In a modern company like Amazon, almost all human activity is directed by computer programs. They not only monitor workers' actions but are used to choose who should be employed. Yet it emerged last week that the company had scrapped an attempt to use artificial intelligence to select workers on the basis of their CVs, since the results consistently discriminated against women. This is a welcome decision that illuminates two important facts about machine learning, the most widely used technique of AI at the moment. The technical or operational point is that these programs, no matter how fast they learn, can only learn from the data presented to them.

Alexa is no longer "new." The smart-tech revolution is now in full swing, and Amazon Echo is at the heart of it. According to Edison Research, nearly 40 million people own voice-activated speakers, which is about one in six U.S. adults. Echo changed the game, and millions of households have integrated Alexa into their daily lives. For many technophiles, it's not a question of whether to invest in smart technology, but what kind.

Global defence giant Thales is set to create up to 100 jobs at a new £1million base in Plymouth where it will test robotic boats for dealing with sea-borne mines. The French multinational has opened a trials and training centre at Turnchapel Wharf, creating 20 high-skilled jobs, but with an ambition to grow, possibly to as many as 100. The investment is part of a "major commitment" to developing autonomous and unmanned technology for use in the air and on sea – in other words, robotic vessels. Thales, which reported global sales of €14 billion in 2015, is creating two new UK centres, the other being in Wales. The company said that only through experimentation with new and disruptive technologies will the UK military be able to stay ahead and maintain an advantage over other forces.

Artificial Intelligence is a field of computer science that consists of the construction of intelligent machines that are put into operation through computer programs. The purpose of building these gadgets or robots is to replace human intelligence to a certain extent by doing more than one action. AI is a new area under development and has a particular focus on the banking system and the way it operates. Of the most influential sectors are customer service, financial services, and fraud detection. Artificial Intelligence can make banking services automate and thus perform much faster than people.

Google wants to do more than just organize the world's information. It wants to infuse itself into our lives and replace several of our daily tasks robotically. That, clearly, is the goal, as outlined this week. Forget about those shiny new Pixel phones, tablets and speakers that Google announced this week at a splashy event in New York. Or a new talking video speaker that takes on Amazon's Echo Show with a focus on Google visuals like mapping, calendar, and, of course, all that YouTube content.

Does artificial intelligence have the ability to take over the world? Some prominent scientists and tech industry leaders, including the late astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Google research director Peter Norvig, have issued dire warnings about AI's potential threat to the human race, calling for ongoing research into its social implications. Others haven't been as quick or believe that to be the case. In particular, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have taken issue with this outlook, emphasizing the positive benefits of AI and cautioning against alarmist panic. Whoever turns out to be right in this debate, one indisputable fact remain: AI has already become part of our everyday lives in ways we often don't consciously recognize.

Magic Leap introduced a concept called Mica and called it "her" during a section of its 3-hour keynote this week about how an artificial intelligence …

The next time you sit down to watch a movie, the algorithm behind your streaming service might recommend a blockbuster that was written by AI, performed by robots, and animated and rendered by a deep learning algorithm. An AI algorithm may have even read the script and suggested the studio buy the rights. It's easy to think that technology like algorithms and robots will make the film industry go the way of the factory worker and the customer service rep, and argue that artistic filmmaking is in its death throes. For the film industry, the same narrative doesn't apply -- artificial intelligence seems to have enhanced Hollywood's creativity, not squelched it. It's true that some jobs and tasks are being rendered obsolete now that computers can do them better. The job requirements for a visual effects artist are no longer owning a beret and being good at painting backdrops; the industry now calls for engineers who are good at training deep learning algorithms to do the mundane work, like manually smoothing out an effect or making a digital character look realistic.

Today the new fuss in the technology world is about artificial intelligence and how it will change the world, and the wealth management business. First let's clear up some of the confusion around nomenclature. Artificial intelligence is the concept that machines think and process new ideas by themselves, like the sentient computer Hal in the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey." Machine learning is the process by which machines are coded to adapt their programming based on new data and data analytics; think self-driving cars and Google's targeted "smart" ads that intuit what you might be interested in based on the sites you've visited. While we are still quite far from AI and a machine making up its own mind, we can't ignore the impact that smart programs powered by machine learning are making on the world.