Artificial intelligence is no longer the sole domain of tech companies like Google, Facebook, IBM, and Amazon. Recognizing the potential of exponential technologies like AI and bots, creative agencies like Ogilvy and consulting firms like McKinsey and Accenture now proudly feature AI departments. The message to brands executives is clear: understand and leverage trends in automation and artificial intelligence, or perish. According to McKinsey's Michael Chiu, "As many as 45 percent of the activities individuals are paid to perform can be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies. In the United States, these activities represent about $2 trillion in annual wages."

China has now overtaken Japan for having more robots than anywhere else in the world. The Chinese government is concerned about an ageing population and the rising cost of human labour making Chinese products less competitive. It is giving over $100 Billion in subsidies for companies to replace more human workers with robots. It's hoped that the workers that will no longer work in the factories will move to the growing service sector, in part to help look after the ageing population. Countries In the west have already lost large numbers of manufacturing jobs to china but we shouldn't get too smug about our white-collar jobs in high tech, administration, clerical and production being safe from A.I. systems in the future.

The ocean is essential to the livelihoods and food security of billions of people around the globe. Shipping, tourism, transport, fisheries, oil and gas, renewable energy all depend on the sea. Two years ago, economists put a dollar value on what our oceans are worth and came up with $24 trillion. If it were a country, the sea would be the seventh-largest economy on the planet. "When you look at the blue economy, it has an asset value of $24 trillion and that's delivering something between $4-500bn each year in terms of the dividend to humanity," says Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute.

This is a guest post from Jomer B. Gregorio from CJG Digital Marketing The SEO landscape has shifted and developed continuously within the course of 2016. From artificial intelligence to Google Penguin's much-awaited final update, technology is doing more and more to change how SEO functions and operates. Just last year, Google had multiple updates for its features, especially with its algorithm continually receiving updates. Many businesses vanished due to updates on Panda, Penguin, and other algorithms. SERPs also saw several different updates, with some ups and downs throughout the year.

The brain is capable of massively parallel information processing while consuming only 1–100 fJ per synaptic event. Inspired by the efficiency of the brain, CMOS-based neural architectures and memristors are being developed for pattern recognition and machine learning. However, the volatility, design complexity and high supply voltages for CMOS architectures, and the stochastic and energy-costly switching of memristors complicate the path to achieve the interconnectivity, information density, and energy efficiency of the brain using either approach. Here we describe an electrochemical neuromorphic organic device (ENODe) operating with a fundamentally different mechanism from existing memristors. ENODe switches at low voltage and energy ( 10 pJ for 103 μm2 devices), displays 500 distinct, non-volatile conductance states within a 1 V range, and achieves high classification accuracy when implemented in neural network simulations. Plastic ENODes are also fabricated on flexible substrates enabling the integration of neuromorphic functionality in stretchable electronic systems. Mechanical flexibility makes ENODes compatible with three-dimensional architectures, opening a path towards extreme interconnectivity comparable to the human brain.

The fast development of robotics has raised public concern about robots replacing workers not only on factory floors but also in offices, and causing a global unemployment crisis. To an extent, people's concern seems justified. For example, Apple Inc's largest original equipment manufacturer Foxconn Technology Group has started using robots in large numbers, resulting in many workers losing their jobs. An equally fearsome threat is the wide application of artificial intelligence, because it can render many professionals, including financial analysts, jobless. Japan-based Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Company, for instance, laid off 30 percent of its employees in the claims settlement department in January, as those posts were to be taken over by machines with artificial intelligence.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, writer Douglas Adams describes a "small, yellow, leech-like creature" called the Babel fish which "feeds on brain-wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language". Botanists have not discovered anything like the Babel fish, but the science fiction of universal translation is rapidly becoming reality thanks to technological advances. Most exciting for Hitchhiker fans is the Pilot earbud, backed by $3.5 million in crowdfunding raised by a startup called Waverly Labs. The company's chief executive Andrew Ochoa says: "We were really inspired with wearable technology and began working on the idea of a smart earpiece that could solve a global challenge. We were a small team back then, but we all came from different backgrounds and spoke different languages, and that's how we came up with the idea."

How long do you think it will be until virtually all tier 1 call center agents are replaced by AI bots? I addressed this a bit in my Machine Learning session at last year's Business Communications Summit. I've been discussing the topic with my colleague Dave Michels, and we agree that the impact of artificial intelligence on contact center operations will be significant. Chatbots are the first step, but automated bots that naturally interact with callers will initially reduce and eventually eliminate all but the most complex human agent interactions during the next decade. The industry has arrived at a formidable convergence of natural language processing, speech synthesis, machine learning, and declining compute costs that will make it possible to produce outstanding customer service outcomes from AI bots within the next five years – if not sooner.

Despite banks' simultaneous excitement and fear of artificial intelligence as perhaps one of the most transformative technologies for their business, they've been quieter about IBM's Watson. Watson is a cognitive technology and super-computer comprising AI that "learns" how to draw conclusions from data, natural language understanding – which allows it to read and understand unstructured data, like social media posts and digital photos – and a search engine that can comb through millions of data points in seconds. It holds enormous promise in the long term for banks, who hold troves of customer data they're constantly studying and using to create better customer experiences as well as improve operational efficiencies. "What a Watson could deliver to banks would be tools to ensure sales people are selling the right things to the right people at the right time," Gilbert said. "Wells Fargo probably wouldn't have an eight financial product sales challenge if it had a Watson," because Watson wouldn't have allowed such rules to be set for employees to follow.

I have been teaching courses on data mining for over 10 years. One of my favorite lectures focuses on the use of Markov Models for predictive analytics. I enjoy giving this lecture because it always triggers interesting reactions from my students. Since the lecture can be used to demonstrate advanced concepts (like Bayesian inference and probabilistic reasoning) as well as basic concepts (like conditional probability and statistical dependence), I use the lecture both in my graduate course and in my freshman class. I start the lecture by telling the students that I will show them how to predict the future with a cat.