The traditional definition of artificial intelligence is the ability of machines to execute tasks and solve problems in ways normally attributed to humans. Some tasks that we consider simple--recognizing an object in a photo, driving a car--are incredibly complex for AI. Machines can surpass us when it comes to things like playing chess, but those machines are limited by the manual nature of their programming; a 30 gadget can beat us at a board game, but it can't do--or learn to do--anything else. This is where machine learning comes in. Show millions of cat photos to a machine, and it will hone its algorithms to improve at recognizing pictures of cats.

We recently held a heated debate at Digital Catapult; would Artificial Intelligence increase the number of jobs? In this blog post, Peter Karney, Head of Product Innovation and Darren Murphy, Digital Communities Manager, go head to head* to explore the big questions surrounding AI. Peter: AI can certainly reduce or eliminate menial activities. One example is a call centre. Currently if you need advice you'll speak to a human being; it's expensive and can be a complete waste of time. But you can put an AI system in that can learn, figure out what you're saying, and do context searches.

A child's performance at school is widely considered to be a complex combination of inherited ability, the way they were brought up, the quality of teaching they received and a bit of luck. But a new study has suggested it may be possible to predict a person's academic achievement by looking at their DNA alone. Researchers have developed a new genetic scoring technique that explains almost 10 per cent of the differences between children's educational attainment by the age of 16-years-old. A DNA test could soon be used to predict how a child will do when they are at school after researchers found they can explain 10 per cent of a person's academic achievement by the age of 16-years-old by creating what is known as a polygenic score based on 74 genetic variants thought to play a role in educational performance The IQ test has long been dismissed as an inaccurate way to discern how intelligent a person really is - but now scientists may have found a better way. Researchers at the University of Warwick say MRI scans can measure human intelligence, and define exactly what it is.

Some designers might say their collections contain a little piece of each artist who has influenced them in their work. But none can mean this as literally as Tina Gorjanc, a fashion student from Central Saint Martins college in London. Ms Gorjanc has designed a collection of handbags and jackets, which she wants to make using leather cultivated from Alexander McQueen's own DNA. Tina Gorjanc, a fashion student from Central Saint Martins college in London, has designed a collection of handbags and jackets, which she wants to make using leather cultivated from Alexander McQueen's own DNA The'Pure Human' project envisions using DNA from McQueen's graduation collection from the same college, called'Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims'. The cells would be taken from the hair and placed in a culture.

Last week, I bought a selection of clothes recommended by an online personal stylist: a pair of skinny Topman jeans, a perfectly fitting white T-shirt from Jack & Jones, and most daringly – for me, anyway – some khaki chino shorts by Pull&Bear. We'd carried out the consultation online, with me sharing not only obvious information like my size, desired price range and "daringness" (with "daring" defined as wearing floral shirts or shorts with blazers), but also helping her work out my actual style preferences by telling her brands I like and flicking through endless pictures of well-dressed men to highlight the looks I want. This is no AI horror story, though. My stylist Sophie Bailey-Hine is very real, and her and her colleagues at Thread, a British startup that was founded in 2012, are currently helping 480,000 men find a new image, dress well, or simply sort out their clothes shopping. There is one small twist: Thread has just eight stylists.

The author recently completed a wonderful course in Machine Learning taught by Prof Andrew Ng of Stanford on Coursera. Machine Learning, more popularly known as Artificial Intelligence or AI is not a new topic. AI has been in the making for over 60 years. But it has started delivering creditable results in the last few years. The success of the driverless car has captured the popular imagination but progress in the areas of image recognition, natural language processing and anomaly detection is no less impressive and has applications across sectors.

Professor Fei Fei Li invests her time researching computer sciences at the Stanford University. She is Director of the Stanford AI Lab, Researcher in AI, computer vision, machine learning and cognitive neuroscience. We particularly loved her latest appearance on this TED Talks event about how systems learn how physical objects look and wanted to share this with you. YouTube: "Fei Fei Li: How we're teaching computers to understand pictures" by TED Talks

A little less than a year ago, Sphero released the first edition of its Spark robot, a rolling ball you can control with a mobile app. Since then, the product has been adopted as a tool for teaching kids about robotics and computer programming in over 1,000 schools across the US and Canada. Today it's announcing the second edition, the Sphero Spark, which has a tougher, scratch-resistant skin. It also has a more advanced version of Bluetooth, meant to make it easier to pair the bots with multiple devices in a classroom setting. Aside from these two changes, the new Spark unit is basically identical to its predecessor in size, price, battery life, and capability.

Chief Operating Officer Rachel Cooke Rachel is responsible for business operations including overseeing client services, research events and project management. Prior to joining Brandon Hall Group, Rachel was the Chief Operating Officer Co-founder of AC Growth. Rachel has over 15 years of experience in sales, marketing, business development, and sales performance management. Prior to AC Growth, she held several senior management roles and was on the leadership team at Bersin & Associates, a pioneer analyst firm in e-learning and now industry leading HR and talent Research Company. In her Senior Director role, Rachel developed the strategy and led the commercial execution of the solution provider vertical, and grew the vertical into the company's largest market segment.

There's no doubt Stephen Hawking is a smart guy. But the world-famous theoretical physicist recently declared that women leave him stumped. "Women should remain a mystery," Hawking wrote in response to a Reddit user's question about the realm of the unknown that intrigued him most. While Hawking's remark was meant to be light-hearted, he sounded quite serious discussing the potential dangers of artificial intelligence during Reddit's online Q&A session: A superintelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren't aligned with ours, we're in trouble. Hawking's comments might seem unrelated.