More than a third of U.S. jobs could be at "high risk" of automation by the early 2030s, a percentage that's greater than in Britain, Germany and Japan, according to a report released Friday. The analysis by accounting and consulting firm PwC focused primarily on the economic outlook in Britain, but it included a section on automation in Britain and elsewhere. In the U.S., 38% of jobs could be at risk of automation, compared with 30% in Britain, 35% in Germany and 21% in Japan. The report emphasizes that these estimates are based on the anticipated capabilities of robotics and artificial intelligence by the early 2030s, and that the pace and direction of technological progress are "uncertain." The key issue is not that the U.S. has more jobs in sectors that are universally ripe for automation, the report says; rather, it's that more U.S. jobs in certain sectors are potentially vulnerable than, say, British jobs in the same sectors.

DataRobot has raised $54 million in the first close of a Series C round led by New Enterprise Associates. The latest round brings the total amount raised by the Boston, Massachusetts-based company to $111 million, with "significant" additional funding expected in the second close of the round. Data scientists Jeremy Achin and Thomas DeGodoy founded DataRobot in 2012 on the belief that automated machine learning will not only increase productivity for data scientists, but will also open up the world of data science to non-data scientists. The DataRobot platform features hundreds of open-source machine learning algorithms, allowing users to quickly build predictive models. Chris Devaney, COO at DataRobot, told ZDNet that a data scientist would typically look at a set of data, prepare that data, and then train a predictive model -- a process that can take weeks or even months.

The Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution is to open in San Francisco on Friday. SAN FRANCISCO -- The World Economic Forum opens the doors Friday to a new outpost focusing on ways in which science and technology can positively impact society. The Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution aims to reshape industries, challenge regulatory frameworks and redefine "what it means to be a human," Murat Sönmez, a member of the World Economic Forum Managing Board and head of the new center, said in a statement. "We need to urgently develop policy norms and frameworks and apply these innovations to ensure their benefits affect us all," said Sonmez, pointing to jobs of the future, artificial intelligence and ethics, national digital policies, cross border data flows, civil drones, and autonomous vehicles and the environment. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Gov. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) were planning to open the center at San Francisco's Presidio and play host to more than 120 dignitaries, including Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf of Oakland, University of California at Berkeley President Nicholas Dirks, start-up founders, venture capitalists, and participants from Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Turkey and the UK.

Over the past few weeks I casually asked several climate-informed colleagues what questions, claims, or myths do they hear most often from friends, family, or random people. I call these "zombie" theories because they have often been refuted but live on in social media, other outlets, and so forth. Here are the top 20 that emerged. In this image provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA, shows how low sea ice levels were in the Arctic this winter, alarming climate scientists. During the winter, Arctic sea ice grew to 5.57 million square miles (14.42 million square kilometers) at its peak, but that's the smallest amount of winter sea ice in 38 years of record keeping, beating the record set in 2015 and tied last year.

British workers could face difficult competition in the workplace with the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), according to a new report published Friday from the accounting professional service PwC. The study revealed robotics and AI could affect nearly 30 percent of U.K. jobs by the 2030s, compared to 38 percent in the U.S., 35 percent in Germany and 21 percent in Japan. Jobs most at risk to be replaced by automation in the study included transportation, manufacturing and wholesale and retail, the Independent reported. Social workers, teachers and medical employees were less at risk. The study also estimated that an increase in automation would affect men more than women, especially men with a lower level of education, who PwC said the government should help by training those lesser-skilled workers in the next 10 to 20 years.

In the last few years, artificial intelligence has quickly broken beyond the realm of science fiction. In fact, IBM -- the creator of the AI powerhouse Watson -- predicts that the AI market will catapult to $2 trillion in the next decade. Nearly every industry on the planet stands to benefit from AI's increased use. But make no mistake, few will see a larger boost than the business of corporate accounting. Senior analyst Jonathan Rodriguez explains why below.

Tech giants are in a race to see who can build the most powerful voice-activated assistant, but there's a side effect that we haven't considered: Kids who grow up asking Amazon's Alexa questions or summoning Siri might lose some social skills. What if artificial intelligence changes the way we talk? Experts in robotics, machine learning, and AI descended on Austin for South by Southwest this week, and the biggest questions were lifted straight from the film Her. Is it changing the way we interact with each other? Will kids think they can order around their friends the same way they tell Alexa to tell them a joke?

NVIDIA's speedy GPUs and Machine Learning software have unquestionably become the gold standard for building Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications. And today, NVIDIA added TenCent to their list of cloud service providers that offer access to NVIDIA hardware in their clouds for AI and other compute intensive applications. This marks a significant milestone in the global accessibility of the hardware needed to build AI applications, from drones to medical devices to automated factories and robots. TenCent (whose Chinese name roughly translates to "Soaring Information") is one of China's largest Internet companies and the world's largest gaming platform, having recently announced 2016 revenues that grew by 48% to $21.9B. Many companies, perhaps most, opt to access GPUs in the cloud instead of buying and deploying the hardware directly.

With the resignation of Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng, the ability of the country's tech firms to retain top minds is in question

More than 10 million workers in the UK are at high risk of losing their jobs to robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems over the next 15 years, according to a new report released today. However, new AI-related technologies will also boost productivity and generate additional jobs elsewhere in the economy, the report found. The study by accountancy firm PwC estimates that the UK has a lower proportion of existing jobs at potential high risk of automation than the US (38 percent) and Germany (35 percent), but more than Japan (21 percent). The analysis found that the likely impact of automation varies significantly across industry sectors. The highest proportion of jobs facing potential high risks of automation among the larger sectors include transportation and storage (56 percent), manufacturing (46 percent) and wholesale and retail trade (44 percent).