In the 10 days leading up to Christmas this year, I searched on Instagram for three of my exes, an acquaintance I met on a trip to Cuba four years ago, an account dedicated to astrology memes, a past roommate, my own dog's account (@lucythetherapypup), my best friend's sweater-wearing poodle, a famous Pomeranian who lives in New York, a bird named Parfait I recently met at a San Francisco market, 10 contestants of the reality TV show Love Island, and the hashtag #wienerdog. I know all of this because Instagram told me. That's because this month, I submitted a data request under California's new privacy law to see just how much information the company has on me. What I got was a wide-ranging look at how my life has changed in the last 10 years since I first logged on to Instagram, and a window into what the company is willing to share about what it knows about me. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, I have the right to demand companies disclose "any personal information" they collect about me and request a copy of that information.

At Mawson, we partner with exceptionally talented founders to build AI startups that redefine industries. We are always on the lookout for outstanding technical talent and entrepreneurs, who like us at Mawson, believe building companies is not a job, but a way of life. If you're curious about what the journey of a Machine Learning Engineer at Mawson is like, we invite you to step into the shoes of one as you continue to read on… Congratulations, welcome to the Mawson family, where you've joined the team along with several other new Machine Learning Engineers. The fact that you've made it this far already is an achievement, as we've specifically selected individuals who are exceptional in Math and Programming. Our journey starts by advancing your Deep Learning skills.

China is once more tightening its grip on internet content, and this time algorithms are in the spotlight. The Cyberspace Administration of China has published upcoming rules that dictate how internet companies manage content, including a push for recommendation algorithms that promote "positive" ideas (read: government policies) while excluding "bad" material. The measure explicitly forbids content that "endangers national security, leaks state secrets, subverts state power [and] undermines national unity." The new rules are due to take effect on March 1st, and also call for tighter management of accounts, sign-ups, moderation and "rumors." Governments have lately stepped up attempts to regulate algorithms, although China's approach is very different than that from other countries.

Every day, roughly 60 percent of all market trades are made by computer. When the market turns volatile, this can climb to as high as 90 percent. Robo-advisors are increasingly making this process available to the consumer, saving them time and money as a result. With humans no longer in the transaction chain, fees are slashed. Undercutting the typical 2 percent cut of profits (not to mention 20 percent incentives) charged by a wealth manager, most robo-advisors take around 0.25 percent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a part of life so quickly and seamlessly that many of us are still unaware of how deeply it has impacted society. AI analytics has increased the productivity and efficiency of a range of industries ranging from manufacturing to retail. In the coming year, it's likely that AI will make even more substantial strides, causing positive changes to specific industries and adapting how they function at an elementary level. Below, 11 members of Forbes Technology Council touch on the sectors that may benefit the most from AI in the coming year and why the technology is so crucial to those fields. No, robots are not going to take over customer service.

The recent tit-for-tat missile strikes between US and Iran show how war has changed in the 21st century. Technology has brought new capabilities for killing at a distance, and what we are seeing today with long-range, so-called "precision missiles" is a harbinger of the next generation of warheads. Autonomous weaponry and "killer robots" sound like the stuff of science fiction but various governments including the US and Russia are investing heavily in their development. Turkey has teamed up with a defence contractor to deploy kamikaze drones with biometric facial recognition to the Syrian border this year, while the Israeli-developed Harpy "loitering munition" – which hangs about in the sky looking for an unrecognised radar signal to strike – has been sold to several countries including India and China. For cloud computing expert Laura Nolan, this issue became personal in early 2018 when, while working for Google, she discovered the tech giant had secretively signed up to the US military's artificial intelligence project Maven.

There's an emerging technology that is starting to gain traction in the tech world. Already featured in most major media networks, the role of deepfake artificial intelligence and virtual influencer (VI) touches on a variety of legal and ethical concerns that the business community should take notice of. Deepfakes are videos manipulated by AI to overlay images of celebrities or public figures in order to deceive viewers into believing the content is authentic. Recently, deepfake videos of Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Boris Johnson have all emerged and gone viral. In the state of California, recent legislation has made it "illegal to create or distribute videos, images or audio of politicians doctored to resemble real footage within 60 days of an election," according to The Guardian.

Artificial intelligence is our shiny new toy. We're dazzled by its potential to help us make our lives more efficient, more productive…just…better. Already, AI systems seem to be getting closer to making better decisions than a human can, which is a relatively new development. Until now, while even the most advanced machine learning systems have been very good at sorting massive amounts of data and contextualising it to make sense of it, they haven't been better than us at deciding what to do with their findings. AI changes all this through one distinguishing quality: its ability to adapt its own behaviour, often in milliseconds – instead of days, weeks or years, as is the case with the average human. These AI breakthroughs are moving at such a rate that people like SingularityNet founder Ben Goertzel give us between 5 and 30 years before machines are smarter than us.

"Ambarella is an artificial intelligence ("AI") company," says the first line in a recent Ambarella (AMBA) investor presentation to Morgan Stanley. More than four and a half years ago, we wrote about how Ambarella was seeing very strong revenue growth selling semiconductor processing solutions for video in four primary segments: camera-based advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), wearable cameras like GoPro, cameras for drones, and home automation cameras. Since that article, shares of Ambarella have fallen -50% compared to a NASDAQ return of 73% over the same time frame. Fortunately, the company is being forthcoming with investors as to why the company's stock has performed so poorly. We had previously remarked how a lack of transparency into the company's financials prevented investors from seeing which of these areas were contributing to all that strong revenue growth.

With the change of each year, new trends emerge or old ones change and evolve in the marketing industry. The changes that occur may be blatant, but more often, they are subtle, and you need to be looking for them to notice what they are. Determining what is trending is in a company's best interests since it gives it the ability to focus on the big issues. With social media competing with mass media, a trend could explode in a matter of hours, making it even more critical to predict the eventuality before it happens. To help, 15 members of Forbes Agency Council weigh in on the trends they expect to show up throughout 2020, to better inform marketers where they should be putting their focus.