Most of my photography friends have been playing around with some form of AI Art, and the results are pretty remarkable. However, as amazing as this technology is, I'm sure I am not the only one wondering if Artificial Intelligence will leave us all looking for new careers. What exactly is artificial intelligent art? AI art is a brand new form of expression that allows users to string together a bunch of descriptive words, feed them into a machine learning program, and have the software export a one-of-a-kind, hyper-graphic image in seconds. The results aren't always what you might have imagined in your head, and more times than not, the efforts of the Ai algorithm are beyond your wildest imagination.

You're awake, you're sentient, you might even be upright. You're not comatose or dead, and it's reasonable to assume that if you were on some kind of powerful mind-altering drug then you wouldn't be reading this. The point is, you're here, and you're alive, so therefore you're conscious. OK then, since you're conscious and I'm conscious and everyone else is conscious, go ahead. Does it belong to the mind or the body, or does it exist outside both? Is consciousness part of our souls, or does it live in the things we create – our art, our music, our cities and wars? Could it be mechanical or electronic, and, if so, what makes it operate? Most pressingly of all, is it possible we have now made for ourselves a new kind of consciousness, one which exists independently? If so, then what the hell have we got ourselves into? The search for a definition of consciousness must lay claim to be the world's longest-running detective story. We've had our best minds on it ever since we developed brains big enough to ask questions and, still, we seem to be stumped. Plato and Aristotle couldn't fix it; Kant, Hume and Locke tried different angles; Schroedinger, Heisenberg and Einstein remained in awe before it. None of them came up with the final formula, the definitive, nailed-it for ever, silences-all-critics answer. Lately though, the hunt seems to have changed gear. Despite big differences about how best to conduct the search and where to look, several of the most persistent sleuths have found themselves disconcertingly close to agreement. No-one is yet at the stage when they are ready to call a press conference and announce to the world they have finally apprehended the suspect, but they have at least begun to converge on these two leads: the Omega Point and the Singularity. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is an improbable prophet, partly because he's dead, and partly because he's still associated with a famous palaeontological fraud.

Computers powered by artificial intelligence are smart enough to threaten a range of jobs, whether computers developing treatment plans for cancer patients or Amazon.com That impact is already being felt. The World Economic Forum expects automation, including AI, to result in the loss of at least 5 million jobs globally by 2020. In the view of Genpact (G) CEO NV "Tiger" Tyagarajan, however, the bigger question is how many jobs such technology will ultimately create. Amazon is opening a new brick-and-mortar store, but without a checkout line.

Computers powered by artificial intelligence are smart enough to threaten a range of jobs, whether computers developing treatment plans for cancer patients or Amazon.com That impact is already being felt. The World Economic Forum expects automation, including AI, to result in the loss of at least 5 million jobs globally by 2020. In the view of Genpact (G) CEO NV "Tiger" Tyagarajan, however, the bigger question is how many jobs such technology will ultimately create. Amazon is opening a new brick-and-mortar store, but without a checkout line.