Digital technologies can do more and more things better than us, by processing increasing amounts of data and improving their performance by analysing their own output as input for the next operations. AlphaGo, the computer program developed by Google DeepMind, won the boardgame Go against the world's best player because it could use a database of around 30 million moves and play thousands of games against itself, 'learning' how to improve its performance. It is like a two-knife system that can sharpen itself. That any apocalyptic vision of AI can be disregarded. The serious risk is not the appearance of some ultraintelligence, but that we might misuse our digital technologies, to the detriment of a large percentage of humanity and the whole planet.

This post is a discussion of Nick Bostrom's book "Superintelligence". The book has had an effect on the thinking of many of the world's thought leaders. In that light, and given this series of blog posts is about the "Future of AI", it seemed important to read the book and discuss his ideas. In an ideal world, this post would certainly have contained more summaries of the books arguments and perhaps a later update will improve on that aspect. For the moment the review focuses on counter-arguments and perceived omissions (the post already got too long with just covering those). Bostrom considers various routes we have to forming intelligent machines and what the possible outcomes might be from developing such technologies. He is a professor of philosophy but has an impressive array of background degrees in areas such as mathematics, logic, philosophy and computational neuroscience. So let's start at the beginning and put the book in context by trying to understand what is meant by the term "superintelligence" In common with many contributions to the debate on artificial intelligence, Bostrom never defines what he means by intelligence. Obviously, this can be problematic. On the other hand, superintelligence is defined as outperforming humans in every intelligent capability that they express. Personally, I've developed the following definition of intelligence: "Use of information to take decisions which save energy". Here by information I might mean data or facts or rules, and by saving energy I mean saving'free' energy.1 However, accepting Bostrom's lack of definition of intelligence (and perhaps taking note of my own), we can still consider the routes to superintelligence Bostrom proposes.

Over the past several years, Riot Games, which produces the immensely popular League of Legends, has been experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics tools to find the online trolls and make their games more sportsmanlike. "We used to think that online gaming and toxic behavior went hand in hand," explains Jeffrey Lin, lead game designer of social systems at Riot Games. "First, put the tools in the hands of the community and second, build machine learning systems that leverage the scale of data--contributed from the community through reports--to combat the problem." To learn how Big Data, automation and artificial intelligence will shape the future, download the HPE white paper "Big Data in 2016."

Millions of young online gamers today are accustomed to battling bad guys. But their biggest foes are often their fellow players. Many online gaming sites are rife with creepy bigotry, harassment and even death threats. So how do you root out the rotten apples? Over the past several years, Riot Games, which produces the immensely popular League of Legends, has been experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics tools to find the online trolls and make their games more sportsmanlike.

Remember the English composition teacher who could always find a gentle way to improve that middling passage in your writing? The editor who elevated the lightning bug to lightning? Textio, a Seattle machine learning and natural language processing startup focused on improving job listings and recruiting e-mails for companies including Starbucks, Microsoft, and Twitter, is releasing a new feature that can identify words and phrases that are not bad, per se, but could be better. The company's "opportunities" feature is confined to the rather narrow--and importantly, measurable--world of writing done by recruiters and hiring managers. It only suggests improvements to a few words here and there, rather than providing a wholesale rewrite.

Apple's Siri has a fantastic yet little-understood feature that brings a little artificial intelligence into every iOS user's life. Here is how to use it. Apple calls this feature Proactive and makes it mainly available through Siri. Proactive is context-based artificial intelligence solution the company intends will become more powerful than Google Now and more private than any other solution out there – even Royalty should be able to use it without being spied upon (and, by extension, anyone should enjoy equal levels of privacy). You access it using Siri and it can do things like show you photos you took last month to reminding you to do things when you get into or out of your car.

Dag Kittlaus and Adam Cheyer created the artificial intelligence behind Siri, Apple's iconic digital assistant, and one of the first modern apps to capably handle natural language queries on a smartphone. Today the pair showed off their newest creation, Viv, a next generation AI assistant that they have been developing in stealth mode for the last four years. The goal was to create a better version of Siri, one that connected to a multitude of services, instead of routinely shuffling queries off to a basic web search. During a 20 minute demo onstage at Disrupt NYC, Viv flawlessly handled a dozen complex requests, not just in terms of comprehension, but by connecting with third-party merchants to purchase goods and book reservations. The major difference between Siri and Viv is that the latter is a far more open platform.

Students taking an online course at Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing were duped into thinking one of their teaching assistants, named Jill Watson, was an actual human. And how can you blame them--the virtual TA managed to answer many of their questions with 97 percent certainty. Now, being "certain" is not the same as being correct. But computer science professor Ashok Goel felt it was a sufficient level of confidence to allow the virtual TA, named Jill Watson, to answer student inquiries on her own. For nearly the entire month of April, Jill was responding directly to the class through an online student forum, but only when she was 97 percent sure her answers were correct. The students weren't told that they were interacting with a virtual TA until April 26.

Siri co-founder and CEO Dag Kittlaus has been quietly working on a much-anticipated voice assistant powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning and integrations with third-party services. This product is called Viv and, in a world first, Kittlaus just gave us a demo at TechCrunch Disrupt NY that shows off the power of what they've built with Viv. Like with Siri, Viv wants to build a conversational and smart layer that lets you interact with various services. But Viv is taking everything one step further. More importantly, there's a developer platform to add more services.

Automotive Grade Linux could be the answer to today's woefully fragmented, often frustrating automotive operating-system landscape. A project of the Linux Foundation, AGL is currently focused on providing an operating system for in-vehicle infotainment consoles. But its backers envision an OS that can control instrument clusters and handle everything from connected-car features to autonomous vehicles. Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Ford, and Jaguar Land Rover are all participating. I spoke with Dan Cauchy, general manager of the Automotive Grade Linux project at the Linux Foundation, to learn more about this project.