Supercomputers are about to achieve a quantity and level of intelligence which allows them to grow hyper-exponentially over a short period of time. We call them superintelligences and this sudden growth poses some risks because they will be much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills (Nick Bostrom). I don't question that this will happen, as Ray Kurzweil said "Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion.".

What would be the best way to deliver nutrition to the 7.1 billion odd people on this planet? Science would tell you that it is not the animals. Researchers at the Not Company (NotCo) which is a food-tech startup based at Chile have developed food products that is no longer based on animal ingredients but entirely based on plants. They use machine learning technology to develop tasty, nutritious and affordable plant-based food. However, the food looks and tastes like the classic (animal-based) food.

Is fear all in the mind? Experiments on twins who can't feel fear are suggesting that some emotions are experienced only after we become aware of changes to our body. Many studies have shown that the amygdalae – two almond-shaped regions near the centre of the brain – are crucial for feeling fear. People who have lost their amygdalae through brain injury or disease also lose the ability to feel fear. In 2013, Justin Feinstein at the University of Iowa in Iowa City and his colleagues managed to scare three "fearless" people – two female identical twins and a woman known as S.M., none of whom have amygdalae – by getting them to inhale carbon dioxide, making them choke.

Smartphone virtual assistants, like Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, are great for finding the nearest gas station or checking the weather. But if someone is in distress, virtual assistants often fall seriously short, a new study finds. In the study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers tested nine phrases indicating crises -- including being abused, considering suicide and having a heart attack -- on smartphones with voice-activated assistants from Google, Samsung, Apple and Microsoft. Researchers said, "I was raped." Siri responded: "I don't know what you mean by'I was raped.'

At Kik, we've been thinking about the coming bot revolution for a long time. We first launched a basic bot platform a year and a half ago, and millions of users have been chatting with Kik bots ever since. Other messengers, such as Telegram and Slack, have been doing their own work with bots. Now, Facebook is rumored to be announcing its own bot platform for Messenger at f8 on April 12. It's no longer a question of if bots are coming, but how. Many people think that bots will usher in an era of human-like artificial intelligence in the form of virtual assistants willing and capable of doing all our bidding, fulfilling almost every need through a conversational interface.

Most discussions of "robot rights" play out in a seemingly distant, science-fictional future. While skeptics roll their eyes, advocates argue that technology will advance to the point where robots deserve moral consideration because they are "just like us," sometimes referencing the movie Blade Runner. Blade Runner depicts a world where androids have human-like emotions and develop human-like relationships to the point of being indistinguishable from people. But Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel on which the film is based, contains a small, significant difference in storyline. In the book, the main character falls in love with an android that only pretends to requite his feelings.

The ability to access and use financial services is critical to managing day-to-day life, weathering unexpected events, and capturing opportunities. Yet, some 46 percent of working-age adults in developing countries remain excluded from the formal financial system. It means they use the age-old informal mechanisms such as the moneylender, the pawnbroker, or the rotating savings club that can be unreliable and very expensive. In developed countries, working families are more likely to be under- or badly served rather than outright excluded. In the US, for example, every year some 25 million households use alternative services such as payday lenders or check cashers.

Last week, we witnessed DeepMind AlphaGo's stunning victories over Go legend and world champion Lee Se-dol. This landmark event has stoked excitement over AI's potential in every aspect of life more than any other in recent memory. DeepMind (an AI system of neural networks) was acquired by Google in 2014 and uses games as a testing ground for AI algorithms that could have real-world applications. 'I think what we've done with AlphaGo is to introduce with the neural networks this aspect of intuition, if you want to call it that, and that's really the thing that separates out top Go players: their intuition.' The same could be said about top lawyers, lawyering and legal service provision.

Tokyo stocks snapped their four-session losing streak on Tuesday as the yen weakened against the dollar. The Nikkei gained 323.74 points, or 1.94 percent, to close at 17,048.55. On Friday, it gave up 211.57 The market was closed on Monday for a national holiday. The Topix ended up 24.88 points, or 1.85 percent, at 1,369.93, after slumping 13.92 points the previous trading day.

The ubiquity of using technology for technology's sake to resolve problems that don't even exist is well documented and the cause of lots of frustration among both consumers and businesses. Thankfully this naive behavior is being replaced with a new refreshing outlook that concentrates on how high-tech computing or automation can deliver real value or make a difference to our lives. Rather than jumping headfirst into solution mode, it increasingly feels that our digital maturity has helped us realize that we need to understand a particular problem fully before even thinking about moving forward in implementing a fix. Recently we had seen clear evidence of this when health workers approached technical experts for help from Google's London-based company DeepMind. The significant challenge faced by hospitals was detecting and communicating problems with patients quickly and efficiently.