share of the market, while Uber has struggled to make a big impact. Didi has also made some small investments in Lyft, a US-based Uber rival. As Didi is valued at over 25 billion, this new investment isn't necessarily a game-changer for either company, but its secondary effects might be far stronger. Apple's focus on China is clear.

Today on In Case You Missed It: A University of Washington robot hand has an algorithm in it that knows what works and what doesn't when handling things, and can improve itself over time. Samsung Brasil made a smart surfboard for a professional surfer that shows water conditions and incoming texts, and researchers hacked movies to include the visual style of art masters. Mass transit fiends will want to know how the hyperloop test in Nevada went. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.

Both theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk have warned that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to destroy humanity. Established geniuses as they are, their words don't seem to have resonated with Dag Kittlaus, the brains behind Siri, the beloved virtual assistant for iPhone. Ignoring words of caution pertaining to pending doom, the Norwegian, along with his team, have given birth to yet another AI, Viv. Dubbed "The Global Brain", this cloud-based virtual assistant is being called the next generation AI assistant. But the question is, is it?