Rising inequality and social polarisation are set to shape world developments for the next decade after contributing to Britain's decision to leave the European Union and the ballot-box success of US president-elect Donald Trump, the World Economic Forum says. Climate change was underlined as the third major global trend in the WEF's annual assessment of global risks, published on Wednesday at an event at Bloomberg's European headquarters in London. It said world leaders must work together to avoid "further hardship and volatility in the coming decade". If everything goes to plan, we should see Australian growth around 2.8% in 2017, but there are a number of risks in both directions. Bellamy's CEO Laura McBain has been widely credited for transforming the family-run local company to a global brand.

MEPs are to vote on the first comprehensive set of rules for how humans will interact with artificial intelligence and robots. The report makes it clear that it believes the world is on the cusp of a "new industrial" robot revolution. MEPs will decide whether to give robots legal status as "electronic persons". Designers should make sure any robots have a kill switch, which would allow functions to be shut down if necessary, the report recommends. Meanwhile users should be able to use robots "without risk or fear of physical or psychological harm", it states. The report suggests that robots, bots, androids and other manifestations of artificial intelligence are poised to "unleash a new industrial revolution, which is likely to leave no stratum of society untouched".

Rising income inequality and the polarisation of societies pose a risk to the global economy in 2017 and could result in the rolling back of globalisation unless urgent action is taken, according to the World Economic Forum. Before its annual meeting in Davos next week, the WEF said the gap between rich and poor had been behind the UK's Brexit vote and Donald Trump's election victory in the US. And it warned that there were new threats to social cohesion from the robotics and artificial intelligence revolution. The organisation said fundamental reform of capitalism may be needed to tackle public anger. The WEF's annual global risks report – culled from 700 experts – found that rising income and wealth disparity, and increasing polarisation of sectors of society, were ranked first and third among the underlying trends that will determine the shape of the world in the next decade.

This still image taken from drone footage posted online Monday, Jan. 2, 2017 by the Aamaq News Agency, a media arm of the Islamic State group, purports to shows an aerial image of a neighborhood damaged by Turkish airstrikes in the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, in Aleppo province, Syria. Nearly two months into the assault, Turkey has become bogged down in an unexpectedly bloody fight to retake the Islamic State group's last stronghold in northern Syria. It has been forced to pour in troops, take the lead in the battle from its Syrian allies and reach out to Russia for aerial support -- a move that tests its alliance with the United States and the Syrian opposition. This still image taken from drone footage posted online Monday, Jan. 2, 2017 by the Aamaq News Agency, a media arm of the Islamic State group, purports to shows an aerial image of a neighborhood damaged by Turkish airstrikes in the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, in Aleppo province, Syria. Nearly two months into the assault, Turkey has become bogged down in an unexpectedly bloody fight to retake the Islamic State group's last stronghold in northern Syria.

A child's first words are celebrated, but once we are lingual, we just open our mouths and speak. But how did we come to have smooth, spoken language? Scientists have turned to our relatives, non-human primates, for answers. In the hunt for what makes us unique, researchers have some ideas. One distinction they have long highlighted is the position of humans' voice box. Humans have a low larynx, while other primates have a high larynx.

There is no doubt that 2016 was a breakthrough year for some of the technologies we have been watching. AI, VR, AR, Chatbots, self-driving cars all took significant leaps forward in terms of their practical applications and adoption, taking many by surprise. It is definitely true to say that the robots are no longer coming- they are here, and they are taking jobs. Rates of innovation and adoption will not slow down in 2017, so we've pulled together the key emerging technology trends to watch and plan for. One thing is for certain in 2017, whether you work in strategy, risk management, operations, start-ups, R&D or marketing, you need to be abreast of the potential of disruptive digital technologies which are no longer purely the realm of the CIO or CTO.

Across customer experiences, marketing and business it was a year with many inflection points. Understanding them will help us better gauge how it will gain even more traction in 2017. Five years after the debut of Siri on the iPhone 4S, Apple's new AirPods gave new life to its virtual assistant. Amazon and Google have brought AI into our living rooms in a massive way – this past holiday season, Amazon sold millions of Alexa devices worldwide. Smart brands were at the ready to take advantage of that winter bounty: Jamie Oliver, National Rail, Spotify, and Just Eat all offered useful skills for Alexa.

I had a fun ride attending a very interesting lecture this semester called Programming Paradigms. I learned about the four main paradigms that exist: imperative, object-oriented, functional and logic programming. Now, I'm sure every developer has heard about imperative, OO and functional, but to be honest I had no idea what logic programming was about. I was intrigued, what could this paradigm I had never heard about be, what does it excel in and could it be useful for day-to-day programming problems? The book The Pragmatic Programmer has a tip called "Invest Regularly in Your Knowledge Portfolio": Different languages solve the same problems in different ways.

Do you think Hollywood has lost touch with American values? Do you think Hollywood has lost touch with American values? The contentious presidential campaign was filled with accusations of elitism and bias by the media -- from the news to entertainment. Many supporters of Donald J. Trump saw his victory as a repudiation of the so-called liberal elite. So as 2017 begins, we ask: Is Hollywood representing all Americans? Are Hollywood values out of sync with American values? It's the start of a conversation we'll have all year with Hollywood's creators, consumers and observers. Most of all, we want to hear from you. Is Hollywood out of touch with your America? Here's what our critics and writers have to say: KENNETH TURAN on potent Hollywood visions that helped elect Trump TV's affluent bubble: MARY McNAMARA on Hollywood's reluctance to deal with class issues Fear of the powerful woman: JUSTIN CHANG on working women and men still behaving badly Realistic or cliche?: JEFFREY FLEISHMAN on ...

Google Home and Amazon's Echo are the most famous, but a whole raft of these gadgets is preparing to flood the market. One of the most advanced will likely come from Baidu, the Chinese tech giant that, like Google, began as a search engine and now has its tendrils in all sorts of digital and physical spaces. Andrew Ng, Baidu's chief AI scientist, calls these devices "conversational computers," and he's a key reason any of them have learned to talk in the first place. A former AI researcher at Stanford, Ng is best known for spearheading the Google Brain initiative, an ambitious artificial-intelligence project that helped advance Silicon Valley's understanding of deep-learning techniques. Instead of being programmed to respond to specific actions, a deep learning system is fed massive amounts of data from which it is able to discern patterns over time, loosely mimicking how the human mind absorbs information. Ng's system at Google famously figured out what a cat looks like after scanning millions of online images.