Steve Cousins is founder and CEO of Savioke, which develops and deploys autonomous robots that work in human environments to improve people's lives. Steve was previously president and CEO of robotics incubator Willow Garage. When it comes to technology's impact on the economy, there continues to be concern that robots and other advances will lead to unemployment. But what does history really tell us about the impact of new technologies on jobs and the economy? And more importantly, what happens to America's ability to compete in a global economy if we reject automation and stifle technological innovation? As a computer scientist, researcher and now CEO of a fast-growing robotics company, I've spent my career building technologies to improve people's lives and help companies grow.

Emotional intelligence is a hard thing to achieve, even in humans. But it's especially difficult in robots, and maybe even more so in chatbots, whose available tools for picking up on emotional cues are quite limited. Emotibot is a Chinese startup focused on making sure personal assistants, chatbots and virtual customer service agents can accurately understand the emotional state of people they're dealing with. Having someone respect your emotions while dealing with any kind of customer service interaction, you might know from personal experience, can make a huge difference in quality of service. Bots right now are pretty emotionally stunted; some can crack jokes, pulling from a pre-programmed pool of one-liners, but few, if any, can detect that you might not be in the best of moods for hearing a wisecrack and instead opting for a more sympathetic response.

In the past few years, the market for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies has gained strong momentum. What's interesting, though, is that the much of the innovation in this space is driven by disruptors, not legacy vendors. These'upstarts' are companies born in the internet age or companies that have transitioned into the AI market, and are building out useful AI products that will likely broaden in their impact over time. Much like how Amazon Web Services (AWS) became the infrastructure provider of choice for many companies with the rise of the public cloud, many of these upstarts will see their products widen in application. While many of these companies might have originally created their product for a specific use case, it's possible that they will grow into platforms on which the company may build an additional revenue stream.

In examining the history of famous robots, you'd be forgiven for overlooking a 1950s children's toy named Robert. Robert the Robot, who was a product of the once-mighty Ideal Toy Company, didn't do much, at least compared to the standards set by science fiction at the time. Unlike the helpful humanoids of Isaac Asimov's I, Robot, Robert was just a 14-inch-tall hunk of plastic that could utter a few phrases, wheel around with a tethered remote control, and grip objects in his mechanical arms. Still, Robert deserves credit for being the first plastic toy robot made in the United States, and the first toy robot to become an American sensation. He was the subject of children's songs, enjoyed a Hollywood film cameo, and was quickly imitated by rival toy makers.

Mr. Sunil Patel is a Ph D Scholar at Gujarat Technological University, Gujarat, India. He received his Masters degree in Computer Engineering from Sardar Patel University, Gujarat. His research interest is in Computer Vision, Big Data Analysis and Distributed Computing.

Here are Academic/Research positions in Business Analytics, Data Mining, Data Science, Machine Learning posted on KDnuggets in November 2016. See an up-to-date and full list at www.kdnuggets.com/academic/ See also industry jobs in business analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science. Seeking applicants for this fellowship, sponsored by Amazon India and hosted by IISc. This is an 18-month postdoctoral fellowship targeted at outstanding researchers working on Foundations of data science, or Interface between theoretical and practical aspects of machine learning.

Driven by a declining population, a trend for developing robotic babies has emerged in Japan as a means of encouraging couples to become "parents". The approaches taken vary widely and are driven by different philosophical approaches that also beg a number of questions, not least whether these robo-tots will achieve the aim of their creators. To understand all of this it is worth exploring the reasons behind the need to promote population growth in Japan. The issue stems from the disproportionate number of older people. Predictions from the UN suggest that by 2050 there will be about double the number of people living in Japan in the 70-plus age range compared to those aged 15-30.

Since 2010, poachers in South Africa have killed more than 5,000 rhinos. In Asia, two rhino species--Javan and Sumatran--are critically endangered. According to the World Wildlife Foundation, poachers eager to reap their horns use helicopters and veterinary drugs to track and attack the animals. A mechanical engineer and a member of the family whose aerospace and transportation company builds trains, planes, and more, Bombardier's at his best when he ignores pesky things like budgets, timelines, and contemporary physics. Since 2013, he's run a blog cataloging more than 200 concepts, each a fantastic, farfetched new way for people to travel through land, air, water, and space.

Every White House leadership change causes speculation about what pre-existing initiatives the incoming administration will embrace or eliminate. I encourage President-elect Trump and his appointees to start their term ready to ensure that artificial intelligence (AI) gives our economy the competitive edge it needs. The Obama administration recently released its recommended approach for how the U.S. should promote AI research and development. It published balanced suggestions to guide public investment, encourage private-public collaboration, and account for national security, public safety, diversity, and ethics. It was a good start.

The rise of artificial intelligence, or AI, services -- one of the fastest-growing markets in tech --should be a boon for consumers and investors alike. In fact, researcher IDC predictsAI and cognitive systems technology sales are primed to simply explode in the years to come, rising from an estimated $8 billion this year to $47 billion in 2020. Though by no means the only names interested in this space, Amazon.com Here's how these particular artificial intelligence stocks have performed so far in 2016. Forget GE! Heres how to play the largest growth opportunity in history Forget GE! Heres how to play the largest growth opportunity in history Importantly, each of the tech giants named above has its own strategy to tap into the growth in the artificial intelligence market.