Before we delve into how AI will change drug development, environmental simulation, and gene sequencing, we must look at how we got here. In 2011, Mark Andresen, the creator of the Netscape web browser and a leading technology investor, wrote a long article in the Wall Street Journal. At the time, the stock market was in turmoil, and no one knew what to make of these new tech companies going public. Many people said it was a giant bubble, just like the dot-com era ten years ago. But Andresen saw things differently. He argued that software is eating the world. Soon every industry will be transformed or disrupted by technology.

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), is raising questions at the ethics watchdog for the world's biggest wealth fund. In particular, the threat posed by weapons systems guided by AI brings ethical "challenges," according to Johan H. Andresen, the chairman of the Norwegian Council on Ethics. "It won't necessarily only have to do with weapons, but many other applications," he said in an interview in Oslo. "It's hard to program empathy– we can't demand that– but everything we're looking at is under human control and humans are making the decisions, so both people and companies can be held responsible." Norway's $1 trillion wealth fund has been stepping up the scrutiny of its portfolio and has banned a swathe of companies, including nuclear weapons and cluster bomb producers as well as tobacco and coal companies.