Why is the US Fed chair criminal probe causing alarm? Venezuela's defence minister has accused the United States of using the country as a "weapons laboratory" during the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3. Vladimir Padrino Lopez said last week that the US had used Venezuela as a testing ground for "advanced military technologies" that rely on artificial intelligence and weaponry never used before, according to the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal. On Sunday, US President Donald Trump told the New York Post that US forces had indeed used a weapon he referred to as "the discombobulator". "I'm not allowed to talk about it," he said, adding that the weapon "made equipment not work" during the operation. Details of the US military mission to abduct Maduro have not been made public, but the US has been known to use weapons to disorient soldiers and guards or disable equipment and infrastructure in the past.

People have a natural fear of technology putting them out of work. The word sabotage allegedly comes from French protesters who threw their wooden clogs -- sabots -- into machines to stop them working. And much of the second half of the 20th century was characterised by labour disputes in relation to the introduction of new technologies in manufacturing industries. Many workers in the services and creative industries believed they were immune to such threats, but AI has changed all that. Robot process automation (RPA) and other AI-powered activities are replacing human activities in a whole range of areas, from call centres to accountancy practices; and, as the technology gets smarter, the number of roles that can be replaced increases.