As the first fully digital bank in Spain, Openbank is leading the way in banking innovation. We interviewed Patricia Benito, Chief Digital and Business Officer at Openbank to find out more. To begin can you tell us a little about Openbank SA? Openbank is our digital native bank, our Fintech and the Santander Group digital bank. This gives us the best of two models: the dynamism of a startup and the solidity of a financial group of the size and trajectory of Santander. It is a bank that today has one of the most advanced technologies in the world in terms not only of functionality for our customers but also in the application of intelligent algorithms and use of the cloud.

But deciding to build an app in the first place was driven by a broader purpose. As one doctor put it, "If you want to do world-class sociology research, build Facebook."

Out of curiosity, I was checking recent articles published in Journal of the American Statistical Association, as I used to publish in such journals 20 years ago, during my post-doctorate years. I did find some interesting articles, but when I tried to access them, I was asked to fork over $40 to get online access for 24 hours, and $226 to get online access for 30 days. The article in question, entitled A Multi-Resolution Approximation for Massive Spatial Datasets, had received only 283 page views, and took two years before being submitted and being published. You can check these stats here. Who still pay for such expensive articles, which in addition usually contain a substantial amount of arcane mathematics?

This week in IoT, autonomous and connected car technology dominates, with Renault demoing its latest concept vehicle. There was some major Irish success in the world of internet of things (IoT) hardware manufacturing, with Dublin-based DecaWave winning a major international award. The company was honoured at this year's Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) awards – the industry's'Oscars' – with the Start-up to Watch award. In its announcement of the winners, the GSA said that DecaWave was chosen as it was "a company that has demonstrated the potential to positively change its market or the industry through the innovative use of semiconductor technology or a new application for semiconductor technology". Meanwhile, in the consumer world, a report from Cisco has shown that the adoption of IoT devices is in jeopardy if consumers are not confident in the safety of products.

The quest to give machines human-level intelligence has been around for decades, and it has captured imaginations for far longer -- think of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in the 19th century. Artificial intelligence, or AI, was born in the 1950s, with boom cycles leading to busts as scientists failed time and again to make machines act and think like the human brain. But this time could be different because of a major breakthrough -- deep learning, where data structures are set up like the brain's neural network to let computers learn on their own. Together with advances in computing power and scale, AI is making big strides today like never before. Frank Chen, a partner specializing in AI at top venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, makes a case that AI could be entering a golden age.

The Robot Launch global startup competition is over for 2017. We've seen startups from all over the world and all sorts of application areas – and we'd like to congratulate the overall winner Semio, and runners up Apellix and Mothership Aeronautics. All three startups met the judges criteria; to be an early stage platform technology in robotics or AI with great impact, large market potential and near term customer pipeline. Semio from Southern California is a software platform for developing and deploying social robot skills. Ross Mead, founder and CEO of Semio said that "he was greatly looking forward to spending more time with The Robotics Hub, and is excited about the potential for Semio moving forward."

Automotive, financial services, utilities--in these and many other industries, businesses are already applying artificial intelligence to core business processes and to innovating products. Business adoption of artificial intelligence is picking up steam, but still today only 20 percent of organizations that are aware of AI actually use this rapidly advancing technology. One reason: many executives are still wondering, "What can AI do for my business?" Earlier this year at the AI Frontiers conference in Santa Clara, California, we sat down with AI experts from some of the world's leading technology-first organizations to find out about current and future applications of AI. An edited version of the experts' remarks follows the video.

Microsoft AI chief Harry Shum says the company is fulfilling Bill Gates' vision of a computer that can understand us. If you ask Google "Is Hamilton a good musical?" it will send back a link to Quora, the question-and-answer service, where people ask that same question. The next link, a story published in Slate last year, is an interview with a critic who argues why the Pulitzer-, Grammy- and Tony-winning musical isn't revolutionary (their pun, not ours). Microsoft thinks it can do better. Beginning Wednesday, the company will start giving you more nuanced answers, powered by artificial intelligence software designed to identify different viewpoints.

I wanted today to broadcast in English this excellent article, originally published in French by FIGAROVOX with Laurent Alexandre, on transhumanism, artificial intelligence, robots, and the « dark » vision of Elon Musk on our future. Even if I don't agree with the pessimist point of view on the supposed AI nightmare coming, this interview is really interesting to better understand the challenges that we are going to face in the next 20 years and over. From my point of view, humans will only decide of their future … decisions that could be the most crucial since the beginning of humanity … to move towards a better life thanks to technological progress related to artificial intelligence … or to go to … Gattaca! FIGAROVOX / GREAT INTERVIEW – Should we be afraid of transhumanism? Between fantasies and reality, Laurent Alexandre answers all the questions we ask ourselves about artificial intelligence. He paints a vertiginous and disturbing portrait of the world to come, where technologies will radically transform the human.

MS: Chris, two of the hottest topics in business and finance automation at the moment are'Robots' and'Artificial Intelligence'. They're almost used interchangeably, but I understand they're not the same. Can you explain the difference? CA: 'Artificial Intelligence' is arguably a bit more attention-grabbing in the headlines! But fundamentally, Robotics in finance means cutting-edge automation; sophisticated software which can be programmed within boundaries to, for example, code an invoice, or to receive a sales order and process it, and then match the payment to the order when it comes in.