At the (tail) end of 2024, Billie Eilish sat cross-legged on stage and began to miaow. Her fans erupted in harmony, each belting out an off-key miaow of their own. This is because Eilish's Oscar-winning track What Was I Made For? – a lachrymose Barbie cut lamenting adulthood's entailing ennui – has become the default soundtrack for a new breed of cat video. You may recognise it: the song often plays over the top of these AI-generated fantasias featuring a cartoonishly fat cat or an equally buff feline with a suspiciously veiny human body. The cat cheats on her lover, falls pregnant or seeks revenge in a weirdly condensed soap opera.

A video of Taters the cat beamed across 19 million miles of space because NASA had to try it. It was a successful demonstration of new laser communication technology, through which NASA beamed an ultra-high-definition video across deep space, from the Psyche spacecraft back to Earth. The signal from the video, sent on December 11, made it to Earth in 101 seconds. That data speed -- through space -- is faster than most broadband connections on Earth. You can get these reports delivered daily direct to your inbox.

By combining the strengths of humans and machines, AI can help us achieve more than we could on our own. AI algorithms can analyze mountains of data with the efficiency of a hundred Sherlock Holmeses (yes, that is the plural of "Holmes"), identifying patterns and insights that humans might miss. In healthcare, this has led to breakthroughs in disease detection and treatment, and in finance, it has helped investors make better investment decisions -- because let's face it, we can't all be Warren Buffet. And let's not forget about AI-powered robots and machines, who have joined forces with human workers to increase efficiency and productivity. According to a recent report from PwC, AI has the potential to contribute a staggering $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

Autonomous vacuum maker iRobot is a lot like Tesla, not necessarily by reinventing an existing concept -- vacuums, robots and electric cars all existed before these two companies came on the scene -- but by imbuing their products with that intangible quirk that makes people sit up and take notice. Just as Tesla ignited the public's imagination as to what an electric car could be and do, iRobot has expanded our perception of how domestic robots can fit into our homes and lives. More than two dozen leading experts from across the technology sector have come together in'You Are Not Expected to Understand This': How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World to discuss how seemingly innocuous lines of code have fundamentally shaped and hemmed the modern world. In the excerpt below, Upshot Deputy Editor Lowen Liu, explores the development of iRobot's Roomba vacuum and its unlikely feline brand ambassadors. Excerpted with permission from'You Are Not Expected to Understand This': How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World edited by Torie Bosch.

Giving heavy thought to AI and self-awareness, combined with ethical behavior and AI ethics. I'd bet that you believe you are. The thing is, supposedly, few of us are especially self-aware. There is a range or degree of self-awareness and we all purportedly vary in how astutely self-aware we are. You might think you are fully self-aware and only be marginally so. You might be thinly self-aware and realize that's your mental state. Meanwhile, at the topmost part of the spectrum, you might believe you are fully self-aware and indeed are frankly about as self-aware as they come. Speaking of which, what good does it do to be exceedingly self-aware? According to research published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) by Tasha Eurich, you reportedly are able to make better decisions, you are more confident in your decisions, you are stronger in your communication capacities, and more effective overall (per article entitled "What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It)." The bonus factor is that those with strident self-awareness are said to be less inclined to cheat, steal, or lie. In that sense, there is a twofer of averting being a scoundrel or a crook, along with striving to be a better human being and embellish your fellow humankind. All of this talk about self-awareness brings up a somewhat obvious question, namely, what does the phrase self-awareness actually denote. You can readily find tons of various definitions and interpretations about the complex and shall we say mushy construct entailing being self-aware. Some would simplify matters by suggesting that self-awareness consists of monitoring your own self, knowing what yourself is up to. You are keenly aware of your own thoughts and actions. Presumably, when not being self-aware, a person would not realize what they are doing, nor why so, and also not be cognizant of what other people have to say about them. I'm sure you've met people that are like this. Some people appear to walk this earth without a clue of what they themselves are doing, and nor do they have a semblance of what others are saying about them.

If we need to learn one thing about the numerous AI applications around us today, it is that they are examples of "artificial specific intelligence." In other words, they rely on algorithms that are great at very particular tasks, such as selecting a movie based on our watching history or keeping our car in the proper lane on the highway. Because it is so highly specialized, AI greatly outperforms human intelligence in those narrowly defined tasks. Take it from a person who recently spent 50 minutes picking a movie that itself lasted 77 minutes. However, AI's effectiveness at specialized jobs comes at the price of severe context blindness and a general inability to develop meaningful feedback loops: The typical algorithm does not and cannot consider the wider implications of the decisions it makes and hardly affords us users any control over its inner workings.

Do you spend hours watching cat videos and wondering what they are thinking? A new study has revealed that cats'do have facial expressions' but many people struggle to interpret what they mean. You can tell a hissing cat is probably unhappy and a purring cat is in a good mood, but it's not been easy to tell the way a feline is feeling from the look on its face. Researchers in Canada asked more than 6,000 people from 85 countries to watch clips of cats and say whether their facial expressions were negative or positive. Cats have a reputation for being'hard to read' and animal behaviour experts from the University of Guelph say their study backs this reputation up.

In reflecting on 2018 from a security perspective, some of the major themes, as I've written previously, have been about new AI security tools, industry consolidation and the blurring of lines between physical and cyber security. GRDP, the California Consumer Privacy Act and Facebook's seemingly never-ending scandals related to consumer privacy have also raised regulatory and public awareness of data privacy as a key issue and concern. These discussions will continue into next year and beyond, and there a number of other big trends that are likely to dominate the security industry in 2019. Here are seven that I believe we'll be looking at in the new year and for some time after that: As the number and range of threats continue to grow, it's clear that only AI can counter them. That's why we saw some big companies announce AI-based solutions in 2018, including Palo Alto Networks' behavioral analytics solution Magnifier and Alphabet's Chronicle.

There is always fear that one day, technology and artificial intelligence will replace some of the work previously done by humans. We curated a list of 5 jobs which might be replaced by AI and shared how people can re-skill to remain relevant in the technological world. However, this is why humans can never be replaced by artificial intelligence entirely. With the internet, we discover lots of things we didn't know we needed, enjoyed and very often loved. As of 2015, there are over 2 million cat videos on YouTube alone.

Have you ever done things that were fun and easy instead of a really hard and really important thing that you really had to do? You know, like sorting through 10-year-old pictures and reordering them in new files with improved -- and more creative -- names, instead of doing that major spring cleaning of the house that you have planned for two months in advance. According to TED speaker and procrastinator expert Tim Urban from Whait But Why (a website that I've stumbled upon during a procrastination session), all people are procrastinators! You and everyone you know are procrastinators. Some are more pro than others, though.