We are well on the way to a world in which many aspects of our daily lives will depend on AI systems. Within a decade, machines might diagnose patients with the learned expertise of not just one doctor but thousands. They might make judiciary recommendations based on vast datasets of legal decisions and complex regulations. And they will almost certainly know exactly what's around the corner in autonomous vehicles. "Machine capabilities are growing," says Dr Stephen Cave, Executive Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI).

Artificial intelligence (AI) rapidly is advancing, thanks to ever-more-powerful computing, massive growth in the availability of digital data and increasingly sophisticated algorithms. The world's largest technology firms are investing billions to develop their AI capabilities, and companies across industries, from travel to real estate to fashion, are racing to bring AI-enabled services to market. AI has the potential to bring significant social benefits, including healthcare (via improved diagnostics), transportation (through self-driving vehicles) and law enforcement (with improved fraud detection). AI also brings new social risks, including to non-discrimination (from algorithmic bias), privacy (through the misuse of personal information), child rights (through lack of informed consent) and labor rights (because of the mass displacement of workers by machines). While by no means exhaustive, we believe the following seven considerations are essential for our members to factor into their AI strategies. AI is relevant for all industries, not just technology companies.

Back in mid-2015, Turing Robotics Industries unveiled its delightfully quirky debut smartphone, an encrypted Android device encased in colorful chrome. Though we cautioned that it could be delayed for a myriad of reasons that often plague small companies, we looked forward to their release in December...then delayed until early 2016...and long story short, it didn't ship at all. Now the company is filing for bankruptcy in Salo, Finland where it had rented a warehouse for manufacturing. But not to worry, Turing Robotics CEO Steve Chao assured customers in a Facebook post: That doesn't mean the company is actually bankrupt. Finnish publication Salon Seudon Sanomat broke the news of the company's financial issues, reporting that creditors had filed a claim with Turing Robotics last year leading to the seizure of its movable property.

The biggest Silicon Valley legal battle in years pits a highflying startup against a tech behemoth, in a case that has already yielded a year of drama and legal wrangling. Waymo's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges Uber ransacked the tech giant's driverless-car design secrets after paying about $680 million in 2016 to buy autonomous-truck company Otto, founded by a former star engineer at Google, Anthony Levandowski. Uber denies the allegations, though court filings indicate it knew before buying Otto that Mr. Levandowski had possession of sensitive Google files. The San Francisco startup has said it is using its own technology to create autonomous vehicles. Last May, it fired Mr. Levandowski in part due to what it said was his unwillingness to cooperate with its own investigation.

During opening remarks in front of a 10-person jury sitting less than a mile from Uber headquarters, Waymo's lawyers portrayed Uber's former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, as a cheater who would do anything to catch up to his competitor. Uber's attorneys pushed back in their defense, calling Waymo's portrayal "quite a story" while denying the allegations that Uber swiped trade secrets and knowingly used them to develop autonomous vehicles. An Uber attorney, Bill Carmody of Susman Godfrey LLP, said there was no conspiracy or cheating. The high-stakes showdown pits an offshoot of Google against a highflying startup in Uber, two companies estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars and among the leaders in autonomous-vehicle development. The case could test intellectual property law in Silicon Valley, where top engineers with technical chops are constantly being poached by rival companies.

Crisis Text Line, a nonprofit that offers emotional support through text messaging, has spent four years connecting people in extreme emotional duress with online counselors. Now its founder is creating a startup called Loris.ai to help companies teach employees how to communicate. "There are a lot of companies right now that are fearful of having hard conversations," says Nancy Lublin, the founder of both Crisis Text Line and Loris.ai. "Managers are nervous having a one-on-one meeting with a direct report of a different gender, and that holds women back. People worrying about inclusion worry they'll get it wrong, and that holds people back."

Greta Cutulenco, Co-founder and CEO says, "Vehicles are becoming more complex - both mechanically and electronically. This rise in complexity creates a strain on testing processes, which gives rise to quality issues, and eventually a spike in warranty claims and recalls. Acerta offers a SaaS platform that uses machine learning to provide real-time malfunction detection and failure prediction. The platform learns the normal behaviour of the tested system and the complex correlations between data streams, and automatically detects anomalies in real-time. This enables manufacturers to utilise all of the data they collect to produce accurate insight into their system quality."

Is it the German operators that created the AI in 2016, or is it the deep learning machine itself? That was one of the questions a panel of intellectual property experts grappled with at an AI conference in Toronto hosted by Osgoode Hall Law School last week. As businesses struggle to keep step with the rapid advancement in AI, policies and laws are also being stretched, said lawyer Carole Piovesan of McCarthy Tetrault LLP. "Canada is really at the precipice, as is much of the world, of trying to define what its legal framework is going to look like in the face of AI," she said. "But with the current pace of AI innovation -- it's happening so quickly and it's of such a transformative nature -- that policy-makers are being forced to anticipate issues that don't necessarily exist here and now."

Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car company, filed its trade secrets theft lawsuit against Uber almost one year ago. If the case had immediately gone to trial, it might have looked a bit different. By now, though, tales of Uber's broken culture have been splashed across front webpages, new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is a public contrition pro, and former CEO Travis Kalanick, the guy who allegedly drove the whole "win at all costs" ethos from the top, is, well, former. That makes Kalanick a very useful device for Waymo's legal team. On Monday, the first day of the blockbuster trial over autonomous vehicle lasers between Uber and Waymo, the Waymo lawyers made it clear: Kalanick will play the bad guy here.

SAN FRANCISCO – Uber was either a cheating competitor willing to break the law to win the race to develop self-driving cars, or the victim of an unproven conspiracy theory stitched together by its main rival, Waymo, jurors heard in opening statements of a trade secrets trial on Monday. The first salvos were delivered to a 10-person jury in San Francisco federal court in a civil lawsuit that could help determine who emerges in the forefront of the autonomous car business nearly a year after Alphabet Inc.'s self-driving car unit Waymo sued rival Uber Technologies Inc. The case hinges on whether Uber used apparent trade secrets to advance its autonomous vehicle program. Waymo's allegation is that its former engineer, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded more than 14,000 confidential files in December 2015 containing designs for autonomous vehicles before going to work for Uber and leading its self-driving car unit in 2016. "Waymo wants you to believe that Anthony Levandowski got together with Uber as part of some grand conspiracy to cheat and take trade secrets," Uber attorney Bill Carmody said in his opening statement to the jury.