Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business Section. Investors are still digesting news that the nation's economic growth declined at the end of last year for the second straight quarter, denying President Trump the 3% annual increase he had promised his tax cuts would create. And growth this year and next won't hit that level either, economists say. Total economic output rose 2.9% in 2018. Beige Book: The latest Beige Book from the Federal Reserve comes out Wednesday.

In the clamour of continual negative news surrounding Brexit, one could be forgiven for thinking that dilemmas around the backstop and border issues are the only game in town concerning Irish business. However, lurking in the shadows, the gathering momentum of artificial intelligence, or AI, represents another multi-faceted development concerning CEOs in the ever-changing landscape of modern business. In a recent PwC survey, almost half of Irish respondents agreed that AI will be the next key gamechanger for business, and will have an impact on the world even greater than that of the internet revolution. While a strong majority believe AI will significantly change the way business is done over the coming five years, fewer than half admitted to having plans to pursue AI initiatives, compared to 77% globally. "Global CEOs are anticipating the AI revolution more so than Irish CEOs", said PwC Ireland's David Lee, adding that the survey suggests business leaders need to invest more in AI to keep up with international competitors and to fully leverage competitive advantage.

This July marks the 50th anniversary of an audacious technological achievement: Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon. Since that moment, the United States has been the undisputed leader in all things high-tech. But America's dominance could be coming to an end. China aspires to be No. 1, and may very well get there. American leaders are taking notice.

Time Machine foresees to design and implement advanced new digitisation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to mine Europe's vast cultural heritage, providing fair and free access to information that will support future scientific and technological developments in Europe The Time Machine will create advanced AI technologies to make sense of vast amounts of information from complex historical data sets. This will enable the transformation of fragmented data – with content ranging from medieval manuscripts and historical objects to smartphone and satellite images – into useable knowledge for industry. In essence, a large-scale computing and digitisation infrastructure will map Europe's entire social, cultural and geographical evolution. Considering the unprecedented scale and complexity of the data, The Time Machine's AI even has the potential to create a strong competitive advantage for Europe in the global AI race. "Time Machine is likely to become one of the most advanced Artificial Intelligence systems ever built, trained on data from wider geographical and temporal horizons", explains Frederic Kaplan, Professor of Digital Humanities at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Coordinator of the Time Machine Project.

If you're going to the play the "AI" drinking game at RSA Conference 2019, you may not make it out alive. Ahead of the industry's largest trade show in San Francisco, vendors are already touting AI-based solutions meant to address one of the industry's most pressing issues: a scarcity of workers qualified to defend against cyberattacks. Over the past week, both Palo Alto Networks Inc. PANW, -0.32% and Microsoft Corp. MSFT, 0.52% announced new AI-branded services to address an often-cited lack of cybersecurity workers qualified to keep on top of an exponentially growing number of cyberattacks. In a report released Thursday, however, Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO, 0.51% said that the industry may actually be cooling to AI-powered cybersecurity.

Many believed an algorithm would transcend humanity with cognitive awareness. Machines would discern and learn tasks without human intervention and replace workers in droves. They quite literally would be able to "think". Many people even raised the question whether we could have robots for spouses. But I am not talking about today.

Motherboards coordinate all the processes inside a computer. Motherboards coordinate all the processes inside a computer. Not every new technology product hits the shelves. Tech companies kill products and ideas all the time -- sometimes it's because they don't work, sometimes there's no market. Or maybe, it might be too dangerous.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere. It quietly integrated itself in nearly every aspect of our lives. Still, this technology is in its infancy and we don't entirely understand its full potential. We cringe at the idea of data being mined by governments, as reported in an amazing story on CBS's 60 Minutes. We worry about Big Brother, but excitedly lap up every Cortana or Siri update hoping it makes life just a little bit more interesting and easier.

The power grid of the United States is one of the most complex and technical systems in operation around the world. In order to deliver consistent electricity to the entire country, a number of regional transmission organizations (RTOs) must interact and manage resources. Like with any wide-scale network-dependent system, the electric grid is vulnerable to cyberattacks from outsiders. Hackers may be looking to cause disruptions in service or may have a larger goal of affecting the supply chain of energy resources. The U.S. government and the electric and gas companies are now moving into a more technology-focused future where new sciences like artificial intelligence and machine learning can be leveraged to help secure the power grid, its infrastructure, and customers nationwide.

Presidents have ordered troop surges into Iraq and Afghanistan, and President Trump is applying that strategy in another way. His Feb. 11 executive order requires a surge in research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. The order requires federal agencies to drive progress on AI through their own research and development and through investing in R&D in the private sector and academia. "Artificial intelligence" and "machine learning" are terms used interchangeably despite the vast difference between them. To analyze where we need to go, we first need to define the terms.