Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been getting creative for some time now and inventing new things, including everything from new kinds of batteries, computer chips, furniture, and rocket engines, all the way through to new kinds of vehicles and sports apparel, for companies as diverse as Airbus, Amazon, GM, NASA, and Under Armour. But despite this quantum leap recently the US Patent Office declined to credit AI for its inventions. Now that's changed, and in what seems to be a world first Intellectual property (IP) officials in South Africa have made history in a landmark decision to award a patent that names an AI as the inventor. The patent – which was filed by an international team of lawyers and researchers led by the University of Surrey's, Professor of Law and Health Sciences, Ryan Abbott – is for a food container based on fractal geometry.

Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. One of the most difficult things about detecting manipulated deepfakes and photos is that digital photo files aren't coded to be tamper evident. But researchers from New York University, as well as other researchers and start ups around the world, are starting to develop strategies that make it easier to tell if a photo has been altered, as well as finding new ways to prevent your likeness from being deepfaked, opening up a potential new front in the war on fakery. Forensic analysts have been able to identify some digital characteristics they can use to detect meddling, but these indicators don't always paint a reliable picture of whatever digital manipulations a photo has undergone. But what if that tamper-resistant seal originated from the camera that took the original photo itself?

Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. Have you ever heard people ask whether or not AI will destroy the world, or ask if we'll ever be able to control future Artificial Intelligence's? If not then firstly what rock have you been hiding under, and is there space for one more, and if you have then you'll know that no one ever comes up with a decent answer. That said though, and for what it's worth, every once in a while Elon Musk tells everyone that one day AI could become an immortal dictator, which would suggest he thinks we couldn't control it, and every once in a while Google announces it's still not succeeded in creating a kill switch that will let it terminate rogue AI's, which, again, just suggests more of the same. And let's not even go anywhere near the "Doomsday Games" event where hundreds of the world's top experts and scientists couldn't figure out how to solve the majority of the world's doomsday scenarios, or the time Google demonstrated that more powerful AI's get "aggressive" and "kill" weaker ones … And as for my answer it'd also be no, categorically, especially as we get closer to realising the dawn of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) – two events which will change our world beyond all recognition.

Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. The world of maintenance might sound dull, but when the aircraft of the future have autonomous robot snakes and cockroaches from Rolls Royce fixing them all of a sudden things get a little bit more interesting. Now, in another giant leap forward for robot bug-kind a company called BladeBUG in the UK have unveiled a bug-like robot that, like human wing walkers, performs "blade walks" along the blades of operational offshore wind turbines. "[The new robo-bugs] open the door to autonomous inspection and repair of wind turbines, improving the efficiency of the blades and reducing risk for rope access technicians," said Chris Cieslak, founder and director of BladeBUG. "[Our robot] uses a patent-pending six-legged design with suction cup feet, which means each of the legs can move and bend independently. This is significant because it enables the robot to walk on the blade's changing curved surface, as well as inside the blade, tower, or hub of the turbine."

Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from XPotential University, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. Today Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being woven into the digital fabric of our society where it's being used to help companies find top hires, find new vaccines, find untold riches, and even run the odd company here or there. And did I mention AI dictators and politicians? Recently though I've seen an uptick in the use of AI to solve some of the world's grander challenges, such as help governments find new ways to tackle climate change, to develop a digital twin of the entire Earth, and track and predict global chaos. Now though taking some of these ideas another step scientists from the University of Granada, Ferrovial, and the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain, who've highlighted the need for "unified, accessible, and open data sets that help [organisations] develop projects that solve the United Nation's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)," are trying to use AI to find new ways to help solve some of the world's greatest challenges.

Join our XPotential Community, future proof yourself with courses from our XPotential Academy, connect, watch a keynote, or browse my blog. We already live in a world where a simple selfie can tell companies about your character, your personality, and even your intent to criminality – let alone your general emotional state or health – but now a new algorithm has been developed to detect coronary artery disease solely from nothing more than patients facial photos. The proof-of-concept, published in the European Heart Journal, needs more refinement before it becomes a useful clinical tool but independent experts are already suggesting there are profound ethical considerations that need to be resolved before a system like this can even think about being deployed in the wild. Alopecia, Xanthelasmata, a yellowing on the eyelids, and Arcus Corneae, an opaque ring around the cornea, are among several facial biomarkers to indicate a person may be suffering poor cardiovascular health. A team of researchers from China has now developed a deep learning algorithm that can study just four photos of an individual to determine a person's risk of coronary artery disease.