Traditionally, sex is an act performed by two humans for various reasons, but this is changing in a world that is becoming increasingly driven by technology. We've come to understand that a Chinese company known as WMDOLL, is ramping up production of sex dolls, a growing industry. Here's the thing, WMDOLL creates sex dolls that are powered by Artificial Intelligence, though they are far from being on the same level as the robots found in Westworld. In fact, these dolls are not yet robots, but they'll get there eventually we're sure. For those who are wondering, WMDOLL is one of the largest sex doll makers in China, and the company, at this time of writing, is based in the province of Guangdong.

President Donald Trump's July 19 executive order establishing the President's National Council for the American Worker is directed at preparing Americans for the workplace of the future. Although short on specifics, the order sends a powerful message about the need for revitalizing educational opportunities if Americans are to thrive in the era of big data, robots and artificial intelligence. The president's intent is to lay the groundwork for tackling a national "skills crisis." His order accepts that Americans need additional skills to fill the current 6.7 million job vacancies. In fact, the executive order gives official imprimatur to what many in industry and academia have feared for some time: "The economy is changing at a rapid pace because of the technology, automation, and artificial intelligence," and existing programs have "prepared Americans for the economy of the past."

The graph represents a network of 2,637 Twitter users whose tweets in the requested range contained "#iiot", or who were replied to or mentioned in those tweets. The network was obtained from the NodeXL Graph Server on Saturday, 28 July 2018 at 09:16 UTC. The requested start date was Saturday, 28 July 2018 at 00:01 UTC and the maximum number of tweets (going backward in time) was 5,000. The tweets in the network were tweeted over the 3-day, 9-hour, 56-minute period from Tuesday, 24 July 2018 at 14:03 UTC to Saturday, 28 July 2018 at 00:00 UTC. Additional tweets that were mentioned in this data set were also collected from prior time periods.

You have heard it right. Recently this July, Vistara has introduced India's first airport robot named RADA. The robot is designed for the customer assistance and Indra Gandhi international airport is the first one in India to have its airport robot, at its signature lounge in terminal 3 by Vistara. RADA is all set to assist passengers for their flight-related queries. Also, it offers games, videos and music options through its user-friendly interface. RADA is the innovation of Mr. Ravinder Pal Singh who is Vistara's chief information and innovation officer.

The short answer is yes. Get ready for a transformation of your HR department and I'm talking about making it much better. Do you really want to work at your current level of speed and productivity? AI is the key businesses have been waiting to make this department more effective: Getting more done, pursuing accuracy and playing a more dynamic role in attaining company goals. But of course, it will only happen if you know about and implement these changes.

A pair of Canadian students making a simple, inexpensive prosthetic arm have taken home the grand prize at Microsoft's Imagine Cup, a global startup competition the company holds yearly. SmartArm will receive $85,000, a mentoring session with CEO Satya Nadella, and some other Microsoft goodies. But they were far from the only worthy team from the dozens that came to Redmond to compete. The Imagine Cup is an event I personally look forward to, because it consists entirely of smart young students, usually engineers and designers themselves (not yet "serial entrepreneurs") and often aiming to solve real-world problems. In the semi-finals I attended, I saw a pair of young women from Pakistan looking to reduce stillbirth rates with a new pregnancy monitor, an automated eye-checking device that can be deployed anywhere and used by anyone, and an autonomous monitor for water tanks in drought-stricken areas.

I've been to dozens of retail-related conferences in the past year, most of which were attended by retailers, brands and early-growth companies seeking to gain traction in the retail ecosystem. Over the year, I've seen a continuous increase in the number of AI-driven technologies and companies showcasing solutions for retailers. I've also observed growing interest in these innovations among retailers. Because as multichannel retailers continue to fight age-old problems such as inaccurate inventory, stockouts and overstocks, overstretched and undertrained store associates, and suboptimal pricing, advances in AI targeting these problems are proving their ROI. AI, or machine intelligence, is human-like or intelligent behavior exhibited by computers and machines that are "trained" by data to make autonomous decisions.

ROBO Global's Jeremie Capron examines how the trade war between the US and China could be good for robotics. You've heard it over and over again: No one wins in a trade war. As the trade war between the US and China continues to escalate, the tariffs and barriers on imported products threaten to slow business activity, create supply chain friction, and dampen international trade – not only between the two countries themselves, but around the globe. No one wins a trade war. But robotics, automation, and AI (or RAAI) is notorious for breaking the rules.

A recent Nasscom report highlights around 1.4 lakh jobs remain vacant in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data Analytics segment across various sectors in India, out of the total demand of 5.1 lakh employees in the country. The report mentions around 3.7 lakh jobs are filled by now and the employee deficit would increase to 2.3 lakh by 2021, as the total demand goes up to around 8 lakh employees. In order to meet the deficit of qualified and skilled employees, Nasscom plans to engage with universities and colleges along with leading IT companies including Wipro and Tech Mahindra to provide relevant skills to around one million employees and another one million prospective employees and students. "The Future Skills programme which was launched earlier this February ultimately aims to reskill one million professionals along with skilling one million potential employees and students in the industry over a period of five years," the statement said. Nasscom has a user base of more than 200,000 from member firms committed to re-skilling their employees.

Barclays and JPMorgan Chase have been experimenting with IBM's quantum computing technology since December, when they joined the tech company's Q network. Salvatore Cucchiara at Morgan Stanley last week articulated the bank's hope of speeding up portfolio optimizations like Monte Carlo simulations with the help of quantum computing. True Positive Technologies, which creates investment strategies for institutional investors with the use of machine learning, has been working with quantum computers since 2014 for portfolio optimization and scenario simulations. Dr. Marcos Lopez de Prado, who founded Guggenheim Partners' Quantitative Investment Strategies business and is now CEO of True Positive, argues that quantum computing will solve financial firms' need for increased computing capacity in the future, while requiring less energy than traditional computers suck up. "Quantum computing will become increasingly important over time," he said.