The simplest definition of AI is computer technology that can do tasks that ordinarily require human intelligence. More formally, AI is the combination of machine learning algorithms, big data and a training procedure. This mimics human intelligence: the combination of innate ability, access to knowledge and a teacher.

Also like humans, when it comes to AI there are the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: digital assistants, medical AIs to diagnose cancer, satellite navigation that figures out the best way home and systems that somehow know that your credit card has been used fraudulently.

The bad: biases such as that discovered in the COMPAS risk-assessment software used to help judges in the US determine a sentence by forecasting the likelihood of a defendant reoffending. After two years of evaluation COMPAS was found to have overestimated re-offence rates for black defendants and underestimated re-offence rates for white defendants. Every human I know is biased, so why worry when an AI is biased? Because there is a good chance it will be replicated and sold by the millions, thus spreading the bias across the planet.

The ugly: think Orwell’s 1984. Now look at the social credit score in China, where citizens are watched in the streets and monitored at home, losing points for littering or paying their bills late, and as a consequence being denied a bank loan or their right to travel.