President Trump's effort to keep manufacturers in the U.S. may encourage increased automation -- potentially at the expense of human workers. However, the robots are likely to be made in China unless the U.S. acts soon. The Chinese government is investing billions of dollars to take the global lead in robotics and AI. In its most recent five-year plan, the national government aimed to boost annual production of industrial robots to 100,000 by 2020 -- and is poised to exceed that target. China has also surpassed the U.S. in the number of scientific papers produced on AI and is deploying machine learning and robotics across industries as well as the military.

Thirty-eight percent of jobs in the U.S. are at high risk of being replaced by robots and artificial intelligence over the next 15 years, according to a new report by PwC. Meanwhile, only 30% of jobs in the U.K. are similarly endangered. The same level of risk applies to only 21% of positions in Japan. The U.S. and U.K. labor markets are both dominated by services jobs, and roughly the same share of workers are employed in key sectors including finance, transportation, education, manufacturing and food services. But PwC found major differences in the nature of the work done within these sectors that explains why more U.S. jobs are at risk.

Hedge funds have been trying to teach computers to think like traders for years. Now, after many false dawns, an artificial intelligence technology called deep learning that loosely mimics the neurons in our brains is holding out promise for firms. WorldQuant is using it for small-scale trading, said a person with knowledge of the firm. Man AHL may soon begin betting with it too. Winton and Two Sigma are also getting into the brain game.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd has criticised WhatsApp's use of encryption to protects its users' communications, in the wake of the Westminster terror attack. It has emerged that the attacker, Khalid Masood, sent a WhatsApp message moments before launching his assault, and Ms Rudd accused the Facebook-owned app of providing terrorists with a place to "hide". In the government's line of fire is end-to-end encryption, a security technique designed to keep users' data private, which Ms Rudd described as "completely unacceptable" while speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show. WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption to all of its messages in April 2016, enabling it by default on all conversations. "From now on when you and your contacts use the latest version of the app, every call you make, and every message, photo, video, file, and voice message you send, is end-to-end encrypted by default, including group chats," it said at the time.

Stephen Hawking has managed to air his concerns about Donald Trump, Brexit and the backlash against experts to an audience of hundreds in Hong Kong without travelling 6,000 miles to the country. The world-famous physicist appeared before crowds who cheered and took photos via hologram. The cosmologist and professor, who is 75, is the latest in a string of politicians and entertainers to use the technology which is making significant incursions into industries. Hawking made the speech and answered questions in the guise of a "HumaGram", a three-dimensional image which can only be viewed by those in special glasses. The Cambridge professor also spoke via a hologram at the Sydney Opera House in 2015.

As we approach a fourth transformation (according to Robert Scoble and Shel Israel it's How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything), we face some challenges and questions. I cannot see into the future so its pointless prognosticating. Others far more knowledgable have done and at least concluded that No, the Experts Don't Think Superintelligent AI is a Threat to Humanity. Nevertheless it's safe to say that software is already eating the world and robots and AI are going to play a massive role. I am writing my next trend report on a related subject (post on that here) but am deeply embedded in the here and now.

THE world reeled when Lee Sedol – one of the great modern players of the ancient board game Go – was beaten by Google's DeepMind artificial intelligence (AI) program, AlphaGo. The AI managed to outmaneuver Lee at his own game, one which rewards players' strategic judgment and creative analyses. To achieve this, DeepMind provided AlphaGo with the basic framework of the game, recordings of previous games and made it play itself continuously. The software mimics the processes of human learning – and as it went along, AlphaGo learned to be a better player over time. The day of the face-off, AlphaGo beat Lee four games to one and was awarded the highest Go game-master ranking.

Approximately 32 percent of existing UK jobs in financial services and insurance could be automated by robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) over the next 15 years, according to a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers. And other industries are even more at risk. For example, 56 percent of existing transportation and storage jobs could be at risk from automation by 2030, while 46 percent of current manufacturing jobs could be automated, and 44 percent of wholesale and retail jobs are headed for automation, PwC revealed in its latest UK Economic Outlook report. Conversely, the threat of automation is lower in other sectors such as education (9 percent) and health and social work (17 percent), PwC said. Overall, up to 30 percent of existing UK jobs could be automated by 2030, which is a lower proportion than those at risk in the US (38 percent) and Germany (35 percent), but more than Japan (21 percent), the study added.

Uber has suspended its self-driving car operations after one of its vehicles was involved in a crash in Arizona. The accident left one of the company's driverless Volvos on its side, but fortunately led to no serious injuries. A picture of the crash scene shows two other damaged cars sitting next to the Volvo, one of which has smashed windows and particularly bad dent marks, suggesting the accident happened at some speed. The I.F.O. is fuelled by eight electric engines, which is able to push the flying object to an estimated top speed of about 120mph. 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.

A mysterious self-driving car company has been quietly expanding in recent years in the world's largest country. Now, Moscow-based Cognitive Technologies has hired a slew of new recruits and is ready to move to the U.S. in the coming months. "The big R&D center will stay in Russia, but the main engineers and business guys will be sent to U.S. soil to set up a proper office," Roman Tarasov, the company's VP for global business, tells Inverse. Cognitive Technologies was founded in 1993 by the guys who created Kaissa, the world's first computer chess champion. For decades it worked on image and voice recognition applications, selling products to Intel, Yandex, and others.