Episode Summary: Accenture is a leading global professional services company in the tech space, providing services to many of the Fortune 500 and their global equivalents. The company recently conducted a study, combined with expertise from economists and AI researchers, about the longer-term economic impact of artificial intelligence around the world. In this episode, I spoke with Chief Technology Officer Paul Daugherty, who has been with Accenture since 1986, and who was joined by Global Technology R&D Lead Marc Carrel-Billiard. We met up at a coffee shop after an AI Summit in San Francisco, and I asked Paul and Marc about what they had learned from this newly-published study and what they consider to be the significant impacts of *AI and automation on the future job market. Brief Recognition: Paul Daugherty is Accenture's CTO and leads the company's Technology Innovation & Ecosystem group.

Jerry Kaplan is widely known as an Artificial Intelligence expert, technical innovator, serial entrepreneur, and bestselling author. He is currently a Fellow at The Center for Legal Informatics at Stanford University and a visiting lecturer in the computer science department, where he teaches social and economic impact of Artificial Intelligence. Kaplan founded several technology companies over his 35-year career, two of which became public companies. As an inventor and entrepreneur, he was a key contributor to the creation of numerous familiar technologies including tablet computers, smart phones, online auctions, and social computer games. Kaplan is the author of three books: the best-selling classic Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure; Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2015); and Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know (2016). In 1998, Kaplan received the Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Northern California. He has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Forbes, among others. He received a BA degree from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania. Jerry will be speaking at the Gigaom AI Now in San Francisco, February 15-16th.

Here are some story lines I don't want you to miss today. Donald Trump has chosen one of the most consistently conservative presidential cabinets in recent history -- one whose presumed members' views don't always align with what Trump promised on the campaign trail. In Washington circles, the biggest guessing game is how it will all play out. Somehow, you have to think tweeting is involved. We don't want to jinx it, but … all of California should be in for some rain today.

Rob May is the CEO and Co-Founder of Talla, a platform for intelligent information delivery in Slack and Hipchat. Previously, Rob was the CEO and Co-Founder of Backupify, (acquired by Datto in 2014). Before that, he held engineering, business development, and management positions at various startups. Rob has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and a MBA from the University of Kentucky. He is also a well known angel investor, a venture partner at Pillar, and is the creator and writer of the widely-read and highly-regarded AI newsletter, Technically Sentient. Rob May will be speaking at the Gigaom AI Now in San Francisco, February 15-16th. In anticipation of that, I caught up with him to ask a few questions.

Robot" Rami Malek has been nominated as best male actor in a drama series for his performance as Elliot Alderson in the hit USA Network series at the 23rd SAG Awards. The actor took to Twitter to share his delight over the nomination. "Gotta thank my peers for the love and respect they've showed me with this @SAGawards nomination," Malek said. Fans will know if Malek won the award when the ceremony airs on Jan. 29, 2017. Aside from a possible win from Malek, fans can also expect to see the actor in a project that has been waiting to be made for years now. The actor was tapped to replace Sasha Baron Cohen in the long-gestating Queen biopic titled "Bohemian Rhapsody," according to Variety. During an appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," Malek opened up for the first time about playing the legendary musician Freddie Mercury. Who doesn't know that music? Of course I have to prepare," Malek said about the status of the film.

Data science and machine learning will become more mainstream, especially in the following industries: energy, finance (banking, insurance), agriculture (precision farming), transportation, urban planning, healthcare (customized treatments), even government. Some, with no familiarity with data science, will want to create a legal framework about how data can be analyzed, how the algorithms should behave, and to force public disclosure of algorithm secrets. I believe that they will fail, though Obamacare is an example where predictive algorithms were required to ignore metrics such as gender or age, to compute premiums, resulting in more expensive premiums for everyone. The rise of sensor data - that is, IoT - will create data inflation. Data quality, data relevancy, and security will continue to be of critical importance.

How should we be thinking about machine learning and AI? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. The big issue that I am interested in is: what does it mean for us to live with machines that are not sentient but appear as if they are? Let's start by quickly defining sentience and intelligence (at least for this discussion). We'll say that intelligence is the ability solve complex problems, handle varied input and achieve goals. An abacus is not intelligent.

Data science and machine learning will become more mainstream, especially in the following industries: energy, finance (banking, insurance), agriculture (precision farming), transportation, urban planning, healthcare (customized treatments), even government. Some, with no familiarity with data science, will want to create a legal framework about how data can be analyzed, how the algorithms should behave, and to force public disclosure of algorithm secrets. I believe that they will fail, though Obamacare is an example where predictive algorithms were required to ignore metrics such as gender or age, to compute premiums, resulting in more expensive premiums for everyone. The rise of sensor data - that is, IoT - will create data inflation. Data quality, data relevancy, and security will continue to be of critical importance.

The big issue that I am interested in is: what does it mean for us to live with machines that are not sentient but appear as if they are? Let's start by quickly defining sentience and intelligence (at least for this discussion). We'll say that intelligence is the ability solve complex problems, handle varied input and achieve goals. An abacus is not intelligent. Sentience is the ability to feel, to have first person experience.

Robots have already been put to work across a number of industries. They are manufacturing cars, taking care of the elderly, doing housework, homework, and even entering literary awards. It is not surprising then that new robots have been developed to conduct job interviews. One such robot, Matlda, has been programmed to conduct 25-minute interviews in which she works through a roster of up to 76 questions. She records and analyses the interviewee's responses, monitors facial expressions and compares them to other successful employees within the hiring company.