When you think of artificial intelligence, the first image that likely comes to mind is one of sentient robots that walk, talk and emote like humans. It's known as machine learning, and it revolves around enlisting computers in the task of sorting through the massive amounts of data that modern technology has allowed us to generate (a.k.a. One of the places machine learning is turning out to be the most beneficial is in the environmental sciences, which have generated huge amounts of information from monitoring Earth's various systems -- underground aquifers, the warming climate or animal migration, for example. A slew of projects have been popping up in this relatively new field, called computational sustainability, that combine data gathered about the environment with a computer's ability to discover trends and make predictions about the future of our planet. This is useful to scientists and policy-makers because it can help them develop plans for how to live and survive in our changing world.

There is no need to worry about whether robots might start taking our jobs. Three of the world's 10 largest employers are already replacing tens of thousands of their workers with robots: Foxconn, a key manufacturing partner for Apple, Google, and Amazon, is the world's 10th largest employer and it has already replaced 60,000 workers with robots, according to a recent note written in part by analyst John Seagrimat CLSA. Walmart, the third-largest global employer with 2.1 million workers, wants to replace its warehouse stock-checkers with flying drones that can scan miles of shelves in a fraction of the time. And the US Department of Defense, the No.1 global employer, is already; flying the world's largest fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles - drones, basically - in its various Middle East conflicts. The US DoD has at least 7,362 RQ-11 Ravens in operation for instance.

In U.S. Congress Discusses AI, Automation, Robotics and Basic Income we see senior U.S. Government people start to try and understand the changing world… Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.

As hard as it may be to believe I actually heard some intelligent discussion on this topic this morning on @MSNBC @morning_joe where it was stated that we are heading to an economy where 80% of people will have nothing to do. That may be a bit extreme but our educational and governmental institutions need to be preparing now for the impending digital revolution. Unlike the industrial revolution this one will not produce the same quantity of good paying jobs to employ the masses. I wrote this last year in response to the Baltimore riots but the content is still relevant. Smart machines enjoy full employment, but what about people? Smart machines, deep neural networks, robots, packages that know exactly where they are going, delivery drones.

In 10 years, we'll see big changes in how people live their lives and how companies operate, thanks to the innovation that's now being kindled around the world. So says Alec Ross, former innovation adviser to Hillary Clinton during her term as U.S. Secretary of State, who lays out the thesis in his new book, The Industries of the Future. In Part 1 of our interview, Ross explains how the technology underlying the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, blockchain technology, will greatly reduce the friction in financial and other transactions. Here he discusses the impact of cognitive robots and the outlook for U.S. companies trying to compete on a global scale. You talked about robotics a lot in your book and you focused for the most part on physical robots.

Whether robots will replace doctors in the future is just one of the questions Professor Lilford will be addressing in a panel discussion titled The Picture of Health: Exploring the Future of Medicine, as part of the University of Warwick's Festival of the Imagination. Running from October 16-17, the festival marks the university's 50th anniversary, showcasing its work and expertise with a series of talks, live shows and interaction exhibitions on the theme of "Imagining the future". This particular event will take the form of a Q&A with the audience, focusing on what the world of medicine will look like 50 years from now. Thanks to Professor Lilford's 40 year career, in which he's done everything from practising as a doctor specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology to working for the Department of Health, he's well placed to tackle any questions that come up. It promises to be a fascinating peek into the wards and surgeries of the future.

Now to put that fact in context, compare this to 2004, when DARPA sponsored the very first driverless car Grand Challenge. Of the 20 entries they received then, the winning entry went 7.2 miles; in 2007, in the Urban Challenge, the winning entries went 60 miles under city-like constraints. Things are clearly progressing rapidly when it comes to machine intelligence. But how did we get here, after not one but multiple "A.I. winters"? And why is Silicon Valley buzzing about artificial intelligence again?

It's no mystery that big data presents a challenge to privacy. But perhaps more alarming is the emergence of technology that combines facial recognition and data analytics to create a powerful surveillance tool. It's a disturbing development that combines the most worrisome aspects of algorithmic and big data technology with the chilling and dangerous threats inherent in facial recognition. A Chicago tech company is advertising its "predictive video" to anticipate behavior "based on the emotional state and personality style of any person in a video." In Russia, the app FindFace gives users "the power to identify total strangers on the street," according to The Atlantic. Google's new chat app Allo has a "smart reply" feature that apparently analyzes photos from contacts and offers suggested responses to them .

"The future is here," or so stated Adrian Flux Insurance Services, an insurance broker out of Norfolk, England, that announced it will issue policies for self-driving cars. "Unlike every insurance policy that you've ever held in the past, driverless car insurance needs to cover you against a whole host of modern problems, not just your typical bumps and scrapes," the company stated in a news release. The U.K. allows the extensive testing of fully autonomous vehicles on public roads, as do the states of California, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Texas and the District of Columbia in the U.S. New vehicles are increasingly coming with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which can take control of the vehicle to ensure it stops before hitting an object or maintains speed and distance between other vehicles. Google's self-driving pod car has no steering wheel. California is considering regulations that would require a human driver behind every autonomous vehicle's steering wheel.

Today everybody expects a regulation comes out and that's what it is forever. That will not work,