We were flattered when this recent BBC News article about legal technology included our company TrademarkNow. However, we were somewhat surprised that it questioned the use of AI for legal technology. "There are pitfalls with this approach in such a heavily regulated sector," according to the article, and it raised the controversial issue of AI-driven technology offering legal advice - a big taboo and, in most jurisdictions, restriction in the legal field. Mikael Kolehmainen, our CEO and co-founder, is a former practicing trademark attorney, so we're very familiar with the intricacies of designing software that offers legal advice vs. software that provides a much-needed, powerful digital tool to help lawyers' productivity and efficiency. Our products have always focused on the latter, and we've always done our best to be as clear as possible about this.

When you consider all the amazing things artificial intelligence can be used for, making beer probably isn't one of them. Unless I'm misunderstanding something, I thought the whole point of beer was to let us worry less about intelligence. But while many of the things artificial intelligence can be used for are far more boring than beer – I can only watch people lose to a robot at Jeopardy so many times – so maybe IntelligentX is actually on to something: The company has claimed to produce the world's first AI brewed beer. "AI is about making decisions," said IntelligentX co-founder Dr. Rob McInerney in a promotional video, "and when you're brewing beer, there's a lot of decisions that need to be made." For the products his brand makes, those decisions are run through a complex machine learning algorithm that is able to use customer feedback to "brew new versions which are more finely tuned to people's tastes," according to the company.

Automation and artificial intelligence (AI) is a growing necessity and benefit in the business world. As we enter the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the technological advances at the centre of this great business change will differ greatly from past industrial leaps forward. People experience constant changes and refinement in their understanding, and their ability to respond to situations. With advances and the growth of Big Data, organisations now have a rich feed of business, customer and decision-making data to feed into platforms powered by machine-learning algorithms.

Notably, the company acquired Mojang for 2.5 billion in September 2015 and then later purchased MinecraftEdu in January this year with an announcement that Minecraft Education Edition would be available in summer. Originally designed as an internal tool, the company announced that it would be made fully available under an open-source license. Now, with a new name, the company has publicly unveiled Project Malmo, which has been described as "a platform that uses the world of Minecraft as a testing ground for advanced artificial intelligence research." It is comprised of two components: a mod for the Java version of Minecraft and additional code that enables AI agents to become aware of and operate within the environment.

Microsoft has made some interesting moves in the education space as far as Minecraft is concerned. Notably, the company acquired Mojang for 2.5 billion in September 2015 and then later purchased MinecraftEdu in January this year with an announcement that Minecraft Education Edition would be available in summer. Leading on from these acquisitions, a team within Microsoft developed Project AIX to simulate a world where an AI can be tested out without posing a risk to humans. Originally designed as an internal tool, the company announced that it would be made fully available under an open-source license. Now, with a new name, the company has publicly unveiled Project Malmo, which has been described as "a platform that uses the world of Minecraft as a testing ground for advanced artificial intelligence research."

A designer's guide to AI. Leveraging user centered design principles, the author rightly states that AI will enable designers to create bespoke experiences right out of the box for each user. Importantly, these experiences need to a) create emotionally-aware relationships with the user, b) respond to needs that haven't yet been explicitly expressed, c) prevent negative emotional responses when a user is upset with an AI-caused result and d) be sensitive to sociology. A list of further reading resources is included. There's been a resurgence of neuroscience-inspired AI architectures in the past few years, with Numenta being one of the leaders. Their VP of Research, Subutai Ahmad, argues that environmental sensory inference and behavior generation are intricately tied together, and critical for learning really general purpose representations.

Pretty much every cinematic portrayal of artificial intelligence has been less than encouraging. HAL 9000 kills the crew members on the Discovery in 2001: A Space Odyssey, making us all a little bit afraid of handing the reins over to computers. Sonny kills his creator in I, Robot, increasing worldwide scepticism about the integration of humans and their smart robots. Even real life AI has given us pause. For example, when an IBM computer defeated Russian chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the 1990s, it was definitely a cause for concern.

Here's What We Can Expect from Deep Learning in 2016 and Beyond Robots Need "Common Sense" A.I. to Work in Our Uncertain World

Artificial intelligence is making miracles happen. A group of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently developed an AI that predicts social interactions. The core algorithm of their research is able to predict whether a person will go for a hug, handshake, high-five, or kiss. Like every AI, this algorithm also needs some data to train itself. The researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) used television shows like "Desperate Housewives" and "The Office" to train the algorithm.

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