One Per Cent

It will cost us so much it makes my heart ache

President of Samsung’s mobile business Koh Dong-jin gears up to give 2.5 million people a new phone following reports that its flagship Galaxy Note 7 can “explode” while being charged

Automated away

The future is now. Walmart, the biggest US employer, announced last week that it would be automating 7000 back-office jobs. After a trial across 500 of its 4600 stores, in which cash-counting, invoicing and accounting were done by machines, the company will now roll out the automated system across its business. Walmart said the 7000 employees will be moved to customer-facing roles.

Scary talent

IBM’s Watson is already a jack-of-all-trades. Now the quiz-winning medical expert AI has turned its circuits to film-making. In a collaboration with 20th Century Fox, Watson helped to make a trailer for upcoming sci-fi thriller Morgan. To teach it how to give people the heebie-jeebies, a team fed it 100 trailers for horror films. The AI then identified 10 scenes in the new film, which a human edited together.