This post highlights some of the possible economic implications of the so-called "Fourth Industrial Revolution" -- whereby the use of new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to transform entire industries and sectors. Some economists have argued that, like past technical change, this will not create large-scale unemployment, as labour gets reallocated. However, many technologists are less optimistic about the employment implications of AI. In this blog post we argue that the potential for simultaneous and rapid disruption, coupled with the breadth of human functions that AI might replicate, may have profound implications for labour markets. We conclude that economists should seriously consider the possibility that millions of people may be at risk of unemployment, should these technologies be widely adopted.

NEW DELHI: Norway's new powerhouse for artificial intelligence (AI) opens in Trondheim today. The new centre, Telenor-NTNU AI-Lab, will strengthen national competitiveness and add valuable, future-proof competencies to the Norwegian society. "Artificial intelligence is perhaps the single most important technology of our century. In the future, AI will drive your car, revolutionize cancer treatment and make public services more efficient. With this opening we want to accelerate the education, research and competency building which will be crucial for Norway's ability to compete in the digital future," says Sigve Brekke, President & CEO of Telenor Group.

The struggle between economies based on government planning and the unhindered free market was supposed to have been settled years ago when the Soviet Union crumbled. Now it appears the battle between planning and the invisible hand may be back on and it's still not absolutely clear which side will win. This week China announced a new set of government plans to boost its economy. By contrast, the U.S. moved toward a new round of deregulation with the same intent. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the triumph of free market, laissez-faire capitalism seemed complete. Although the Soviet Communist system had demonstrated transformational successes, like catching up to the West in heavy industry, nuclear science and space technology, the top-down command economy proved unsustainable.

Apple has responded to WikiLeaks' explosive'Vault 7' document release, and claims to have already addressed the majority of the iPhone vulnerabilities allegedly exploited by CIA spies. According to files released by the whistle-blowing group this week, the CIA used special software and hacking tools to remotely control and monitor phone activity, both on Android and iOS. "These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the'smart' phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied," wrote WikiLeaks in a release. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar. Japan's On-Art Corp's CEO Kazuya Kanemaru poses with his company's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' and other robots during a demonstration in Tokyo, Japan Japan's On-Art Corp's eight metre tall dinosaur-shaped mechanical suit robot'TRX03' performs during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan Singulato Motors co-founder and CEO Shen Haiyin poses in his company's concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China A picture shows Singulato Motors' concept car Tigercar P0 at a workshop in Beijing, China Connected company president Shigeki Tomoyama addresses a press briefing as he elaborates on Toyota's "connected strategy" in Tokyo.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, may bring to mind Ex Machina, The Matrix and the Terminator movies. But in reality, AI and robotics are reshaping our lives, prompting ethical, legal and societal debates. Today AI is seen all around us, from Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa and self-driving cars powered by Google, Lyft and Ford. Here are 7 powerful AI trends we can expect in 2017. Apple Home on iPhone and Google Home, an extension of Amazon Echo, automated home devices resulting in a connected ecosystem.

Airbnb wants to mold its hosts into a powerful organizing force, akin to a union, to advocate on its behalf with local governments around the world and to serve as an ideological rebuke to the advances of AI at other tech firms. As part of that effort to increase engagement with hosts, CEO Brian Chesky announced today that he is embarking on a world tour, forming a host advisory board that will provide feedback to the company and sit in on one of its four annual board meetings, and do monthly check-ins with Airbnb users via Facebook Live. "I want to be held accountable to the community," Chesky, who is modifying his title to CEO and head of community, told a group of hosts gathered at Airbnb HQ. "It's incredibly important because when we sit in a room trying to make decisions, we want to make sure we're doing it for the community, not to the community." Chesky will visit London, New York, Cape Town, Delhi, and Beijing to meet with hosts over the next couple of weeks, and hinted that more changes are coming to improve customer service and host experience. Putting hosts front and center is part of Airbnb's business strategy -- after all, the company relies on people to list their homes for rent -- but it also hints at Airbnb's transition into political advocacy.

Nvidia unveiled its Jetson TX2 platform to power drones with good artificial intelligence. The platform includes the Jetson TX2 "embedded AI supercomputer," a chip and its surruonding hardware that can power 4K video drones that consume only about 7.5 watts of power. Drones with the TX2 solution can operate two cameras simultaneously. The Jetson 3.0 platform was designed for AI "at the edge" of the network, rather than in the cloud, or Internet-connected data center. Drones with cameras can capture a huge amount of data. This means Jetson has to handle a lot of the processing of data at the edge, in the device itself, rather than transferring all of that data to the cloud, said Deepu Talla, vice president and general manager of Nvidia's Tegra business unit, at a press event in San Francisco.

The Raspberry Pi may be the most widely known board computer being sold, but Nvidia's Jetson TX2 is one of the fastest. The Jetson TX2, unveiled Tuesday, is a full Linux computer on a tiny board the size of a Raspberry Pi. It's designed to help make robots, drones and other devices that rely on computer vision applications. The board's main attraction is a GPU based on Nvidia's latest Pascal architecture, which is also in the company's fastest GPUs, like the Tesla P100. The Pascal GPU brings computer vision to robots and drones, allowing them to recognize objects and navigate around obstacles.

Google announced Friday that it has achieved state-of-the-art results in using artificial intelligence to identify breast cancer. The findings are a reminder of the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, and its potential to improve global health. Google used a flavor of artificial intelligence called deep learning to analyze thousands of slides of cancer cells provided by a Dutch university. Deep learning is where computers are taught to recognize patterns in huge data sets. With 230,000 new cases of breast cancer every year in the United States, Google (GOOGL, Tech30) hopes its technology will help pathologists better treat patients.

NVIDIA just announced the Jetson TX2 embedded AI supercomputer, based on the latest NVIDIA Pascal microarchitecture. It promises to offer twice the performance of the previous-generation Jetson TX1, in the same package. In this tech report, we will share with you the full details of the new Pascal-based NVIDIA Jetson TX2! Artificial intelligence is the new frontier in GPU compute technology. Whether they are used to power training or inference engines, AI research has benefited greatly from the massive amounts of compute power in modern GPUs. The market is led by NVIDIA with their Tesla accelerators that run on their proprietary CUDA platform.