As the internet continues its migration to handheld devices, user experience will increasingly play a central role in enterprise strategy. As we look at digital trends in the year ahead, it is clear that user experience will play a more prominent and central role in defining digital as a business objective. Online interactions are being designed to deliver a simpler, more intuitive and delightful experience for the user. Given the rapid growth advancement of technologies and techniques available to interact with society, user experience must be implemented strategically to ensure the information is presented in the best possible manner regardless of the medium. Below are some of the biggest, and impactful rising trends in user experience that we can expect to see in 2017. Chatbots, digital assistants and voice-controlled applications are bringing a new form of communication and messaging, helping to move to a new conversational form of interaction and improving overall usability.

This article was posted by Saurav Kaushik. Saurav is a Data Science enthusiast, currently in the final year of his graduation at MAIT, New Delhi. He loves to use machine learning and analytics to solve complex data problems. Have you come across a situation when a Chief Marketing Officer of a company tells you – "Help me understand our customers better so that we can market our products to them in a better manner!" I did and the analyst in me was completely clueless what to do!

With outstanding performance recently attained, both market and macroeconomic factors will combine to produce consolidation of share price around or above recent highs for Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA). It is likely that the February 2017 high of $120.92 will be exceeded in coming months. Thereafter, a marked downturn is expected, the severity and duration of which will largely, but not wholly, be determined by macroeconomic factors. This scenario, as it unfolds, paves the way for a timed profitable short of the stock, which is not yet priced in. Stock price is close to its exceptional 18-month highs, having climbed by 224% during the last financial year.

In this special guest feature, Sarah Lahav of SysAid Technologies takes a look at machine learning and how it provides a vehicle for "fireproofing" in IT service management – anticipating and preventing problems rather than waiting for them. As the company's first employee, Sarah has remained the vital link between SysAid Technologies and its customers since 2003. She is the current CEO and former VP of Customer Relations at SysAid – two positions that have fueled her passion in customer service. In IT service management, "firefighting" has become a metaphor for much of the work. Someone or something starts a digital fire, and we put it out.

Stock predictions made by machine learning are being deployed by a select group of hedge funds that are betting that the technology used to make facial recognition systems can also beat human investors in the market. Computers have been used in the stock market for decades to outrun human traders because of their ability to make thousands of trades a second. More recently, algorithmic trading has programmed computers to buy or sell stocks the instant certain criteria is met, such as when a stock suddenly becomes cheaper in one market than in another -- a trade known as arbitrage. Machine learning, an offshoot of studies into artificial intelligence, takes the stock trading process a giant step forward. Pouring over millions of data points from newspapers to TV shows, these AI programs actually learn and improve their stock predictions without human interaction.

If the tumultuous events of the past year have left you fearing that a global apocalypse is imminent, then this video will do little to ease your concerns. For scientists, in their infinite wisdom, appear to have decided now would be a good time to unleash the sentinels from the Matrix into the real world. It's been created by researchers at the Suzumori Endo Lab at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Meet the real life'Robocop' which can help identify criminals, find fires and give directions to the loo Why? To prove that insect-like quadruped robots can move just as fast as their mammalian robotic counterparts.

In this excerpt from a #TalkingTech Live broadcast, the panelists weigh in on Uber's bad week, and what's next in ride hailing. LOS ANGELES -- This week's tech news was dominated by charges of sexual harassment and discrimination at ride-hailing service Uber, a potential push from Google to bring ride-sharing to the mass market and a move from Facebook to bring more ads to the social network. But Uber owned the most headlines, which started on Sunday with a blog from a former female engineer who described how the company's human resources department repeatedly deflected her and other women's reports of sexual harassment from their colleagues, even telling her that she could expect a negative performance review if she stayed on her alleged harasser's team. The blog post was seen as a wake-up call for Silicon Valley, where six out of 10 women say they've experienced unwanted sexual advances, according to a survey released last year. Still, many pointed out that the male-dominated tech industry has had several such "wake-up calls" -- to little avail.

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Scientific American's sister publication, as "Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur." "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another." The digital revolution is in full swing. How will it change our world? The amount of data we produce doubles every year. In other words: in 2016 we produced as much data as in the entire history of humankind through 2015. Every minute we produce hundreds of thousands of Google searches and Facebook posts. These contain information that reveals how we think and feel. Soon, the things around us, possibly even our clothing, also will be connected with the Internet. It is estimated that in 10 years' time there will be 150 billion networked measuring sensors, 20 times more than people on Earth. Then, the amount of data will double every 12 hours. Many companies are already trying to turn this Big Data into Big Money. Everything will become intelligent; soon we will not only have smart phones, but also smart homes, smart factories and smart cities. Should we also expect these developments to result in smart nations and a smarter planet? The field of artificial intelligence is, indeed, making breathtaking advances. In particular, it is contributing to the automation of data analysis. Artificial intelligence is no longer programmed line by line, but is now capable of learning, thereby continuously developing itself. Recently, Google's DeepMind algorithm taught itself how to win 49 Atari games. Algorithms can now recognize handwritten language and patterns almost as well as humans and even complete some tasks better than them. They are able to describe the contents of photos and videos. Today 70% of all financial transactions are performed by algorithms. News content is, in part, automatically generated. This all has radical economic consequences: in the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today's jobs will be threatened by algorithms. It can be expected that supercomputers will soon surpass human capabilities in almost all areas--somewhere between 2020 and 2060.

In the hallowed hallways of Morgan Stanley's office in Canary Wharf, men in crisp tailored suits pass each other, briskly chatting away on their smartphones, while attractive young women in black pencil skirts and long legs scamper through the halls with take-away salads from Chop'd, dressing on the side. Walking these very halls has been the aspiration of many, the full-time MBA candidate who was looking for a career change and "wanted to get into investment banking". Just what is investment banking, you might ask? Well, the money-making part of the operation is called "the front office". Let's just say that if you meet a 9 at All Bar One in Canary Wharf and she asks you if you're in a front office role, just say yes.

Industry-leading toy company Mattel (NASDAQ:MAT) had a rough 2016. Its problems, however, started much earlier. Mattel's iconic Barbie has fallen out of fashion, and in September of 2014, the company also lost the licensing for the lucrative Walt Disney Princess line to rival Hasbro after being the sole beneficiary for nearly 20 years. After that stumble, Mattel's performance has suffered -- the shoes left by the Disney darlings have simply been too big for Barbie to fill. As a result, investors have been left wondering if Mattel's best days are behind it.