The odds are high, according to recent economic analyses. Indeed, fully 47 percent of all U.S. jobs will be automated "in a decade or two," as the tech-employment scholars Carl Frey and Michael Osborne have predicted. That's because artificial intelligence and robotics are becoming so good that nearly any routine task could soon be automated. Robots and AI are already whisking products around Amazon's huge shipping centers, diagnosing lung cancer more accurately than humans and writing sports stories for newspapers. Last year in Pittsburgh, Uber put its first-ever self-driving cars into its fleet: Order an Uber and the one that rolls up might have no human hands on the wheel at all. Meanwhile, Uber's "Otto" program is installing AI in 16-wheeler trucks--a trend that could eventually replace most or all 1.7 million drivers, an enormous employment category.

They never take days off and never strike -- artificial intelligence is set to replace more than 30 human workers at a Japanese insurance firm. The system will be based on IBM's Watson Explorer technology, and will help calculate payouts to Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance policyholders from January 29, the company said in a statement. IBM describes Watson as "cognitive technology that can think like a human". The AI will scan hospital records and medical certificates, and then extract data on injuries, patient medical histories and administered procedures to determine insurance payouts. Fukoku Life said it hoped the AI would increase productivity by 30 per cent, although final payments will still be processed by human staff.

Colonial First State data scientists are working with a team of computer engineering PhDs from the University of Technology, Sydney, to develop deep learning algorithms to predict investor responses to market shocks and tailor the communication of financial advice. A five-year partnership between Commonwealth Bank of Australia-owned CFS and UTS has resulted in the asset manager providing 20 years of investment and behavioural data for 1 million customers to machine learning researchers at the university, who are using its cutting-edge super-computers to forecast investor reaction. Peter Chun, the general manager of product and investment at Colonial First State, said artificial intelligence and big data analytics will also help the asset manager predict which customers might be more receptive to investment opportunities. He points to the example of the government's non-concessional contribution rules for superannuation; customers have a window of opportunity before June 30 to invest more than the caps.

Asked if a computer will ever be able to give better investment advice than a human, Oliver Bussmann does not hesitate. "I believe it's possible," said Bussmann, who until March was the chief information officer of UBS. Banks' wealth management departments and other investment firms are starting to adopt artificial intelligence. This is different from robo advisers. Those have simplistic, rules-based models -- you give them your age, risk tolerance, goals, and so on and they select a basket of ETFs for you.

A few days ago, AMD (NYSE:AMD) has shown its new professional video/compute card lineup for the enterprise sector and it has recently shown some additional demonstrations about the new Ryzen CPUs. AMD is obviously focusing the public attention around its overall platform, which is becoming more and more interesting, and it is finally providing some very interesting product previews. In this article, I want to focus on the professional video lineup for the enterprise market, that is subdivided into three solutions with three different architectures. As I will show you, the first two solutions are not so competitive due to technical issues and/or outdated architectures, but the top solution, the MI25 powered by the VEGA 10 architecture, looks to be very interesting and competitive. Surely, the initial enthusiasm must be restrained since the architecture is quite late in comparison to Nvidia's (NASDAQ:NVDA) Pascal, while VEGA 10 will probably still show the high power consumption behavior that characterizes Polaris 10 and the entire GCN architecture.

There is no shortage of attention lately on the "Internet of Things". As a case in point, see the "Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things Act" or "DIGIT Act", i.e., S. 2607, a bill introduced in the Senate on March 1, 2016 and amended on September 28, 2016, "to ensure appropriate spectrum planning and inter-agency coordination to support the Internet of Things" – A companion bill, H.R. 5117, was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 28, 2016. However, since there is no "internet" dedicated to "things", it is fair to state that the Internet of Things does not exist as such. We are left with a definitional vacuum, but it is hammering the obvious to acknowledge that there is no dearth of attempts around the world to fill the gap. Perhaps as a helpful shortcut, we could view the expression as a metaphor that captures the arrival of almost anything and everything, until now out of scope, into the communications space.

Asked if a computer will ever be able to give better investment advice than a human, Oliver Bussmann does not hesitate. "I believe it's possible," said Bussmann, who until March was the chief information officer of UBS. Banks' wealth management departments and other investment firms are starting to adopt artificial intelligence. This is different from the robo-advisers you've probably heard about. Those have simplistic, rules-based models -- you give them your age, risk tolerance, goals, and so on and they select a basket of exchange-traded funds for you.

IT PAYS to have false memories. Our brains use them to generalise new information – but lack of sleep gets in the way. False memory was discovered in an experiment that asked volunteers to memorise lists of related words and then recall them. When they learned "bed", "drowsy" and "dream", about half later also remembered the word "sleep". That's because well-rested brains normally use "associative memory" to link related concepts together.

In 2016, the White House recognized the importance of AI at its Frontiers Conference. The concept of driverless cars became a reality, with Uber's self-driving fleet in Pittsburgh and Tesla's new models equipped with the hardware for full autonomy. Google's DeepMind platform, AlphaGo, beat the world champion of the game--10 years ahead of predictions. "Increasing use of machine learning and knowledge-based modeling methods" are major trends to watch in 2017, said Marie desJardins, associate dean and professor of computer science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. How will this play out?

As the end of the year looms over the horizon, it's time to take a look forward and mull over the next big thing in technology. Like any year before, 2017 will bring its own problems and solutions, shaping up both the way we use and think about technology. TNW Conference is back for its 12th year. So without further ado, take a dive into the future and check out some of the most exciting tech trends to look forward to in 2017. With forecasts predicting its growth into a $30 billion market as early as 2020, much has been said about the bright future of virtual reality.