Hamon and his team created an algorithm that analyzes the tiniest of human movements, using a camera, and determines what that person is feeling. SLL is trying to solve one of the oldest problems in the world: people lie. Being able to determine the viability of a TV show, or how people feel about a specific scene in a movie is a pretty neat trick. SLL does more than provide analytics for TV shows and movies, in fact its ambitions might be some of the highest we've ever seen for an AI company.

Silver Logic Labs (SLL) is in the people business. Technically, it's an AI startup, but what it really does is figure out what people want. At first glance they've simply found a better way to do focus-groups, but after talking to CEO Jerimiah Hamon we've learned there's nothing simple about the work he's doing. The majority of AI in the world is being taught to do boring stuff. The machines are learning to analyze data, and scrape websites.

After years of frustration with its relatively slow pace of progress, artificial intelligence (AI) is finally beginning to deliver on expectations. Depending on who you ask, this is either cause for optimism – or horror. Putting dystopian visions of robots taking over the world aside, most observers are worried about the implications of how a workforce composed increasingly of robots will transform society and the economy. Bill Gates has now jumped into the fray, suggesting that governments should tax robots to fund training for people replaced by robots. Rather than having a knee-jerk reaction to news of advances in AI, however, we should take a wider view of how technological advances have impacted human welfare over the past two centuries.

France are eyeing up an inclusive benefits system that would see every adult receive a basic income of €750 in the fear robots will take over 3million jobs. Two of the seven candidates vying to represent the ruling Socialist Party in this year's presidential election are promising the money to all French adults. The radical move is already being tested in Finland and other experiments are planned elsewhere - including in the United States. If implemented in France, the potential costs could be an eye-watering €700billion a year, and critics have said it would promote laziness. French politicians, from left to right, Arnaud Montebourg, Jean-Luc Bennahmias, Francois de Rugy, Benoit Hamon, Vincent Peillon, Manuel Valls and Sylvia Pinel, attend the first prime-time televised debate for the French left's presidential primaries in La Plaine Saint-Denis, near Paris The reason for the drastic measures is the number of automated systems and machines increasingly replacing human workers.