For many founders the road to raising capital usually takes months, if not years, but for Flamingo founder Dr Catriona Wallace the latest part of her journey took just 12 minutes. The artificial intelligence fintech startup, which is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange through its holding company Cre8tek, raised $5.1 million last month via a share placement to new and existing institutional, professional and sophisticated investors. The oversubscribed round closed after just 12 minutes, with $10 million in bids vying for the 128.1 million in shares that were on offer for 4c each. "There's recently been a lot more interest and conversation [in Australia] around artificial intelligence, and this is reflected in the success of this raise," Wallace tells StartupSmart. "Like all startup founders I know that raising money is always a difficult task -- we were very pleased that the $5.1 million was oversubscribed and mainly our feeling was of happiness and confidence. It gives us a really significant runway into 2018 to prove our next key milestones."

Australian big businesses are spending an average of $6 million a year on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, according to research released at the World Economic Forum. From driverless tractors on farms to banks using machine learning to predict investors, developments in AI can lead to better business outcomes, but they also raise potential concerns around ethics and opportunity. So what does this mean for startups and emerging entrepreneurs? "For startups, the popularity of artificial intelligence amongst big businesses presents a fantastic opportunity from a technology perspective," Infosys Australia and New Zealand vice-president and regional head Andrew Groth tells StartupSmart. Infosys, which conducted the study, is a $US10 billion ($13 billion) Indian-founded multinational firm specialising in new technologies.

As algorithms become entrenched into society, the debate about their effects rages on. In essence, algorithms are sequences of instructions used to solve problems and perform functions in computer programming. As mathematical expressions, algorithms existed long before modern computers. While they vary in application, all algorithms have three things in common: clearly-defined beginning and ending points, discrete sets of "steps," and design meant to address a specific type of problem. On the one hand, algorithms play the role of prime suspect -- responsible for the recent UK pound's Brexit-induced flash crash, used for political and informational manipulation on social networks, and part of what Harvard Professor Shoshanna Zuboff calls "surveillance capitalism".

With a pocketful of savings, Melbourne entrepreenur Michelle Mannering and three fellow founders are busy building a platform utilising artificial intelligence to make the world a smarter and better place. As a hacker-in-residence at Carlton Connect and a participant in the Melbourne Accelerator Program, Mannering and her team are one of the first residents in Melbourne's new "melting pot" for innovation. "My co-founders and I all met at a bunch of different hackathons," Mannering tells StartupSmart. Just a year after meeting, the team has launched Black AI, a startup offering a platform that is developing machine learning computer vision. "Basically, we just teach computers how to understand and interpret the world," Mannering says.

Three Australian startups have been recognised as some of the most disruptive companies in the world with the potential to "influence, change or create new global markets". Twice a year, leading entrepreneurs, investors and experts from the likes of Microsoft Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, Sky News and IBM curate the Disrupt 100 list, which is published by UK-based Tallt Ventures. Out of more than one million global startups and corporate ventures, Sydney's Eora 3D, Adelaide's Humanihut and Queensland's Go One made the cut. With Asia expected to represent a growing number of listings in the future, Disrupt 100 has highlighted Eora 3D among the many startups in the region leading the way. It's a proud moment for Eora 3D co-founder Rich Boers who says he can't believe his startup has been listed ahead of companies like IBM Watson, a health platform using artificial intelligence to generate insights on unstructured data.

Human communication goes beyond words. It is complex, rich in nuances and frequently includes non-verbal signs. Yet despite our technological limitations it is not impossible for some aspects of communication to be emulated by a machine with surprising effect. This has been part of the challenge in developing Harlie (Human and Robot Language Interaction Experiment), a smartphone chatbot app developed by researchers at the CSIRO and University of Queensland. It's primarily aimed at people who may have trouble conversing including those with neurological conditions such as Parkinson's disease and dementia, or even autism. The following dialog excerpt took place between a human who has autism, let's call him Chris (pseudonym), and Harlie.