When you shoot with the iPhone's built-in Camera app, there are various ways to tweak focus and exposure, both before and after you hit the shutter. You might first tap and hold or swipe to adjust and lock focus and exposure. After the shot, you have options for adjusting saturation, contrast, sharpness, and more. Microsoft Pix (free on the iTunes Store), a photo and video shooting and editing app for iOS, doesn't want you to work that hard. It offers an effortless point-and-shoot alternative to the iPhone Camera app with a promise of superior results.

Machines and robots are increasingly shoving humans aside in the workplace. They build, cook and clean for us and increasingly work for us - so much so that Oxford University predicts almost half of US jobs will be done by machines and robots within the next 20 years. And then there is the next wave of technology: smarter artificial intelligence and augmented reality. It is a future that is leaving many people concerned and confused, while others see endless potential. What opportunities can artificial intelligence provide?

Seated against a deep red backdrop, gazing intently at hand-held mirrors, two eunuchs in sparkling saris inspect their appearance before Raksha Bandhan celebrations in the red light district of Mumbai. The photograph from the Reuters news agency is an arresting contemporary scene, but a new Tate Britain project is aiming to inspire deeper reflections with images from its own collection of paintings. Launching on Friday, Recognition is the winner of 2016's IK prize – an annual award, this year supported by Microsoft, for a project that embraces digital technology to explore and showcase Tate's collection of British art. This year, the challenge was to do it with artificial intelligence. The team behind the winning project, from the Italy-based communication research centre Fabrica, say their inspiration came from an intriguing conundrum: how can you apply rational thinking to a subject like art? Recognition matches stunning photographs from the 24/7 news cycle with centuries-old artworks, and presents them online.

HBO has released a new trailer for Westworld, its much anticipated android-apocalyptic-western drama series. With voiceover from the elegantly chilling Anthony Hopkins, the clip indicates that Westworld will tackle fraught, recurring questions surrounding artificial intelligence and what it means to be human. Based on Michael Crichton's 1973 thriller, the series imagines a future in which robots are enslaved by human programmers and situated in a western theme park. Human visitors can do with the androids as they please. "You and everyone you know were built to gratify the desires of people who pay to visit your world," lead programmer Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) admonishes Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood).

We've had more than 150 speakers in the past three seasons. Two of them made the news this summer: Danny Bickson (E9 Season 1) one of the co-founders of Graphlab then Dato then Turi and Arjun Bansal from Nervana systems (E12 Season 3). Turi just got acquired by Apple for 300M, and Nervana got acquired for 350M by Intel. In a different direction, at the last meetup, Raymond Francis explained to us what got picked by the LA Times a month later, Curiosity now uses Machine Learning on Mars. This news is exciting on two levels: First, robots can now explore the universe better and second, it definitely brings some perspective when we talk about the dichotomy between exploration and exploitation in our discussions.

In his biting, much-cheered defense of the work of local newspapers on his show "Last Week Tonight," the red-hot HBO satirist John Oliver had much fun at the expense of the role of "artificial intelligence" in modern journalism. Oliver's highly entertaining piece -- which quickly garnered well in excess of 4 million views -- contrasted the current enthusiasm of some publishing executives, including the ones who currently pay my salary, for various automated manifestations of reporting, editing and news distribution with what you might call the old-fashioned, sentimental view of the profession: the notepad-wielding reporter at the quotidian school board meeting, fighting corrupt politicians and delivering the truth to your stoop. There is a lot to unpack in Oliver's 19-minute segment and various levels of irony at work. For starters, there's this: In decrying the tendency of panicked newspapers to veer toward populist click-bait, Oliver cleverly created, well, his own populist click-bait. Oliver humbly and openly acknowledged how much his show depends on newspapers for its material -- thank you very much on behalf of my hard-working colleagues.

Seated against a deep red backdrop, gazing intently at hand-held mirrors, two eunuchs in sparkling saris inspect their appearance before Raksha Bandhan celebrations in the red light district of Mumbai. The photograph from the Reuters news agency is an arresting contemporary scene, but a new Tate Britain project is aiming to inspire deeper reflections with images from its own collection of paintings. Launching on Friday, Recognition is the winner of 2016's IK Prize – an annual award, this year supported by Microsoft, for a project that embraces digital technology to explore and showcase Tate's collection of British art. This year, the challenge was to do it with artificial intelligence. The team behind the winning project, from Italy-based communication research centre, Fabrica, say their inspiration came from an intriguing conundrum: how can you apply rational thinking to a subject like art? Recognition matches stunning photographs from the 24/7 news cycle with centuries-old artworks, and presents them online.

Since the 1960s, the best way to simulate an object's motion in space has been 3D modeling. An integral element of the CGI process, it's a cumbersome, expensive endeavor, one that requires hundreds of hours of manpower, state-of-the-art technology, and ever-changing algorithms to produce even the shortest sequences. Interactive Dynamic Video, a new technology developed by MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), could significantly ameliorate the process. By calibrating the physical behavior of objects--analyzing vibrations in different frequencies in space--IDV can predict how objects will move in new situations, an unprecedented achievement in motion graphics. It could reduce the cost of the CGI process by eliminating the need for green screens.

Silicon Valley, or the Greater Bay Area, is the 18th largest economy in the world, more than half the size of Canada's economy and bigger than Switzerland, Saudi Arabia or Turkey. This is because the region has become the world leader in research and development of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, software and virtual reality. "Software is eating the world," said Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen famously in 2011. It was controversial but prescient. Five years later, software-driven machines and drones perform surgery, write news stories, compose music, translate, analyze, wage war, guard, listen, speak and entertain.

Artificial Intelligence will rule Hollywood (intelligently) in 2015, with a slew of both iconic and new robots hitting the screen. From the Turing-bashing "Ex Machina" to old friends R2-D2 and C-3PO, and new enemies like the Avengers' Ultron, sentient robots will demonstrate a number of human and superhuman traits on-screen. But real-life robots may be just as thrilling. In this five-part series Live Science looks at these made-for-the-movies advances in machine intelligence. The Turing test, a foundational method of AI evaluation, shapes the plot of April's sci-fi/psychological thriller "Ex Machina."