When Ray Kurzweil met with Google CEO Larry Page last July, he wasn't looking for a job. A respected inventor who's become a machine-intelligence futurist, Kurzweil wanted to discuss his upcoming book How to Create a Mind. He told Page, who had read an early draft, that he wanted to start a company to develop his ideas about how to build a truly intelligent computer: one that could understand language and then make inferences and decisions on its own. It quickly became obvious that such an effort would require nothing less than Google-scale data and computing power. "I could try to give you some access to it," Page told Kurzweil.

Trains with a guard become driver-only trains, which then become driverless trains. That's the fear underlying Aslef's dispute with Southern railways and accounts for the rearguard action to prevent further job losses across the rail industry. There is also scorn for Southern's management, which has attacked drivers' basic terms and conditions, and there is anger at transport secretary Chris Grayling's anti-union stance. But, at its heart, the dispute is over the status and even the very existence of the job of train driver, which has been around for nigh on 200 years. Like most people, train drivers will have read the screaming headlines warning of a robot revolution that spells the end for millions of jobs.

A number of the notable science stories of the past year are, quite literally, out of this world. For me, the story of the year has to be the August discovery of an Earth-like planet orbiting the closest star to our own. The star, Proxima Centauri, is just 4.2 light-years from Earth. The planet circling that star has been named Proxima Centauri b. Proxima Centauri b was discovered by astronomers working on a project called Pale Red Dot, who reported that the planet lies in the star's habitable zone, meaning that it could possess water and, maybe, life.

The new Digital Games and Family Life infographic from the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop puts "Mario" in big navy blue letters. It seems Nintendo's classic is the video game franchise that parents are most likely to enjoy playing with their kids. My children (two boys, 9- and 11-years-old) and I have been enjoying the new NES Classic Edition ever since Nintendo sent us a review unit in early November. The retro all-in-one mini-console delivers an intense shot of nostalgic bliss. The familiar feel of the rectangular controller.

It may take several years or even decades, but hackers won't necessarily always be human. Artificial intelligence -- a technology that also promises to revolutionize cybersecurity -- could one day become the go-to hacking tool. Organizers of the Cyber Grand Challenge, a contest sponsored by the U.S. defense agency DARPA, gave a glimpse of the power of AI during their August event. Seven supercomputers battled each other to show that machines can indeed find and patch software vulnerabilities. Theoretically, the technology can be used to perfect any coding, ridding it of exploitable flaws.

Christmas is right around the corner, but Santa's not the only one dropping from the sky with presents this holiday season. Amazon's Prime Air officially began service this week, when a drone made the service's first delivery in Cambridge, England. So the future of shipping has arrived ... for a handful of people in the English countryside. Many, many more Amazonians will be getting served, however, by Prime Video, now that the company has spun it out into a standalone service. At an introductory rate that's a third the cost of Netflix, the move creates serious competition for viewing dollars around the world -- though it only brings Amazon's original programming.

They also said that the government is in a better position than technology companies to invest in AI applications aimed at broad societal problems. They agreed that AI is in a crucial developmental moment, and that government has a unique opportunity to shape its future. That was the message from prominent AI technologists and researchers at a Senate committee hearing last week. The White House made a similar argument in a "National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan," which it published in October. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who convened the hearing, expressed concern that the United States not cede its leadership in developing AI to China or any other foreign government.

It wasn't that long ago when the first smartphone came out, and we saw the pace of connected devices and associated mobile applications accelerate beyond what anyone could have imagined. Shortly after that, something incredible happened, we reached the point where there were more connected devices than people on the planet. Since then, we've used this to measure the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT). Research predicts there will be as many as 50 to 100, and possibly even 200 billion connected devices by 2020. Some businesses are already set up for IoT, like operators of large networks of devices such as self-service kiosks and vending machines.

Internet platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk let companies break jobs into smaller tasks and offer them to people across the globe. But, do they democratize work or exploit the disempowered? Each morning when she wakes up, Kristy Milland powers up her home computer in Toronto, logs into Amazon Mechanical Turk, and waits for her computer to ding. Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), which has been around for over a decade, is an online platform where people can perform small tasks for pay. Milland is looking for job postings, or "HITs"--and the alerts tell her when a listing matches her criteria. "The alerts go off once a minute," Milland said. "I break from what I'm doing to see if it's a good HIT before I accept the job." Sometimes, a group of HITs is posted. "If a batch comes up and it's lunchtime, or I have a doctor's appointment, or my dog needs to go out," said Milland, "I drop everything and do it. If this is how you feed your children, you don't leave." Milland is one of more than 500,000 "Turkers"--contract workers who perform small tasks on Amazon's digital platform, which they refer to as "mTurk." The number of active workers, who live across the globe, is estimated to run between 15,000 and 20,000 per month, according to Panos Ipeirotis, a computer scientist and professor at New York University's business school.

"There are a lot of security issues with connected vehicles right now. We provide the connected vehicle infrastructure for both Hyundai and OnStar," explained David Miller, Chief Security Officer at Covisint, in this SYS-CON.tv Featured on-site presentation and ongoing on-demand webcast exposure to a captive audience of industry decision-makers Showcase exhibition during our new extended dedicated expo hours Breakout Session Priority scheduling for Sponsors that have been guaranteed a 35 minute technical session Online targeted advertising in SYS-CON's i-Technology Publications Capitalize on our Comprehensive Marketing efforts leading up to the show with print mailings, e-newsletters and extensive online media coverage Unprecedented Marketing Coverage: Editorial Coverage on ITweetup to over 100,000 plus followers, press releases sent on major wire services to over 500 industry analysts Online targeted advertising in SYS-CON's i-Technology Publications All major researchers estimate there will be tens of billions devices - computers, smartphones, tablets, and sensors - connected to the Internet by 2020. This number will continue to grow at a rapid pace for the next several decades. With major technology companies and startups seriously embracing Cloud strategies, now is the perfect time to attend @CloudExpo @ThingsExpo, June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY and October 31 - November 2, 2017, Santa Clara Convention Center, CA.