Google is appealing against the record €2.4bn (£2.2bn) fine imposed by the European Union for its abuse of its dominance of the search engine market in building its shopping comparison service. The world's most popular internet search engine has launched its appeal after it was fined by the European commission for what was described as an "old school" form of illegality. The Luxembourg-based general court, Europe's second-highest, is expected to take several years before ruling on Google's appeal, which had been widely expected. The Silicon Valley giant had responded to the fine at the time of its announcement by saying that it "respectfully" disagreed with the legal argument being pursued. A spokesman for the commission said: "The commission will defend its decision in court."

A top Air Force pilot who has been battling flight simulators since the 1980s was outgunned by an intelligent machine. To the chagrin of cab drivers and delivery boys, Domino's started testing self-driving cars. And exchange-traded funds, long seen as a disruptive technology by those in the industry, are displacing active managers. What these machines will do next--pick stocks, set up asset-allocation plans--was a running theme at the Morningstar ETF conference last week.

The CIA is making use of several artificial intelligence (AI) programs that access, gather, and retrieve social media intelligence for the agency. In a statement reported by Futurism, Dawn Meyerriecks, the deputy director for technology development with the CIA said at the Intelligence and National Security Summit that the agency had over 137 AI projects as part of "In-Q-Tel" where a large portion of it is created through collaborations with Silicon Valley firms. With greater ability and power to analyse data, AI programs thus created have reportedly taken to social media platforms and "comb through" all public records –all the stuff that is posted by people using social media. It is reported that a large percentage of the data that the CIA collects comes from various social media platforms. While the very act of collecting data from social media is by no means new, making use of AI to do this is.

"From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein's Monster to the classical myth of Pygmalion, through the story of Prague's Golem to the robot of Karel Čapek, who coined the word, people have fantasised about the possibility of building intelligent machines, more often than not androids with human features". This is not an excerpt from a book on the history of robots in literature, but the opening sentence of the brand new European Parliament report on Robotics. Beyond this anecdotal reference, this draft report attempts to answer a question: as the presence of robots in our societies is no longer a science-fiction fantasy, and with people interacting more and more with intelligent machines in their day-to-day lives, is the future of humanity threatened? While the European Commission does currently fund robotics projects, the EU lacks a common regulatory framework in this field. Against this backdrop, the legal affairs committee of the European Parliament, has been entrusted with the task of writing a report on the issue of robotics, and has elaborated policy recommendations for the European Commission.

The teachers who inspire our children will soon be machines and not humans, according to a leading university vice chancellor. Within 10 years a technological revolution will sweep aside old notions of education and change the world forever, Sir Anthony Seldon says. The vice chancellor of the University of Buckingham believes school teachers will lose their traditional role and effectively one day be little more than classroom assistants. He says they will remain on hand to set up equipment, help children when necessary and maintain discipline. But the essential job of instilling knowledge into young minds will be completely done by artificially intelligent (AI) computers.

Discussions around Artificial Intelligence (AI) have proliferated and will continue to over the next year. Businesses are beginning to see its value in a wide range of sectors, even as reports that show how machines are encroaching on activities previously assumed to require human experience may instil fear that AI will replace workers' jobs. Simply put there is no hiding the explosion of AI and its applications. In Singapore, the government is investing S$150 million into a new national programme to boost the country's artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities over the next five years. They will partner AI start-ups and companies developing AI products to grow knowledge in the space, create tools and develop talent.

Last week, Vladimir Putin told students, "Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world." That caught the interest of noted AI phobe / profiteer Elon Musk who tweeted, simply and ominously: "It begins…" But the CIA's head of technology development has a different take. Dawn Meyerriecks is less worried about rival nation states might use AI to outflank the United States than about getting U.S. leaders to believe what AI is telling them. "If I want to increase [ certainty in a particular AI-aided assessment] what goes into it? What do I need in order to make a really good assessment on the back-end because that tells me what sort of collection I need to raise confidence to go address national leadership?"

Wary of allowing the country's industry fall behind, the Japanese government is set to fund the development of semiconductors for artificial intelligence and other new technologies. The country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry sees it as imperative to nurture new areas of manufacturing to help shore up the country's economic growth. The colossal sums involved in developing chips, even in their trial phase have meant the area has largely been dominated by Japan's biggest companies. Now the ministry plans to provide financial help to startups and researchers in the field by purchasing the necessary software and equipment. The hope is to lay the ground work for the development of advanced technology and foster a strong pool of talent that can compete on the global stage.

We must think now about the consequences that AI will have very shortly in our lives – changing work, society, economics and more. There's some encouragement that at last governments around the world are waking up to the size of some of the societal questions that AI innovation will ask of us. There is nothing to say that our economic system requires a constant amount of human labour; we should treat the reduction in need for labour as a huge positive, rather than seeking to generate jobs simply to keep people occupied. Shorter working weeks would give more people a stake in employment, and also give them more time to do other things with their lives.

Discussions around artificial intelligence (AI) provoke both excitement and fear in strong measure. Just last week, Elon Musk predicted that AI will be the most likely cause of World War III (although perhaps he just wasn't following President Donald Trump closely enough). As happens so often with new advances, policymaking lags significantly behind. We must think now about the consequences that AI will have very shortly in our lives – changing work, society, economics and more. There's some encouragement that at last governments around the world are waking up to the size of some of the societal questions that AI innovation will ask of us.