Editor's Note: The rapid pace of technological innovation is changing the nature of warfare, and futurists are busy spinning out scenarios of a U.S.-China clash in twenty years involving nano-technology and fully autonomous weapons systems. Yet how will new technologies shape insurgency and counterinsurgency, which conjures up images of guerrillas hiding in Vietnam's jungles? My Brookings colleague Chris Meserole looks at two of the latest books on the subject and assesses how the balance between rebels and government may tilt. When U.S. Special Forces entered Afghanistan in 2001, Facebook didn't exist, the iPhone had yet to be invented, and "A.I." often referred to an NBA star. Seventeen years later, American special operations forces continue to ride horseback in rural Afghanistan, but information technology has advanced rapidly.

Well they are, but not quite as remorselessly or as swiftly as the movies might have conditioned us to imagine. And when the robot age does arrive, the impact on New Zealand -- in jobs and economic disruption -- may not be as apocalyptic as some future scenarios imagine. At least that is the position of two leading robotics researchers, Armin Werner of Lincoln Agritech, and Bruce MacDonald, an Auckland University computer engineering specialist with over 30 years' skin in the robot game. Werner, whose background is in precision agriculture that will have its most advanced developments in robotics, believes the broad use of automation will create more jobs, at least at the skilled end of the labour market. His view is that the embrace of technology will lead to different forms of work, rather than making work more difficult.

AI-based HRTech startup Skillate has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Incubate Fund India, and Industry expert and Director of Zyoin, Anuj Agrawal, says co-founder Anand Baranwal. The newly raised funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand its team and bolster marketing initiatives to ramp up its customer base in India and abroad. Founded by IIT Guwahati Alumni, Bipul Vaibhav and Kumar Sambhav and ex-Tracxn member Anand Kumar in 2016, Skillate aims to empower the recruiters to hire the best talent using artificial intelligence and machine learning. With a team of seven, Skillate is currently incubated in SAP Startup Studio and is based out of its premises in Bengaluru. The HRTech startup is also working with few large enterprises in BFSI, FMCG and manufacturing sectors.

What happens when you mix killer robots and Communists? It sounds like the punch line to a Cold War joke, but there are reasons to wonder whether China's Communist government, which likes to make decisions for its citizens, can work with autonomous armed robots that make their own decisions. Ditto for the People's Liberation Army and its Soviet-style centralized command and control system. "In a military context, questions of trust will be paramount," China expert Elsa Kania told The National Interest. "Will the PLA be more or less inclined to trust machine intelligence, relative to human intelligence? Will a military organization that often seems unwilling to grant autonomy to its officers and enlisted personnel be willing to embrace the autonomy of AI systems?"

PGA golfers such as four-time major champion Rory McIlroy embrace the tens of thousands of data points -- roughly 32,000 per event -- that the tour's ShotLink System has offered since 2001. "I made the decision at the end of last year to really look at my stats," McIlroy said after last week's Travelers Championship. "I think they've become very important, and I think the strokes-gained stats, whether it's tee to green or putting or around the green or whatever, I think that's been one of the biggest changes for good that we've seen in golf, because it really just lets you see how your game stacks up against everyone else." For the first time Thursday at the Quicken Loans National at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm, three fixed, high-resolution cameras, part of the tour's upgraded ShotLink ball-tracking system, replaced the human-operated laser on every green of every hole, capturing the ball in motion as opposed to only the ball at rest. "It's the next phase of how we get the data without having to have human interaction on everything that happens," said Matt Troka, senior vice president of product and partner management of CDW, a technology partner of the PGA Tour.

PTC (NASDAQ:PTC), a IoT, Industry 4.0 and control software provider to government and industry, has partnered with Rockwell Automation (NYSE:ROK), the world's largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information, "to accelerate growth for both companies and enable them to be the partner of choice for customers around the world who want to transform their physical operations with digital technology." Rockwell is making a $1 billion equity investment in PTC as part of the deal in which the two agreed to align their respective smart factory technologies and industrial automation platforms. JD (JingDong) (NASDAQ:JD), the Chinese equivalent to Amazon and China's 2nd largest e-commerce provider, raised $500 million from Google/Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG). Like Amazon, JD is heavy in the automated logistics business and now, with this investment, JD plans to open restaurants staffed by robots starting this August and ramping up to 1,000 by 2020. JD is also involved in last mile deliveries and just launched 20 mobile robot carts in the Beijing area (each robot can deliver up to 30 different parcels).

NEW DELHI: Indian banks, including state-owned SBI and Bank of Baroda, have started deploying artificial intelligence (AI) in a big way to improve efficiency, detect human behaviour and reduce operational costs. State Bank of India, the India's largest lender, has SBI Intelligent Assistant (SIA) -- a smart chat assistant, evolved from the "cutting edge technology of artificial intelligence, that efficiently resolves queries of NRI customers, similar to that of a bank representative. "It provides instant solutions on everyday banking queries in the chat box on the SBI portal," the state-run lender said. The bank is also in the process of instituting an'Innovation Centre' that will explore how emerging technologies such as AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can help in making internal banking processes more efficient. Another state lender Bank of Baroda has evolved an innovative concept by setting up of hi-tech digital branch equipped with advanced gadgets like artificial intelligence robot named Baroda Brainy and Digital Lab with free Wi-Fi services. Private sector banks too are using the advance innovative technology for improving workforce productivity and enhancing the customer experience. "The Indian banking industry is on a rapid digital journey and has been adopting technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning which will reshape the future.

Gurugram-based HRtech startup Leena AI has become a part of summer class 2018 of US-based investor Y Combinator and has confirmed an investment from the company. Talking to Inc42, Adit Jain, co-founder told that while building bots, the team learned through its experience with ChatterOn that it's better to concentrate on a single subject because the underlying machine learning model gets better the more it's used. Following this understanding, the team launched Leena AI in August 2017 as a provider of virtual assistants for the workplace to focus on human resources chatbot. As an enterprise virtual agent, currently focusing on HR, Leena AI draws all functionality from ChatterOn, which increases the speed of execution by multi-fold. "To deliver value, you can't do many things and must focus on a few. We felt that the biggest pain in the internal shared services space was in HR because of highly fragmented back-end application landscape and decided to go deeper in the HR vertical," Anit explained.

The robotics industry is estimated to hit $135.4 billion in 2019 as per IDC. There was a time when a robotics revolution was considered mere science-fiction. The rise of robotics has been phenomenal in most disciplines. From building robotic arms for medical procedures to running autonomous self-driving vehicles, robotics is empowering all technological sectors. In October 2017, Sophia, a social human-like robot was offered citizenship of Saudi Arabia – the first robot to achieve this status.

I was recently asked to conduct a 2-hour workshop for the State of California Senior Legislators on the topic of "Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Privacy." Honored by the privilege of offering my perspective on these critical topics, I shared with my home-state legislators how significant opportunities await the state. I reviewed the once-in-a-generation opportunities awaiting the great State of California ("the State"), where decision makers could vastly improve their constituents' quality of life, while creating new sources of value and economic growth. We have historical experiences and references to revisit in discerning what the government can do to nurture our "Analytics Revolution." Notably, the Industrial Revolution, holds many lessons regarding the consequences of late and/or confusing government involvement and guidance (see Figure 1).