Apple is reportedly working on a chip called the Apple Neural Engine, which would be dedicated to carrying out artificial intelligence (AI) processing on its iPhones. Although artificial intelligence is being used extensively already to power digital assistants like Siri and Google Assistant, these technologies rely on computer servers to process data sent to them rather than the processing happening on the mobile device itself. Augmented reality and digital assistants are not the only applications of AI that will become important on mobile devices. Once the capability is made available to all mobile application developers, it will bring new types of capabilities to mobile devices. Health applications for example will be able to tell when body readings from sensors on the phone or associated wearable devices are abnormal and need acting on.

The leader of one of the world's largest automobile producers expects that cars will soon drive themselves and sync to the world around them - but don't count out the human behind the wheel just yet. Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive and chairman of an alliance that includes Nissan, Renault and Mitsubishi, said Thursday that humans will remain involved in the operation of vehicles for the foreseeable future, even as cars with self-driving technology enter the market in the next five years. You will push a button to activate the car's autonomous driving feature, he said, but it will encounter everyday scenarios it cannot compute and that require human assistance. "Artificial intelligence is still way below the creativity of the human brain," Ghosn said. Imagine a self-driving car coming upon a broken-down vehicle in the road, but there is a solid line to either side of it, Ghosn said.

Babak Hodjat believes humans are too emotional for the stock market. So he's started one of the first hedge funds run completely by artificial intelligence. "Humans have bias and sensitivities, conscious and unconscious," says Hodjat, a computer scientist who helped lay the groundwork for Apple's Siri. "It's well documented we humans make mistakes. For me, it's scarier to be relying on those human-based intuitions and justifications than relying on purely what the data and statistics are telling you."

Robots could soon be hiring and firing staff at the world's largest hedge fund under secret plans drawn up to improve efficiency. A team of engineers at US-based Bridgewater Associates is reportedly developing artificial intelligence which can run the firm without emotions getting in the way. Billionaire founder Ray Dalio is seeking to create a new business model where most employees are programmers and decisions are made by a computer, according to the Daily Mail. He appointed a clandestine team, called the Systemised Intelligence Lab, to work on the project early in 2015. It is overseen by David Ferruci, a renowned developer who created IBM's Watson supercomputer.

Elon Musk famously called it "our greatest existential threat". Physicist Stephen Hawking said that, limited by slow biological evolution, humans wouldn't be able to compete and would be superseded. But the technology that sparked those fears - artificial intelligence - is also being touted as the biggest potential advance in our history. A recent international study found that 50 per cent of experts questioned believe that artificial intelligence - or AI - will be smarter than humans within the next 24 years. And 90 per cent of those surveyed believed that milestone would be reached within 60 years.

Computing and robotics is changing the face of medicine at a faster rate than ever before, and is going to affect the way we treat patients says a medical expert. Michael Gillam, who is heading to the SingularityU summit in Christchurch next month, is a physician, medical informatics expert and IT health specialist. He is also one of four directors that built and sold the patient information software Amalga which became one of Microsoft's flagship products. According to Gillam, as computing power continues to increase and the cost of testing and research decreases, health providers will be able to tailor treatment to patients. "When I started studying there were a few known types of blood cancers and by 2005, there were over 80 different types so we've come a long way," Gillam said.

Robots and drones have already started to quietly transform many aspects of agriculture. And now a new report is predicting the agricultural robotics industry, now serving a 3 billion market, will grow to 10 billion by 2022. The report, by IDTechEx Research in Britain, is called Agricultural Robots and Drones 2016-2026: Technologies, Markets, and Players. It analyses how robotic market and technology developments will change agriculture, enabling ultra-precision farming and helping address key global challenges. It describes how robotic technology will enter into different aspects of agriculture, how it will change the way farming is done and transform its value chain, how it becomes the future of agrochemicals business and modifies the way we design agricultural machinery.

Robots are coming for our jobs. These doom-laden predictions probably sound familiar to anyone who's read or seen any movies lately involving artificial intelligence. Sometimes they're invoked with genuine alarm, as in the case of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking warning against the danger of killer automatons. Other times, the anxiety comes across as a kind of detached, ironic humor masking the true depths of our dread, as if tweeting nervous jokes about #Skynet will somehow forestall its rise. AI raises unsettling questions about our place in the economy and society; even if by some miracle 99 percent of employers agree not to use robots to automate labor, that still leaves many hardworking people potentially in the lurch.

Google has launched a project to use artificial intelligence to create compelling art and music, offering a reminder of how technology is rapidly changing what it means to be a musician, and what makes us distinctly human. Google's Project Magenta, announced this month, aims to push the state of the art in machine intelligence that's used to generate music and art. "We don't know what artists and musicians will do with these new tools, but we're excited to find out," said Douglas Eck, the project's leader in a blog post. "Daguerre and later Eastman didn't imagine what Annie Liebovitz or Richard Avalon would accomplish in photography. Surely Rickenbacker and Gibson didn't have Jimi Hendrix or St Vincent in mind." Google has already released a song demonstrating the technology.