AI has played a role in overcoming COVID especially in drug discovery and other related areas in fighting the pandemic. AI investment in drug design and drug discovery has increased significantly The percentage of graduates undertaking a PhD in AI has increased There is a big uptake in generative AI in the ability to compose text, audio, and images to a sufficiently high standard that humans have a hard time telling the difference between synthetic and non-synthetic outputs for some constrained applications of the technology. AI has a diversity challenge China overtakes the US in AI journal citations After surpassing the US in the total number of journal publications several years ago, China now also leads in journal citations; however, the US has consistently (and significantly) more AI conference papers (which are also more heavily cited) than China over the last decade. Surveillance technologies are fast, cheap, and increasingly ubiquitous The technologies necessary for large-scale surveillance are rapidly maturing, with techniques for image classification, face recognition, video analysis, and voice identification all seeing significant progress in 2020. AI ethics lacks benchmarks and consensus Though a number of groups are producing a range of qualitative or normative outputs in the AI ethics domain, the field generally lacks benchmarks that can be used to measure or assess the relationship between broader societal discussions about technology development and the development of the technology itself.

Editor's note: We first heard from Sophia on social media, where she's been sharing fun videos of her Waymo One rides. We reached out to learn more about what intrigued her about Waymo in the first place and how autonomous driving technology has become a part of her everyday life (and sparked a new passion!). Tell us a little bit about yourself! My name is Sophia, and I live with my husband and 3 children in Tempe, Arizona. I work as a campus store manager at Arizona State University and in the entrepreneurship community as a venture mentor.

It's Tuesday, which means the E3 show floor is now open. It also means we're finally at the end of a four-day slog of press conferences from some of the gaming world's largest publishers. While Activision Blizzard still doesn't do its own pre-E3 event, just about everyone else does, which means these 96 hours have been a deluge of announcements and reveals that we did our best to get our arms around. We didn't even cover them all: the Square Enix press conference was basically devoid of new information, and the PC Gaming Show, while compelling, was mostly a long list of indie game announcements--some of which we'll be getting to later this week. So, for now, here's everything you need to know about every press conference you need to know about.

For the second year in a row, we surveyed a number of great minds in the legal community for their opinions on legal tech. From bitcoin and blockchain to A.I. and chatbots, there's plenty to get excited about. Respondents to this year's survey included: Here's what they had to say: There were several contenders for the biggest legal tech news story of 2017, with A.I. taking a top spot yet again. "The barista at my local Starbucks who thought about going to law school one time was getting ready to launch a legal tech company that focused on A.I. indigent defense via crowdsourcing along the blockchain," said Keith Lee. "That's how prevalent it's been."

The experts predict robots will not be taking over as surgeons until around 2053, while it could take 43 years before machines are competing with mathematicians for space in top academic journals. They also predict AI computers could be churning out New York Times bestselling novels by 2049. In reality, machines are already dipping their digital fingers into this field too. Google has been training its AI on romantic novels and news articles in an attempt to help it write more creatively, and an AI bot called Benjamin can write short sci-fi film scripts – even if they don't entirely make sense. Then there is the work of Automated Insights, which has created algorithms that churn out millions of personalised news, finance and sports articles for companies like Reuters and the Associated Press. Adam Smith, chief operating officer at Automated Insights, says this technology is intended to complement, rather than replace, human expertise. "Automated journalism is creating content that would not have existed before, but humans still need to add context to those stories."

About 250 million light-years away, there is a neighbourhood of our universe that astronomers thought was quiet and unremarkable. However, a new study has found quite the opposite. The galaxy is now believed to be a'monster' - a giant galaxy formed from the parts of other galaxies. At left, in optical light, UGC 1382 appears to be a simple elliptical galaxy. But spiral arms emerged when astronomers incorporated ultraviolet and deep optical data (middle).