At the Warner Bros Games studio in Montreal, a 7ft Batman statue greets visitors at reception. Comics are crammed into every shelf between each desk. And rather than images of lattes and flat whites, the coffee machine proudly displays the bat symbol. So, it might surprise you to learn that the people who work here have killed Batman. For the team behind the new video game Gotham Knights, their murder was the answer to a big question: how do you do something new with a character who has been throwing the Joker in jail for 83 years? If you're thinking that Batman has been done to death, you'd be right.

Predicting where Ebola might strike next could become easier, thanks to a new computer model. The model tracks how changes in the environment and in human societies could affect the deadly virus's spread. It predicts that Ebola outbreaks could become as much as 60 percent more likely by 2070 if the world continues on a path toward a warmer climate and a cooling economy. Ebola, on average, kills half of all people who contract the virus. In previous outbreaks, the fatality rate has risen to as high as 90 percent.

Accenture this week signaled its intention to apply computer vision and product recognition technologies more broadly by investing in Malong Technologies. Based in China, Malong Technologies has been applying computer vision technologies enabled by machine learning technologies to supply chains. But Mike Redding, managing director for Accenture Ventures, says Accenture plans to apply the artificial intelligence (AI) technologies developed by Malong Technologies to a broad range of use cases, including health care and transportation. In a recent trial for an Accenture client, the Malong AI technology achieved the same level of accuracy as human doctors in detecting cases of stroke from brain-scans, says Redding. Redding says Accenture decided to invest in Malong Technologies because the AI pioneer has been recognized by Google, Microsoft and Gartner as being the provider of one of the most advanced implementations of computer vision technologies based on AI.

As AI systems gain increasing "citizenship" in the enterprise, organizations have to ensure the "brains in a box" are adequately trained with enough data sets and content to establish a "bedrock in trust," said Mike Redding, managing director of Strategic Technology Innovation for Accenture, speaking Friday at an Accenture Technology Vision event in Washington D.C. Deployment of AI is complicated, particularly in legacy environments. This challenge has helped give rise to the popularity of robotic process automation (RPA), which is considered "entry level AI," Redding said. Companies can deploy a digital "agent" to the desktop of an employee to augment and streamline tasks, such as those requiring the processing of nuanced regulations. As AI is rolled out, however, companies will need to understand what goes into systems before it is deployed as a way to ensure trust. With the pending GDPR deadline approaching, companies will have to soon explain what goes into AI, Redding said.

Everyone knows about child rearing, but the big career of the future may be computer rearing. Machines with artificial intelligence cannot teach themselves, even with the advent of neural networks and machine learning. They will still need tutors to steer them to accomplish a given task efficiently. The growing human-machine symbiosis -- think smartphones -- will change every aspect of our lives and how our children make their living. The time to prepare is now.

What has improved American lives most in the last 50 years? According to a Pew Research study reported this month, it's not civil rights (10 percent) or politics (2 percent): it's technology (42 percent). And yet, according to other studies, most Americans are wary of technology, especially in areas of automation (72 percent), or robotic caregivers (59 percent), or riding in driverless vehicles (56 percent), and even in using brain chip implants to augment the capabilities of healthy people (69 percent). Science fiction, however, is quickly becoming science fact--the future is the machine. This is leading many to argue that we need to anticipate the ethical questions now, rather than when it is too late.

It doesn't bode well that Skype keeps crashing during my first attempt to speak with Giulio Prisco. Despite the marvels of modern technology, I can't seem to find a way to talk with the Italian theoretical physicist and computer scientist about his latest, and, to some, most quixotic endeavor: the Turing Church, a transhumanist group that he hopes will curate the crowdsourcing of a techno-rapture. In many ways, Prisco and his supporters want to provide a literal faith in the future. Prisco is carving out a digital space for what he hopes will store the building blocks for the construction of humanity's direction. According to the official website, the idea is that by releasing and curating metaphysical and scientific "programming code" to the public, people have a better chance of successfully augmenting our path as a species in hopes of eventually achieving in the physical world what most religions only promise in the afterlife: the defeat of death.