After graduating from the Osaka College of Music in 1988, Yoko Shimomura was torn between career paths. Classically trained since the age of 3 and raised in a family of piano players, Shimomura had studied to become a piano teacher. But when she wasn't studying or playing the piano, Shimomura was popping coins at her local arcade or stomping on Goombas in Super Mario Bros. It was Koji Kondo's infectious melodies in the original Super Mario Bros. that first piqued Shimomura's interest in video game music. Not long after, Koichi Sugiyama's classical score for the RPG Dragon Quest inspired her to marry her love for video games and classical music.

In a concert hall in Switzerland, an audience sat in anticipation to listen to a version of Beethoven's Tenth Symphony for the first time. The symphony, which the German composer never finished, was only scraps of notes when he died. Some composers have tried to string together a version of the symphony since then. But now, artificial intelligence has given it a shot. The four-minute extract created has been called BeethovANN Symphony 10.1.

Artificial Intelligence technologies might well replace humans in the workplace entirely someday. But at least for the foreseeable future, businesses will derive far more value using AI to augment and enhance existing capabilities than to automate away human jobs. Analyst firm Gartner predicted in a recent report that by 2021 organizations worldwide will create $2.9 trillion of business value and some 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity by harnessing AI to support decision-making, improve efficiencies and to enable new applications. Far from replacing jobs, companies will use AI in conjunction with humans to create more business value, says Svetlana Sicular, research vice president at Gartner. "There are many themes about AI taking away jobs," Sicular says.

A galaxy far, far away is a little closer with the invention of a robotic arm inspired by Luke Skywalker's bionic hand. And while this arm may not wield a lightsaber, it has a greater power for jazz musician Jason Barnes -- it lets him play the piano for the first time in five years. Barnes, who lost much of his right arm in a work accident, is back at the keys with an AI prosthesis created by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Unlike most prosthetics, it gives the 28-year-old the ability to control each finger individually. With it, Barnes can play Beethoven.

If ever there was an event specifically designed to send the regular Sydney Opera House clientele into a near-fatal frenzy of monocle popping, it was this one: a video game festival hosted at Australia's most famous cultural icon. But whatever misgivings one may have about Minecraft at the Opera House, when I arrive the mood is buoyant. More still stand in line to meet the "celebrities of Minecraft" – a concept that would be impossible to even begin to explain to someone 10 years ago. Others are marshalled into groups, waiting side stage in the concert hall to take part in Australia's first Minecraft tournament. The parents take in the scene with an air of contented bafflement. Their confusion is understandable: on the surface, Minecraft as a popular game, let alone an international phenomenon, is hard to explain.