This year is expected to be a great leap forward in automation and the development of artificial intelligence, as machine learning and neural networks mean that robots can learn and understand more than ever before. But with this rise in automation has come a fear that the robots will completely supplant humans in the workforce. A YouTube video called "Humans Need Not Apply" released in 2014 has argued that much of the human workforce could be supplanted by robots, and that robots could even take over creative jobs which was assumed could only be done by humans. To some degree, these fears are overblown. The more likely scenario is that humans and AI will work together, covering for each other's strength and weaknesses and improving the economy.

Perhaps you should think twice next time you check your Facebook at work. A new type of artificially intelligent (AI) software could mean your boss could track your every move with the help of an algorithm. The software is currently being offered by London start-up called StatusToday which builds artificial intelligence that attempts to understand human behaviour. The programme relies on a large amount of information about employees, including websites you look at and how often you're looking at them (stock image) London start-up, StatusToday, has created AI software that will allow your boss to spy on you. It works by tracking your activities.

Whether we search for recipes, chatting with friends or pay via the web, we create massive amounts of data. Clever use of this information forms the basis for future digital services. With the development of Internet of things and artificial intelligence, the amount of data will increase dramatically, and this data is considered as the raw material in the digital economy. The value attached to mobile payments are not necessarily transactional revenue, but ownership of customer data. A report by Deutsche Bank confirms this and shows that innovation in mobile payments will open up for new products based on customer data.

The rise of artificially intelligent machines will come at a cost--but with the potential to disrupt and transform society on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution. Jobs will be lost, but new fields of innovation will open up. The changes ahead will require us to rethink attitudes and philosophies, not to mention laws and regulations. Some people are already debating the implications of an automated world, giving rise to think tanks and conferences on AI, such as the annual We Robot forum, which takes a scholarly approach to policy issues. A registered patent attorney and board-certified physician, Ryan Abbott writes about the impact of artificial intelligence on intellectual property, health and tort law.

Despite being at its core a knowledge industry, the legal profession has been remarkably slow to adopt information technology outside of online databases such as LexisNexis and e-discovery software. The conservative nature of the profession, the intensive training that focuses on developing individual skills and knowledge and the lack of incentive for efficiency that is built into the hourly billing model all contribute to that resistance. Over the last few years, however, numerous artificial intelligence (AI) solutions have been developed for legal use, and the profession has begun to embrace, or perhaps be embraced by, those tools. A number of forces have converged to catalyze this market. First, the software products meet specific, well defined needs and therefore have been well accepted.

Kay Firth-Butterfield: One of the things that stick out in my mind is some research that McKinsey did recently, where they describe AI as a contributing factor to the transformation of society. And I just want to quote what they're saying about the transformation of our society: that it's happening ten times faster, and at three hundred times the scale, or roughly three thousand times faster than the impact of the industrial revolution. And you know, a lot of people compare this revolution to the industrial revolution. But, I think it's the speed and the real, core underpinning that AI is contributing to that transformation of our society that makes these discussions so important. David Bray: It's not just about handing over judgment and decisions to a machine that a human would do otherwise.

Despite being at its core a knowledge industry, the legal profession has been remarkably slow to adopt information technology outside of online databases such as LexisNexis and e-discovery software. Over the last few years, however, numerous artificial intelligence (AI) solutions have been developed for legal use, and the profession has begun to embrace, or perhaps be embraced by, those tools.

Artificial intelligence is luring science into dangerous waters. To make scientific publishing more efficient, commercial publishers now rely more and more on editorial software systems. These are beginning to transform peer review from interaction between humans into interaction between humans and AI. We should think twice before allowing autonomous AI systems to decide what research warrants publication. Janne I. Hukkinen (@JIHukkinen) is professor of environmental policy at University of Helsinki, Finland, and editor of Ecological Economics.

I recently made my predictions for 2017, and one was that pundits and others in the legal industry would keep talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and law. Since I want to get 100% on my predictions, again, I thought I would start the New Year by ensuring I at least got this one right. I am going to skip the usual topics when AI and law comes up: when will LawNet go live; will Arnold Schwarzenegger agree to play Chief Justice of the Future in the mash-up of Terminator and First Monday in October. Instead, I am going to focus on some questions that you do not hear discussed every day. They circle around an interesting question: are the emerging technologies, such as AI and smart contracts, about to make law more brittle?

When the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society was announced in September, it was with the stated goal of educating the public on artificial intelligence, studying AI's potential impact on the world, and establishing industry best practices. Now, how those goals will actually be achieved is becoming clearer. This week, the Partnership brought on new members that include representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, the MacArthur Foundation, OpenAI, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, Arizona State University, and the University of California, Berkeley. The organizations themselves are not officially affiliated yet--that process is still underway--but the Partnership's board selected these candidates based on their expertise in civil rights, economics, and open research, according to interim co-chair Eric Horvitz, who is also a director at Microsoft Research. The Partnership also added Apple as a "founding member," putting the tech giant in good company: Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google, and Facebook are already on board.