The rise of artificially intelligent machines will come at a cost--but with the potential to disrupt and transform society on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution. Jobs will be lost, but new fields of innovation will open up. The changes ahead will require us to rethink attitudes and philosophies, not to mention laws and regulations. Some people are already debating the implications of an automated world, giving rise to think tanks and conferences on AI, such as the annual We Robot forum, which takes a scholarly approach to policy issues. A registered patent attorney and board-certified physician, Ryan Abbott writes about the impact of artificial intelligence on intellectual property, health and tort law.

Consider the tragedy of a child killed by neglect and abuse. Now consider the tragedy of a child taken from parents who would not have criminally abused her. Computer algorithms might soon help humans make such difficult decisions -- but only if we recognize the myriad ways in which they can go wrong. In countless cities across the nation, child welfare services make extremely tough calls every day. With limited resources and information, they must often rely on gut instinct in predicting who is most vulnerable.

I know how terrible healthcare records theft can be. I myself have been the victim of a data theft by hackers who stole my deceased father's medical files, running up more than $300,000 in false charges. I am still disputing on-going bills that have been accruing for the last 15 years. This event led me on the path to finding a solution so others would not suffer the consequences that I continue to be impacted by, but hospitals and other healthcare providers must be willing to make the change. The writing is on the wall.

Cyber threats are an ever-present danger to global economies and are projected to surpass the trillion dollar mark in damages within the next year. As a result, the cybersecurity industry is investing heavily in machine learning in hopes of providing a more dynamic deterrent. ABI Research forecasts machine learning in cybersecurity will boost big data, intelligence, and analytics spending to $96 billion by 2021. "We are in the midst of an artificial intelligence security revolution," says Dimitrios Pavlakis, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. "This will drive machine learning solutions to soon emerge as the new norm beyond Security Information and Event Management, or SIEM, and ultimately displace a large portion of traditional AV, heuristics, and signature-based systems within the next five years."

As more of our lives move into the digital sphere, data has become incredibly valuable. There's so much digital information floating around that commentators have hailed the beginning of an era of'big data'. This basically refers to huge datasets that are much larger than traditional collections of information. This info has been generated by growing digitisation, especially from online financial transactions and social media. It's a never-ending paradox – the more digital society becomes, the more data there is. . .

Anti-virus software has a hard time keeping up. Piles of new viruses come out each week, so cybersecurity unicorn Cylance is taking what it claims to be a completely new approach: artificial intelligence that learns to recognize malicious code based on an analysis of viruses from the past. It calls the new product CylancePROTECT. In an AMA on Reddit today, the company's head of reseach, Jon Miller, wrote: "Cylance was the first AI built to statically analyze and convict malware pre-execution. We definitely didn't invent AI, but we were the first to use it this way to deliver pre-execution protection. Many other products have been using machine learning, it's just that it was used to support legacy methodologies of protection/detection, using ML to identify trends so static signatures could be built, which in a world where attackers are creating individual pieces of malware to avoid signatures, results in a severe lack of efficacy, thats the problem Cylance was built to solve."

FROM avoiding jaywalkers to emergency braking to eventually, perhaps, chauffeuring the vehicle itself, it is clear that artificial intelligence (AI) will be an important part of the cars of the future. But it is not only the driving of them that will benefit. AI will also permit such cars to use energy more sparingly. Cars have long had computerised engine-management that responds on the fly to changes in driving conditions. The introduction of electric power has, however, complicated matters.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich talks about the state's efforts to get in on self-driving cars (Photo: Chrissie Thompson/Cincinnati Enquirer) COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Add the Buckeye State to the list of those getting serious about self-driving cars. An automotive test track and proving ground in central Ohio –- the country's largest not owned by an automaker -– will update to allow the testing of self-driving vehicles using $45 million in state grants. With the investment, the Transportation Research Center in East Liberty, which partners with Ohio State University, aligns itself with the auto industry's thrust to bring autonomous vehicles to mainstream car buyers. The TRC plans to build the industry's largest high-speed intersection, where connected vehicles can approach at full speed while relying on technology to allow them to pass within seconds of each other. The facility will also feature an urban network with traffic lights and roundabouts, plus a rural section with wooded roads.

Takeover is a pretty key part of how autopilots work in cars right now. Last May, a Tesla Model S driver died when both he and his car failed to spot a tractor-trailer crossing the highway. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into the crash did not find sufficient grounds for a product recall. It did note, however, that despite the clear limitations of the autopilot feature, "other jurisdictions have raised concerns about Tesla's use of the name "Autopilot." Autopilots have been legally tricky from the start.

Anyone who uses Twitter knows that it can be home to very hostile exchanges, some of which may even constitute cyberbullying. In a world where that kind of danger is a mere click away, what can parents do to keep their children safe without monitoring their every digital move? Analytics and machine learning are offering new options. Bark CEO Brian Bason founded his company after having a couple of kids of his own and finding himself concerned about online safety. Bark offers a machine learning-backed app and service to help parents work together with their children to navigate the dangers of today's digital world.