Ocado to wheel out C3PO-style robot to lend a hand at warehouses

Humanoid robot known as SecondHands to pass spanners and move ladders for technicians at online grocery specialist

Ocado is to test a humanoid maintenance assistant in its warehouses, in the online grocery specialist's latest move to reduce reliance on human workers.

Artificial Intelligence has various definitions, but in general it means a program that uses data to build a model of some aspect of the world. This model is then used to make informed decisions and predictions about future events. The technology is used widely, to provide speech and face recognition, language translation, and personal recommendations on music, film and shopping sites. In the future, it could deliver driverless cars, smart personal assistants, and intelligent energy grids. AI has the potential to make organisations more effective and efficient, but the technology raises serious issues of ethics, governance, privacy and law.