The history of artificial intelligence is a history of boring conferences. The term itself was first coined at a boring conference, one that took place in the summer of 1965 at Dartmouth College. One could chart a number of pre-histories when it comes to anxieties around smart, responsive machines and their effects on our world, but the real hype has always been underlaid by the bureaucratic haze of lanyards, plenaries, and good timekeeping. The hype waned during the 1970s, a time sometimes known as the'AI Winter', before being inflated again with the injection of private capital by those interested in the labour-saving potentials of the technology. The ever-looming'Jobpocolypse' brought about by AI quickly became a pressing concern for AI ethicists and policy wonks of all stripes.

The days of construction projects running behind schedule and over budget could soon be over as AI technology tries to solve the U.S. productivity puzzle. Disperse, an AI-powered construction firm, has raised fresh finance to expand into the U.S. in a bid to tackle inefficiencies on building sites. The company's technology uses visual snapshots of construction projects to alert managers about potential problems before they happen. The construction sector has been grappling with low levels of productivity for decades, with underinvestment in technology one of the key factors. Closing the productivity gap in global construction could be worth $1.6 trillion a year, with a third of that coming in the U.S., according to the McKinsey Global Institute.