For a factory where robots toil around the clock to build a rocket with almost no human labor, the sound of grunts echoing across the parking lot make for a jarring contrast. "That's Keanu Reeves' stunt gym," says Tim Ellis, the chief executive and cofounder of Relativity Space, a startup that wants to combine 3D printing and artificial intelligence to do for the rocket what Henry Ford did for the automobile. As we walk among the robots occupying Relativity's factory, he points out the just-completed upper stage of the company's rocket, which will soon be shipped to Mississippi for its first tests. Across the way, he says, gesturing to the outside world, is a recording studio run by Snoop Dogg. Neither of those A-listers have paid a visit to Relativity's rocket factory, but the presence of these unlikely neighbors seems to underscore the company's main talking point: It can make rockets anywhere. In an ideal cosmos, though, its neighbors will be even more alien than Snoop Dogg.

IBM wants to keep its employees from quitting. And it's using artificial intelligence to do it. In a recent CNBC interview, CEO Ginni Rometty said that thanks to AI, the tech and consulting giant can now predict with 95% accuracy which employees are likely to leave in the next six months. The "proactive retention" tool -- which IBM uses internally but is also selling to clients -- analyzes thousands of pieces of data and then nudges managers toward which employees may be on their way out, telling them to "do something now so it never enters their mind," Rometty said. IBM's efforts to use AI to learn which employees might quit is one of the more high-profile recent examples of the way data science, "deep learning" and "predictive analytics" are increasingly infiltrating the traditionally low-tech human-resources department, arming personnel chiefs with more rigorous tools and hard data around the tricky art of managing people.

If you remember the days of cassette tapes, floppy disks and flip phones, then we don't need to tell you how quickly technology is moving lately. Now it seems we're running headlong into the era of artificial intelligence. Yes, smart computers capable of learning and adapting to solve complex problems. We're not quite to HAL yet, but it seems technology is getting there. And with these new technologies comes a new vocabulary.

We are excited to share the winners of the first Microsoft Azure AI Hackathon, hosted on Devpost. Developers of all backgrounds and skill levels were welcome to join and submit any form of AI project, whether using Azure AI to enhance existing apps with pre-trained machine learning (ML) models or by building ML models from scratch. Over 900 participants joined in, and 69 projects were submitted. A big thank you to all who participated and many congratulations to the winners. Submitted by Nathan Glover and Stephen Mott, Trashé is a SmartBin that aims to help people make more informed recycling decisions.

Google unveiled a new Pixel smartphone and other hardware devices Tuesday, all aimed at getting people even more dependent on its artificial-intelligence services. The Pixel 4 phone promises to respond to AI queries even faster than before, while a home Wi-Fi system is getting the AI features for the first time. The company also unveiled a new smart speaker and wireless earbuds, both invoking the AI-powered Google Assistant. The Assistant, akin to Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, is now available on more than 1 billion devices, including ones made by other manufacturers. With Google's own products, though, the company can steer users to Assistant features even more.

"We can then hand that to a product team and to R&D and say, 'This is what customers are asking for--go develop a solution that we can then sell as a company,'" she says. The focus is on repeatable and scalable solutions, she emphasizes. The Atos team tries to understand a customer's needs and what their point of view is. It's "really important that we don't give our customers a point of view until after they've given us theirs," Flores says. It's key to build from that and really understand where someone is coming from for the best solutions. A unique approach of the lab is bringing in multiple stakeholders from different parts of the business.

The workplace is changing, thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence. "AI isn't replacing all the jobs, which is sometimes in the perception that people have," he said at Yahoo Finance's All Markets Summit Thursday in New York City. "What it's doing is creating the opportunity for us to rethink what jobs are." With that, Daugherty highlights several skills that are necessary to stay competitive. "People need to focus on the human skills… like complex problem solving, creativity, social-emotional response, communication," he said.

American industry is in the midst of another revolution. This one is taking us to a place where decisions of many kinds, from when you should go in for a coronary bypass to where your car should turn left, will no longer be made entirely by us; they will be guided by artificial intelligence. That's good news, because artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise for improving the health and welfare of much of the planet. But for society to take full advantage of the power of AI, algorithmic outcomes must be fair, and the application of those outcomes must be ethical. So far, efforts to cultivate algorithmic fairness lag far behind the enthusiasm to adopt the technology.

The concept of artificial intelligence is nothing new, yet the hype around it continues to grow. According to CB Insights (via Forbes), AI startups have raised a record $7.4 billion raised in the second quarter of 2019 alone. The excitement does have merit. Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to automate many of the tedious tasks humans perform now. It could open up new ways to approach problems while saving users time and money.

Employees have more trust in robots than they do their human managers, a global study has revealed. A survey across 10 countries have found that 64 percent prefer to seek advice or guidance from artificial intelligence over their boss and 82 percent feels it does a better job. The majority of workers are also optimistic, excited and grateful about having robot co-workers and nearly a quarter reported having a loving and gratifying relationship with the intelligent-style software. The study was conducted by the US technology company Oracle and research firm Future Workplace. The team surveyed 8,370 employees, managers and HR leaders and'found that AI has changed the relationship between people and technology at work and is reshaping the role HR teams and managers need to play in attracting, retaining and developing talent.'