With the clock ticking down on the biggest film of his career, "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," director Gareth Edwards wrestled with the high stakes ace up his sleeve: using computer graphics to digitally insert actor Peter Cushing, who died in 1994, into Edwards' new "Star Wars" film as the iconic villain Grand Moff Tarkin. "We were ultra-paranoid about it," Edwards told The Times ahead of the home video release of "Rogue One," which crossed the billion-dollar global box office mark just 39 days into its December release. "Even a month away, there was this feeling of, 'Is this going to work? Plenty of pressure already hung over "Rogue One," the first standalone side story in the "Star Wars" franchise. Anchored by a new heroine named Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), recruited into leading a team of characters on a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the prequel to 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope" would tell a darker, more violent tale than its predecessors in a galaxy far, far, away. "In the early conversations about the end of the movie, we knew we were going to hand it off in some form, like passing the gauntlet to Princess Leia," Edwards said of the film's final sequence, in which the Death Star plans land in Leia's hands, leading into the events of "A New Hope." In Austin, Texas, to speak at the South by Southwest festival last month, Edwards recounted the challenge. The task of creating a young CG Leia by digitally blending Carrie Fisher's face, and a single word of dialogue she delivered in 1977 -- "hope" -- with the motion-capture performance of actress Ingvild Deila, went to Industrial Light & Magic. Fisher, who died Dec. 27, did not film scenes for "Rogue One." "We knew we were probably not going to be able to get away without showing her without it feeling like a cheat," Edwards said. "You could do some gag where you just saw the back of her.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is revolutionizing the healthcare industry. Here's what you need to know. Machine Learning is a growing and diverse field of Artificial Intelligence which studies algorithms that are capable of automatically learning from data and making predictions based on data. Machine learning is one of the most exciting technological areas of study today. Each week there are new advancements, new technologies, new applications, and new opportunities.

A new technique using artificial intelligence to read satellite images could aid efforts to eradicate global poverty by indicating where help is needed most, a team of U.S. researchers said on Thursday. The method would assist governments and charities trying to fight poverty but lacking precise and reliable information on where poor people are living and what they need, the researchers based at Stanford University in California said. Eradicating extreme poverty, measured as people living on less than $1.25 U.S. a day, by 2030 is among the sustainable development goals adopted by United Nations member states last year. A team of computer scientists and satellite experts created a self-updating world map to locate poverty, said Marshall Burke, assistant professor in Stanford's Department of Earth System Science. It uses a computer algorithm that recognises signs of poverty through a process called machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence, he said.

Growth is shifting, disruption is accelerating, and societal tensions are rising. Confronting these dynamics will help you craft a better strategy, and forge a brighter future. "The trend is your friend." It's the oldest adage in investing, and it applies to corporate performance, too. We've found through our work on the empirics of strategy that capturing tailwinds created by industry and geographic trends is a pivotal contributor to business results: a company benefiting from such tailwinds is four to eight times more likely to rise to the top of the economic-profit performance charts than one that is facing headwinds. It's easy, however, to lose sight of long-term trends amid short-term gyrations, and there are moments when the nature and direction of those trends become less clear. Today, for example, technology is delivering astounding advances, and more people are healthy, reading, and entering the global middle class than at any period in human history. At the same time, the post–Cold War narrative of progress fueled by competitive markets, globalization, and innovation has lost some luster. Those contradictions are showing up in politics, and the long-term trends underlying them are reshaping the business environment.

Widespread adoption of cognitive systems and AI across a broad range of industries will drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) new Spending Guide. The market for cognitive/AI solutions will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55.1% over the 2016-2020 forecast period, highlighting the tremendous growth and rate of adoption for these technologies. The guide also revealed that this exponential growth of AI and machine learning technologies is bound to impact the UC industry. While widespread use of AI in the UC industry is still a few years out, AI will slowly start integrating with UC collaboration tools and has the potential to transform the industry over time. "Software developers and end user organisations have already begun the process of embedding and deploying cognitive/artificial intelligence into almost every kind of enterprise application or process," said David Schubmehl, research director, Cognitive Systems and Content Analytics at IDC. "Recent announcements by several large technology vendors and the booming venture capital market for AI startups illustrate the need for organisations to be planning and undertaking strategies that incorporate these wide-ranging technologies. Identifying, understanding, and acting on the use cases, technologies, and growth opportunities for cognitive/AI systems will be a differentiating factor for most enterprises and the digital disruption caused by these technologies will be significant."

Whether you are based in Washington or Beijing, automation anxiety is something that could be keeping you awake at night. What will the future of work look like if more and more companies replace humans with machines? The leaders of two of the world's biggest economies, US President Donald Trump and China's Xi Jingping, met this week to discuss business and trade. They oversee a workforce of 900 million people. In the past, Trump has blamed China for taking US jobs.

The global market of artificial intelligence is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of over 60% during 2017-2022. On the basis of application, global artificial intelligence market has been broadly segmented into image recognition, natural language processing, speech recognition, gesture control & others. Among these categories, image recognition dominated global artificial intelligence market in 2016, and the segment is expected to maintain its dominance over the next five years as well. These machines are also capable of taking decisions by self-learning from the nearby environment. Global artificial intelligence market is expected to grow at a robust pace over the next five years, owing to its widespread implementation in numerous industries, such as automobile, finance, healthcare, consumer electronics, etc.

TECHNOLOGY FOR PEOPLE Digital disruption is taking a new direction with people now shaping technology to fit our need. By amplifying people and putting the power into their hands, banks can deepen their role in consumers' lives, and firmly establish their place as partners in the new digital economy. HELP WRITE THE NEW RULES OF ENGAGEMENT OR RISK BEING REGULATED OUT THE UNCHARTED BANKERS SAY: • Industry regulations have not kept pace with technology advancement (66% globally, 82% in US). THE UNCHARTED TAKE THE LEAD TO SHAPE THE NEW RULES 75% of bankers agree they have a duty to be proactive in writing the rules. Freedom to innovate THOSE THAT DO EXPECT MORE: Opportunity to develop standards that others follow Expanded opportunities for trusted partnerships 7. 8www.accenture.com/bankingtechvision

This 2015 file photo shows U.S. soldiers from Dragon Troop of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment discuss their mission during their first training exercise of the new year near operating base Gamberi in the Laghman province of Afghanistan. WASHINGTON – The Trump administration opened a new military front Thursday when it ordered dozens of cruise missiles against a Syrian air base, adding to a growing list of recent U.S. military forays. A look at where the United States has fought in the 21st century. After al-Qaida attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. led an invasion of Afghanistan that ousted the Taliban. Though the U.S. and NATO formally ended their combat mission in Afghanistan at the end of 2014, the war -- now in its 16th year -- drags on.

The recent weaponization of drones has seen its share of inventiveness. But now, militants in Yemen are foregoing clever hacks and add-ons for a far more blunt approach: ramming drones into anti-missile systems, to keep them from knocking ballistic missiles out of the sky. It shows how militant groups and smaller military forces in the Middle East are exploiting gaps in the air defenses of better-equipped forces by using drones in new and unexpected ways, increasing demand for counter-drone technologies in the process. The United Arab Emirates, as part of a Saudi-led coalition, has been trying to oust the Houthi Ansar Allah movement in Yemen since Houthi militants seized control of the country from then-President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in 2015. Recently, according to a report from weapons-tracking research organization Conflict Arms Research, the UAE picked up seven drones, used by the Houthi militia to render the coalition's Patriot ballistic missile defense systems unable to intercept missiles fired from Yemen into Saudi territory.