The future needs to be more human (and less machine). For decades now, we have created computer programming languages and forced entire generations across the globe into becoming engineers and learning how to code. We have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams (we've created machines that can now learn on their own), and we have failed beyond our worst nightmares (we've created "black box" artificial intelligence (AI) which we don't -- and can't -- understand). It's time for us to rethink the future we're so effectively creating. I'm concerned by this trend, where we focus our mental energy into machines, rather than having them understand us more.

The graph represents a network of 2,824 Twitter users whose tweets in the requested range contained "futureofwork ", or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets. The network was obtained from the NodeXL Graph Server on Tuesday, 01 January 2019 at 13:53 UTC. The requested start date was Tuesday, 01 January 2019 at 01:01 UTC and the maximum number of days (going backward) was 14. The maximum number of tweets collected was 5,000. The tweets in the network were tweeted over the 1-day, 14-hour, 53-minute period from Sunday, 30 December 2018 at 10:06 UTC to Tuesday, 01 January 2019 at 01:00 UTC.

With a sharp jawline, and fluttering eyelashes, doe-eyed Sophia, the world's first AI-powered humanoid is quite a stunner. Besides her looks, she boasts of an admirable sense of humour. Designed by Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics, Sophia exhibits many human values such as wisdom, compassion and kindness. She is also capable of expressing her emotions, holding eye contact, recognising faces, and understanding human speech. And Sophia is not the only humanoid robot the world is gushing over.

Edward Tse is founder and CEO of Gao Feng Advisory Company, a strategy consultancy with roots in China assisting clients on global business and management issues. He previously headed Greater China operations for two major international management consulting firms for over 20 years, and is the author of The China Strategy and China's Disruptors.

While AI does deliver ever greater opportunities for efficiencies, people who hear about this immediately fear for their job. However, successful manufacturing companies know that the key is striking the right balance between robots and people. The first step is understanding what user needs robots address. The foundation of AI is pattern recognition. Once AI learns a pattern, it can use that pattern to make predictions about the outcomes of similar patterns.

Though only 23 minutes on the high-speed rail from Shenzhen North to West Kowloon, the journey from the mainland to Hong Kong seems to transport me back half a century. The concrete jungle of my childhood memories hasn't changed one bit. Time seems trapped in the amber of this city of seven million, while the Shenzhen Bay area that I departed has already arrived at the future ahead of schedule. My classmate from a decade earlier, Dr. Ng Lok Tin of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, waits for me at the station exit. As though to highlight the discombobulation of modern China, he greets me in Cantonese though he's a native of Shanghai; I, Hong Kong born, on the other hand, speak to him in Modern Standard Mandarin. "Leung Wah Kiu, what's this really about?" he asks me. "A few days ago, two plainclothes officers approached me to ask if Professor Lau had been in touch and for the contact info of his relatives and friends in Hong Kong." "I thought he had been placed in ...

Next year's gadgets, at least beyond the second quarter, won't want to be caught dead without the killer fashion accessory of 2018: an AI chip. Samsung will reportedly begin manufacturing AI chips soon with hopes for commercialization within a matter of years. If this turns out to be accurate, the South Korean company will join the likes of Huawei, Apple, and Microsoft in making AI processors designed to be implemented in consumer gadgets. While rumors abound that Samsung's next big announcement is going to be a foldable smartphone, it seems more likely that we'll see an AI chip in the next Galaxy. The pivot to AI is imminent with Huawei already leading the pack having announced it's Kirin 970 chip, and Apple's iPhone X set to ship with its A11 bionic chip which features neural net processors.

The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I'm not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast--it is growing at a pace close to exponential. The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five-year timeframe. The way things are going, there is no room for doubt that there will be plenty of political upheavals and surprises in 2019. No one has a clue as to where Brexit is headed or, for that matter, where the entire Western world is going, let alone the prevailing uncertainty in the United States and the onward march of China.

Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are gaining ground in the technological world, and so is artificial intelligence. The use of AI is becoming more and more prevalent across the tech ecosystem. Companies are looking more and more into incorporating AI into their products and services in order to stay competitive. Various startups are not working to democratize access to datasets and algorithms needed to train AI models. In order to make these predictive models enormous datasets are required which is why tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple (FAMGA) and China's Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent (BAT) are leaders in the field of AI. By using CB Insights data, here are examples of 7 companies which are now exploring this new frontier at the intersection of the blockchain, AI, and data marketplaces.

After winning its three-game match against Chinese grandmaster Ke Jie, the world's top Go player, AlphaGo is retiring. Demis Hassabis, the CEO and founder of DeepMind, the Google artificial intelligence lab that built this historic machine, tells WIRED he will now move the machine's designers to other projects. "This is some of the top people in the company," Hassabis says. "The idea is to really explore what we can do in other domains." Considering the world-shaking success of AlphaGo, that is a very powerful idea.