"Jia Jia" can hold a simple conversation and make specific facial expressions when asked, and her creator believes the eerily life-like robot heralds a future of cyborg labour in China. Billed as China's first human-like robot, Jia Jia was first trotted out last year by a team of engineers at the University of Science and Technology of China. Team leader Chen Xiaoping sounded like a proud father as he and his prototype appeared at an economic conference organised by banking giant UBS in Shanghai's futuristic financial centre. Chen predicted that perhaps within a decade artificially intelligent (AI) robots like Jia Jia will begin performing a range of menial tasks in Chinese restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals and households. "In five to 10 years there will be a lot of applications for robots in China," Chen said.

From forecourt to scrapyard, a new car in the UK lasts an average of 13.9 years, which is why if you got one today, it might very well be the last car you buy. Over the next decade, accelerating autonomous driving technology, including advances in artificial intelligence, sensors, cameras, radar and data analytics, are set to transform not only how we drive (or, indeed, are driven), but the notion of car ownership itself. "Autonomous driving has become the next major battlefield for the car industry," says Luca Mentuccia, automotive global MD at Accenture. The six levels of automation, defined under international standards by the Society of Automotive Engineers, range from "no automation" to "full automation", explains Sven Raeymaekers, of tech investment banker GP Bullhound. "If you look at the most recent predictions, the majority of car manufacturers estimate the first highly to fully automated vehicles [AVs] will hit the market between 2020-2025," he says.

Will skills be as vibrant as apps?

Topics include all aspects of improving IT delivery by eliminating waste through automated business models leveraging cloud technologies. WebRTC Summit is co-located with 20th International Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo. WebRTC is the future of browser-to-browser communications, and continues to make inroads into the traditional, difficult, plug-in web communications world. Topics include all aspects of enabling real-time communication over peer-to-peer connections (see suggested topics below). Help plant your flag in the fast-expanding business opportunity that is WebRTC: submit your speaking proposal today!

Editor's note: Originally posted as part of Grakn's Advent at Grakn Labs series. In this era, one can safely say that creating your own chat bot is no longer reserved only for crazy engineers but even non-technical people can create their own. Chat bots have received a lot of hype in 2016 with large news networks like CNET lauding it as the best thing since sliced bread. So did 2016 actually end up being the year of the bot? One of the pioneers of the rise of the bots is Chinese mobile messaging platform WeChat who has provided a bot platform since 2013.

Toyota's Concept-i has an artificial intelligence system that knows what you want (Photo: Nate Hassler/Toyota) Toyota introduced a futuristic concept car Wednesday with built-in artificial intelligence that not only can get drivers where they're going, but shows up as a little ball of light that can talk back to them and know their moods. The car, called Concept-i, made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and it comes with a little AI robot-like companion named "Yui." Yui (pronounced you-EE) greets the driver, showing up as a circle of light about the size of a ping pong ball when they open the door. Then, Yui shows up on the dashboard. Yui keep tabs on the driver.

As late as the mid 2000s, telephones were the primary tool for contact in case customers had any clarifications or grievances about the products or services they had procured. 'Customer care' for businesses was typically handled by employees of call centres, who could, by and large, be relied upon to respond to customers and sort out any issues they faced. With the limited communication options available then, companies were able to resolve issues impersonally and these services were mostly considered nothing more than an unavoidable expense. As a result, customers were often frustrated by rigid company policies that they weren't aware of, and add to that a lack of transparency and official procedures that took days or even weeks to resolve. Fast forward to today and the rise of e-commerce platforms, multiple communication channels, and the easy availability of smartphones has caused a gravitational shift in customer engagement methods.

'Statistics at Nestl e in Switzerland', Vevey, Switzerland -- November 25, 2016 2. 'Statistics has contributed much to data analysis. In the future it can, and in my view should, contribute much more. For such contributions to exist, and be valuable, it is not necessary that they be direct. They need not provide new techniques, or better tables for old techniques, in order to influence the practice of data analysis.' Are you drowning in uncertainty and starving for knowledge? Have you ever been Statooed?

In artnet's predictions for 2017, I wrote that it would be the year Artificial Intelligence would finally crack the problem of curating. That was meant as a joke--but it turns out that I was already behind the times. The whiz kids at Google's non-profit cultural arm, Google Cultural Institute, have spent the year trying to imagine just that. Head to the "Experiments" section of the Cultural Institute website and you will find a catalogue of how they have been attempting to apply "machine learning" to the question of organizing artworks. Perhaps the experiment that best showcases their particular brand of cultural gimcrackery is called "X Degrees of Separation."

MEPs have warned European countries must "seriously" consider introducing a general basic income to prepare for wide scale unemployment that could come as a result of robots taking over manual jobs. A draft report, tabled by a socialist MEP Mady Delvaux-Stehres, warns preparations must be made for what it describes as the "technological revolution" currently taking place, including provisions for the "possible effects on the labour market of robotics". The report, which passed by 17 votes to two and will be put in front of the entire European Parliament in February, urges member states to consider a general basic income in preparation for robots taking over people's jobs. It states: "In the light of the possible effects on the labour market of robotics and AI a general basic income should be seriously considered, and invites all Member States to do so." The resolution also suggests that a system of reporting on how robotics are affecting the economic results of companies should be established "for the purpose of taxation and social security contributions".