Technology might produce a spike in slavery, and it's not related to your smartphone addiction. The Human Rights Outlook 2018 report released on Thursday by risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft highlights how the rise in automation and robot manufacturing could force out of their jobs millions of people in Southeast Asia, with women disproportionately affected in the garment, textile and footwear industry. In both Vietnam and Cambodia, for example, over 85% of jobs in those sectors are at high risk of automation, and over 76% of these jobs are held by women, the study says. Automation might lead to a downward spiral, making exploited workers even more vulnerable to labor abuses and an easy prey to human traffickers and slaveholders as they compete for a diminishing supply of low-skilled and low-paid jobs. "Without concrete measures from governments to adapt and educate future generations to function alongside machines, it could be a race to the bottom for many workers," Alexandra Channer, the consultancy's head of human rights, said in a statement.

It is almost customary to mention the 1995 Hollywood blockbuster, Clueless, while writing about wardrobe management apps. The movie's protagonist, Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) picked her outfit of the day from a digital wardrobe that captured the imagination of fashionistas galore. Entrepreneurs, mainly in the US, have tried their hand at wardrobe fashion apps but didn't succeed, with the exception of long-standing players like Stylebook and Cladwell. The biggest peeve has been the effort and time taken to get started with such apps. Many users switch off at the prospect of individually photographing every garment and adding its details to the online wardrobe.

Arriving at Creator, a new restaurant located on the ground floor of an office building on downtown San Francisco's Folsom Street, feels like walking into a catalog. Sleek, wooden communal tables with high white stools line one end of the room, with a bookshelf full of hand-picked culinary books against the wall and modern light fixtures overhead. It's what you would have imagined a restaurant eventually looking like if you watched a lot of The Jetsons. Those machines, with large transparent glass casings and ingredients in cylindrical tubes, are Creator's burger-making robots. Each 14-foot device contains around 350 sensors and 20 microcomputers to produce the best, freshest, locally sourced cheeseburger that $6 can get you in America's most expensive city.

Today Microsoft president Brad Smith called for federal regulation of facial recognition software. "In a democratic republic, there is no substitute for decision making by our elected representatives regarding the issues that require the balancing of public safety with the essence of our democratic freedoms. Facial recognition will require the public and private sectors alike to step up -- and to act," Smith wrote in a blog post. Recent events explain why Smith is speaking out now. Last month, while the majority of U.S. citizens was outraged about the idea of separating families who unlawfully entered the United States, Microsoft was criticized by the public and hundreds of its own employees for its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Artificial intelligence is being designed to help investigate and predict crimes. Predictive policing software is built around algorithms that identify where crime could potentially take place. The AI software aims to make policing more fair and accountable but it isn't without its share of critics or notions of bias. The idea that smart, emotionless AI machines are capable of making decisions with a freedom of bias is fading fast. A recent investigation which smeared this perception came from ProPublica.

The threat from automation is in the flows part of banks' global markets business, the most important chunk of the biggest division of investment banking Can't code, or speak Bahasa? Didn't go to school with a CEO's son or daughter? A robot will take your trading seat. Read on if you want to save your job. The threat from automation is in the flows part of banks' global markets business, the most important chunk of the biggest division of investment banking.

Will you smell the robot in the room? Might documentaries explore the situation of bioprinted human organ transplantations on the black market? Will virtual reality cause a worldwide obesity epidemic? The Medical Futurist shares the weirdest ideas about how healthcare might look a hundred years from now. Let's peek into a dystopic future of healthcare.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around longer than most people realize. The intent behind much of AI is to free us from mundane repetitive tasks, giving us more time to grow our intellects and businesses, with more interesting, evolving actions. We want what we want when we want it. AI offers us that access with speed and accuracy when we need it. In London, self-driving robots deliver food.

I got excellent feedback after taking part in the panel discussion, and since it was not recorded I thought I would write a blog post on some of what I discussed, my response to the core questions and some other thoughts I had on the topic. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is often thought of as being new areas that are currently hard to automate, difficult problems to solve using computers, and ultimately replacing humans jobs. Yet we have been using a form of AI or Machine Learning (ML) since the 1950's as Artificial neural network, later on adopted by businesses in 1970's initially as decision support systems, and later evolving into data mining, business intelligence, analytics & insights, and more recently data science. What has changed is that the sales and marketing teams are now involved, and sometimes even overpromising on what is possible! Yet there has also been an increase in computing power, storage capacity with massive datasets collected from a larger number of sources, and open source data science code, packages and tutorials that are readily available.

Kai-Fu Lee shares his perspectives on developing and adopting artificial intelligence in China and the United States with McKinsey Global Institute partner Michael Chui. Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing at a breakneck speed, with two major players emerging: China and the United States. Each country has very different strategies, backgrounds, advantages, and disadvantages. Kai-Fu Lee has a unique view of AI development in China, in his present roles as chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and president of Sinovation Venture's Artificial Intelligence Institute and from his extensive background in the topic in former leadership roles at Microsoft Research China and Google Greater China. Michael Chui, a partner of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), spoke with Kai-Fu Lee to understand his perspectives on AI in two of the leading global markets.