In a talk in Pittsburgh in 1997, the late evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould allegedly characterized humans as "the primates who tell stories." Psychologist Robyn Dawes went much further, suggesting humans are "the primates whose cognitive capacity shuts down in the absence of a story." To be sure, we love a good story. Research suggests that anecdotes can be as persuasive as hard data, and that jurors are influenced by the quality of the prosecution's and defense's "stories" when deciding whether to find a defendant guilty. Even in science, we seek explanations, not mere descriptions; in history, we want a good narrative, not a mere sequence of events. Or do they offer something more?

As our civilization becomes more and more reliant upon computers and other intelligent devices, there arises specific moral issue that designers and programmers will inevitably be forced to address. Among these concerns is trust. Can we trust that the AI we create will do what it was designed to without any bias? Can the AI be fooled into doing something unethical? Can it be programmed to commit illegal or immoral acts?

Matt Krisiloff is in a small, glass-walled conference room off the lobby of Y Combinator's office in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, shouting distance from some of the country's wealthiest startups, many of which Y Combinator has nurtured and helped fund. Krisiloff, who manages the operations of the tech incubator's program for very early-stage companies, is explaining why it is committed to investing an amount said to be in the tens of millions of dollars in a venture that is guaranteed never to make a penny. It's the simplest business model conceivable: hand thousands of dollars over to individuals in return for nothing, no strings attached. Krisiloff insists he and his Y Combinator colleagues can't wait to get started giving away the money. "This could be really transformative," he says. "It may help change how humans, society, and technology all operate together in the future."

Matt Krisiloff is in a small, glass-walled conference room off the lobby of Y Combinator's office in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood, shouting distance from some of the country's wealthiest startups, many of which Y Combinator has nurtured and helped fund. Krisiloff, who manages the operations of the tech incubator's program for very early-stage companies, is explaining why it is committed to investing an amount said to be in the tens of millions of dollars in a venture that is guaranteed never to make a penny. It's the simplest business model conceivable: hand thousands of dollars over to individuals in return for nothing, no strings attached. Krisiloff insists he and his Y Combinator colleagues can't wait to get started giving away the money. "This could be really transformative," he says. "It may help change how humans, society, and technology all operate together in the future."

In July, we talked about whether the change in law should be characterized as "Disruption, Eruption or Interruption?" This week, we drill down into one likely source of change, IBM's Watson. Lawyers have been thinking for a while about whether artificial intelligence would ever start to displace or complement lawyers. Richard Susskind, the leading legal futurist/technologist, did his work in this area starting in the mid-1980s. In the August issue of the ABA Journal, one of the commenters to an article about LegalZoom feared: "Once we have fully artificial intelligence enhanced programs like LegalZoom, there will be no need for lawyers, aside from the highly specialized and expensive large-law-firm variety."

How and where it ends at the moment, no-one knows. I've often joked over recent years that if people want to know where tech is going, watch Minority Report and Wall-e. Yes it's slightly simplistic, but it gets across some of the salient points! I remember a talk 12 months ago by a futurist who was looking at where the law might be in 20 years time. Some of the ideas suggested were amazing when you extrapolate where tech is now, the pace of change and where that means things could be.

Rebecca Hawkes, head of marketing at RAVN Systems, discusses why artificial intelligence is showing promise in the legal sector. There's been a considerable amount of media hype around artificial intelligence recently, but this isn't just the latest buzzword. It has now become a practical reality, with the legal industry paving the way in innovation. By 2024 the market for Enterprise artificial Intelligence systems will increase from 202.5m million in 2015 to 11.1 billion (according to a report from Tractica). Artificial intelligence now goes beyond mere interest as actual use cases transpire.

The campaign, led by academics Kathleen Richardson and Erik Billing, argues that the development of sex robots should be stopped because it reinforces or reproduces existing inequalities. Yes, society has enough problems with gender stereotypes, entrenched sexism and sexual objectification. But actual opposition to developing sexual robots that aims for an outright ban? That seems shortsighted, even – pardon the pun – undesirable. Groundbreaking work by David Levy, built on the early research into teledildonics – cybersex toys operable through the internet – describes the increasing likelihood of a society that will welcome sex robots. For Levy, sex work is a model that can be mirrored in human-robot relations.

A well-dressed humanoid not named Ross. Lawyers often get a bad reputation for being slimy and conniving (deservedly or not), but ROSS has neither of those qualities. Ask ROSS to look up an obscure court ruling from 13 years ago, and ROSS will not only search for the case in an instant - without contest or complaint - but it'll offer opinions in plain language about the old ruling's relevance to the case at hand. Just about the only thing it can't do is fetch coffee. Not that anyone should blame it, seeing as ROSS is a piece of artificial intelligence software.

She was a 22-year old aspiring model from Brooklyn. Searching for a way to crack into the industry, she turned to ModelMayhem.com, a website that connects freelance models to casting agents, photographers and others in the business. She flew down to Miami to meet the agent she had met online and, upon her arrival, he drugged and raped her. Her brutal assault was filmed and posted on the porn website Miami's Nastiest Nymphos. She awoke bruised and disoriented in a motel room with no knowledge of how she got there.