When businesses latch onto a buzzword, it quickly becomes the solution to everything. Not long ago, in the era of "big data," companies scrambled to add chief data scientists to their ranks. Before that, vendors of all manner touted their innovative social, local, mobile solutions (or SoLoMo, in industry parlance). Lately, corporations have been talking nonstop--on conference panels, in TED Talks, in pitchdecks--about artificial intelligence. But in this moment, few business trends can compete with the magic of blockchain technology.

I sometimes reflect on how we will reach this stage of AI called AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) which is defined by a state of AI that by some measure equivalents the human condition. Scientists in the field sometimes call this the singularity, or the point where AI will develop much faster and at larger scale than ourselves. This is of course still a hypothetical state and many out there are in the very process of proving it either wrong or right - so I am not going there in this post. Then I am not even touching the subjects of free will, intention, sentience and consciousness... Nevertheless it is interesting to reflect on, independent from utopian or dystopian narratives around which many writings, studies and opinions are centered, how the evolutionary steps of AI look like today. Usually evolution is considered over very large timeframes, meaning millions or billions of years.

At the Re-Work Deep Learning Summit in Boston today, a panel of ethicists and engineers discussed some of the biggest challenges facing artificial intelligence: algorithmic biases, ethics in AI, and whether the tools to create AI should be made widely available. The panel included Simon Mueller, cofounder and vice president of think tank The Future Society; Cansu Canca, founder and director of the AI Ethics Lab; Gabriele Fariello, a Harvard instructor in machine learning, researcher in neuroinformatics, and chief information officer at the University of Rhode Island; and Kathy Pham, a Google, IBM, and United States Digital Service alum who's currently researching ethics at the Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering at Harvard Berkman Klein Center and MIT Media Lab. Mueller kicked off the discussion with a thorny question: Is ethics the most pressing problem for the progress of AI? "It's always an'engineering first and solve the tech problem first' attitude [when it comes to AI]," Pham said. "There are a lot of experts out there who have been thinking about this, [but] those voices need to be recognized as just as valuable as the engineers in the room." Canca agreed that ethics aren't discussed among product leads and designers as often as they should be.

With strawberry picking season well under way - but migrant labour in short supply in several countries - we look at the various robots being developed around the world to help producers harvest this most popular fruit. Next time you buy strawberries take a look a good look in the punnet. Do the berries still have the stem attached or has it been plucked off leaving only the green hat of leaves called the calyx? You may not think that matters, but it's a key consideration for growers as they contemplate the merits of a range of robotic prototypes that promise to pick strawberries as fast and as carefully as humans. Whether the berry is plucked or whether the stalk is snipped through and kept attached is one critical difference between the concepts that Spanish, Belgian, British and US engineers are testing, ready to roll out in fields as soon as next year.

On Thursday, Seattle news station KIRO 7 published a disconcerting story. A Portland family discovered that a snippet of private conversation had been recorded by an Amazon Echo and sent to a random person in their contact list. The report instantly sparked concern and outrage that Amazon's Echo smart speaker is listening to and recording much more than the company claims. The woman, who only identified herself as Danielle, said that one of her husband's employees called the family to say that he had received a text message containing an audio recording of one of their conversations about hardwood floors. "I felt invaded," she told KIRO 7. "A total privacy invasion. Immediately I said, 'I'm never plugging that device in again, because I can't trust it.'"

Paul Steinberg, CTO of Motorola Solutions, speaks to Sam Fenwick about his company's efforts to use AI and machine learning to bring the right data to the user in the right way Paul Steinberg presides over a huge range of research and development activities, ranging from RF engineering and wireless network architectures to drones and robotics. He also manages Motorola Solutions Venture Capital's portfolio and plays a key role in managing Motorola Solutions' intellectual property. One of the things the company is moving towards is a virtual partner – a combination of AI and natural language processing, which allows someone in the field to verbally request information and give commands without talking to a human. Part of the thinking behind this is that people speak faster than they can type, and the need for field workers to stay aware of their surroundings. "The way you and I consume [mobile data] is a slab of black glass, [but the] fundamental imperative [for a police officer, etc] is eyes-up, hands-free. That slab of black glass [is] exactly the opposite: eyes-down, hands-busy. A big part of how we're navigating this problem is around ethnographics and human factors research – living a day in the life of our users and then [working] with the technologists and designers."

Amazon's facial recognition tool is being referred to as a'recipe for authoritarianism and disaster' after it was revealed to be used by law enforcement officials. Now experts say it raises even greater concerns, as the artificial intelligence used to power the technology could exhibit racial bias. Many are calling on Amazon to release data that shows they've trained the software to reduce bias, but it has yet to do so. A controversial facial recognition tool, dubbed Rekognition, marketed to police has been defended by its creator, online retailer Amazon. The controversy was spurred by a report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which found that Amazon's facial recognition tool, dubbed'Rekognition', is being used by law enforcement agencies in Oregon and Florida.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other privacy activists are asking Amazon to stop marketing a powerful facial recognition tool to police, saying law enforcement agencies could use the technology to "easily build a system to automate the identification and tracking of anyone." The tool, called Rekognition, is already being used by at least one agency -- the Washington County Sheriff's Office in Oregon -- to check photographs of unidentified suspects against a database of mug shots from the county jail, which is a common use of such technology around the country. But privacy advocates have been concerned about expanding the use of facial recognition to body cameras worn by officers or safety and traffic cameras that monitor public areas, allowing police to identify and track people in real time. The tech giant's entry into the market could vastly accelerate such developments, the privacy advocates fear, with potentially dire consequences for minorities who are already arrested at disproportionate rates, immigrants who may be in the country illegally or political protesters. "People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government," the groups wrote in a letter to Amazon on Tuesday.

A leading roboticist says androids will share the same civil rights as humans by the year 2045, including the right to marry both people and other robots. That's the claim made by Dr David Hanson, creator of some of world's most advanced and recognisable androids, including Sophia. Dr Hanson believes that by 2029 android AI will match the intelligence of a one-year old human. This will open the door for androids to assume menial positions in the military and emergency services just two years later in 2031, leading to full rights a decade later. Dr Hanson, whose Hong Kong based Hanson Robotics is behind the engineering of his robotic creations, makes the claims in a newly published research paper entitled Entering The Age of Living Intelligent Systems and Android Society.

The British government is keen to recognise the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in ensuring the long-term future success of UK industry. In line with this, it has acknowledged that one of its'grand challenges' is putting the UK at the forefront of the AI and data revolution. In fact, comments from Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond have suggested that large swathes of government activity will soon be performed by AI and automation to free up time for (human) civil servants. Automating some aspects of government jobs will result in savings and efficiencies. However, there are concerns that public sector workers will be at risk of losing their jobs to AI and automation in the next decade.